Ever since we all fired up our first NES console, we have been
hooked. Then, a succession of great consoles came out: Genesis and
Dreamcast, 64 and Gamecube, Playstations 1 and 2. Then Xbox and Halo
came out and even the jocks stopped chest bumping long enough to play.
Finally, out came the Wii, 360, and PS3. And here we sit, an entire
society on video games.
Remember - some of you young guns may have missed this - when your
teacher told you that in high school and college you would need to
either type your papers on a typewriter or write in cursive? Then you
got your first computer, and you realized that they were wrong. We all
(except some kiddies) saw Al Gore invent the internet and we stumbled
into a new era in which each of us slowly realized our full potential
by flaming others on forums and playing video games online. Starcraft,
Counter-Strike, Everquest, and World of Warcraft, just to name a few
larger titles. God how we loved our ever-evolving complexities and
interrelations between our internet and gaming avatars and the world
around us.
Now, disparate, these two worlds stand apart. Our computers sit idle
as we game on our consoles, and our consoles lie lonely near our TVs,
gathering dust when we use our PCs. Even worse, we the gamers ignite
tensions over which is better for gaming: the PC or the Console? I ask
a deeper question, what the hell is the difference anymore? In a time
when we can surf the internet on our PS3; communicate with our friends
on our wireless mics through the 360; exercise with our Wiis; and yes,
game on our personal computers, why the hell are we fighting over which
is better at what? I had a discussion with a friend over this very
topic and it sparked the flame for this little piece.
When we play each individual system, or PC, how many processors stand
idle? In an ever increasing reliance on technology and information to
drive the economy, it seems backward to let these power sinks (you know
you don’t unplug them from the outlet when you aren’t playing) waste
away while you spend your time on other devices. Even more
importantly, with current research requiring more and more processing
to complete, it seems a crime to let these units get breaks of more
than weeks at a time. Come on, you know you haven’t fired up your Wii
since the bowling got boring At least my room-mates and I haven’t. I
still do all my working out analog.
A small step in the right direction is the folding@home being run on
PCs and PS3s. This is the kind of achievement we gamers can be proud
to be a large part of, as the graphics processing units are the most
efficient way to vamp up the projects efficiency; and we all know we
upgrade our video cards far too often to not contribute. (If you
aren’t a part of this, you should be.) [1]
Like all gamers, I enjoy occasionally championing the endeavors of the
human race and sharing my processing wealth, but I still wonder what
could be if all the PCs in my house could not only be networked
together, but could help each other and my consoles process
information. This is possible, of course, but it requires skill-sets
far beyond mine or that of most people. Furthermore, if I were to
attempt this, it would require the integration of so many separate
elements never intended to communicate about anything more than parsing
up a small stream of information delivered by our internet.
So, how would the giants of the gaming, entertainment and information
industry (Nintendo, Microsoft, Apple, Playstation, and the various
personal computer titans game developers, et cetera) come together to
standardize anything? Even more importantly: why would those gigantic
corporations come together? There are reasons for and against, and
they lie -surprise - in the difference between personal computers and
consoles.
While consoles began as dedicated units designed to do a single task,
computers began as flexible, modular units designed to be upgraded and
programmed to do as many things as a brilliant early adopting person
could think up within limits. As with anything, each got more complex;
and soon our consoles became some of our most expensive toys, and
computers became some of our most expensive necessities. In the
organic growth of each individual market, consoles and PCs began to
eyeball the others’ business as each produced video games. In the mix
of all this were the hapless game developers who couldn’t figure where
to produce their games, when to release them and which consoles or
operating systems to release them on. In each company’s bid to secure
a niche in the market we entered the era of franchise gaming.
Everyone just takes for granted that certain games are released on
certain systems and that owners of only a single system are shit out of
luck when it comes to enjoying the best of all three systems. The
inherent flaw in this system of hedging your bets on your own console
being the bestseller: the consoles are not where the money is Just
look at Sony’s titanic loss on the original production costs of the PS3
versus its profits: around 250 dollars lost per unit.[2] Xbox threw
the dice, selling units valued by market researchers to be around 525
dollars for 399.[3] Only the Nintendo Wii (easily the least
technologically ambitious of the three systems) has sold for a profit,
around 6 dollars per unit sold.[4]
So, it begs the question, why continue the obviously insane scheme of
trying to corner a large section of the market for yourself by gambling
on the sales of a system cycle after cycle? The proof is in the
pudding: it has worked before, and it will work again. In a
bittersweet irony, despite the archaic and masochistic tendencies of
these industry mainstays, they make loads of money, or are a big enough
seller to offset most production cost and induce investment. Even in
this economy, with investment and commercial banks crumbling, the
gaming industry plods along, continuing to seduce more and more people
into the growing demographic: gamer. However, can this be similar to
the IT bubble of the late nineties? I hate to say I told you so early,
but I’m gonna be the first to call this one: unless these guys get
their chickens in a line and start working for the consumer instead of
trying to cut our market into thirds, eventually they are going to be
staring into the faces of consumers so strapped for cash and content
that they are sick of buying. Can you honestly tell me that the
investment in each system has yielded half of the enjoyment - dollar
for dollar- you have garnered from your Ipod or seasons of “It’s Always
Sunny in Philadelphia”? At least for me, the answer is no. I haven’t
bought a system when it was current since the Nintendo 64 and despite
the wonderment I felt for Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask, I was
disappointed that I couldn’t play PS titles. I simply did not have
enough money at the time to buy both systems and ever since, I have had
that bitter taste in my mouth.
That is not to say I don’t enjoy consoles now… I do. I play Halo 3
regularly and have dabbled in other 360 titles and played the shit out
of Super Mario Galaxy. I will play Left 4 Dead, but only as a rental
because I do not own a 360 (it is my roommate’s). After I move out, I
will never go back and revisit those experiences like I still do
occasionally on my 64 and my PS2 that I bought four years late for
twenty bucks to play FF titles.
So, having pointed out some major flaws in consoles: what about PCs? I
happen to love gaming on mine, recently renewing my love of World of
Warcraft and *attempting* to play casually. I was, until a while ago,
a fierce proponent of the PC cause, flaming all who dared challenge the
PCs superiority in the gaming world. But, frankly, the PC can stand to
see some improvements too. Look at the Wii and its amazing ability to
bring people older than my parents to the TV for some entertainment
that isn’t cinema or television. Who could have predicted that an easy
to use system would do something I never thought possible, make one of
my friends get up and exercise not once or twice, but on a regular
basis? The Xbox and PS3’s are not without achievements of their own,
further fusing the “casual” and “hardcore” gamer together through easy
internet accessibility and increased interaction between larger groups
of people. PCs still remain a bastion known only to those addicted to
WoW, and the others of us who have been there from the early days of
Starcraft, Tribes, and the like.
Now is idealizing time. Imagine if, instead of a Wii, we had a motion
sensor that plugged into the usb port, or a card that could be placed
in a PCI express slot, that allowing you to use a Wiimote while playing
Wii (now a theoretical software company) titles that are geared towards
children and adults just starting in on gaming. Better yet, imagine if
you could by a processing unit that would augment your personal
computers graphics, memory, and general computation by a similar card
or usb or wireless interface? Instead of systems, we could upgrade
simply buy buying the equivalent of a PS3’s processing power and then
buying the titles? It would be a game design company’s wet dream to be
able to design to demographics rather than owners of individual
systems. Even more potent would be game designers’ ability to sell
advertising within the game itself. Online patches and updates could
be made free through the advertisements played while the updating
occurs or through internal advertising (see NFS series). Games
advertising on similar games could only drive profits and increase the
functionality of the whole system, allowing gamers to find more games
they like, from software developers they know because they produce good
games, not because they produce for a certain system.
So how can we, the gamers, bring about this utopian dream of free and
open development? Bad news: we cannot. We can only sit and watch as
our money gets poured down the drain by these corporations with their
outmoded methods while our processors grow old and obsolete performing
a mere fraction of their possible functions. When the industry bubble
bursts - and it will burst - only then will we see a shift; but that
may be in a long time, as games continue to be an integral and growing
part of our lives.
Thoughts or Comments? Post ‘Em!
[1]http://folding.stanford.edu/
[2]http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/ps3-launch-damages-sony-profits
[3]http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/24/xbox360_component_breakdown/
[4]http://www.gamespot.com/news/6201833.html
We were expecting problems with mod support, but there are a lot of other issues.
Not accidental, they want modders to stop modding their older games to force them to mod Shitfield.
Over 14 GBs and doesn't change much at all? What? Taking up that much drive space for a pathetic 'remastering' is shameful.
Par for Bethesda.
LOL people are actually expecting massive improvements or something? From Bethesda?? the same people who released Skyrim multiple times and the all look like shit? THAT Bethesda? are people for real?
As of right now, there are no monopolies in the games industry, and for the sake of the medium as a whole, they never should either.
And yet the biggest tech companies in America are essentially that. They buy up all the small comps only to kill them off and steal what they have, and if they can't buy em they bleed them to death.
They buy IPs not talent. That's why these buyouts never work and the IPs die. Right now it's too expensive to develop games - but I expect that to shift maybe as AI tools can make it easier. The best games have been indie games for awhile as big developers fuck their ips to death with "games as a service" -
A voice actor from The Coalition's third-person shooter series, Gears of War, has hinted at a new game announcement coming in June.
Hopefully Microsoft will go back to the original story line and get away from that woke nonsense from the last Gears game Gears of Woke! But were talking about Microsoft so all the betting money is on more of the same woke nonsense.