Denis Dyack: How much crack is he smoking, and where can I get some?

[DavidKaye]

Denis argues for the inevitability of a unified gaming format. (http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=81808)

A couple of choice quotes:

On commoditization:

Take a cell-phone as an example. When you first got them, they could do one thing - they could take calls. Now you can play games, you can get email, you can listen to music - but the prices of these things are continuing to drop as it's becoming commoditised, and now if you look at the cell-phone market generally there's hundreds of different kinds of phones and they're all pretty much the same, and they have no value, and they're given away with cell-phone plans.

On how standards would be arrived at and enforced:

I think it would be something that would be very similar to the ESRB (Entertainment Software Ratings Board). Essentially you have all the publishers and developers getting together and saying 'here's the standard specifications that we're going to go with', and obviously I'm not saying that technology is going to stand still - I talked about how it's been shown that technology is logarithmically increasing - so every five years or so they would adjust the standard.

How the hell is a guy with such a tenuous grip on reality running a company?

[CastOutDevil]

All Rogue-like, all the time, babeh.

[father lamat]

Wow...

The only thing keeping the esrb alive and kicking is the fact you can't get on a shelf or a platform license without it. I can honestly see any standard set being broken by the next week, if that long. On some level I can understand where he is coming from though, giving the developers a say in how or what the next platform is going to entail but man... wow.

I thought communism was dead.

[notatiger]

Communism? What are you talking about?

I like the idea of more standardization for computer hardware to make issues like these (BioShock - seriously, fuck PC gaming) (http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=37965) even rarer, but I don't know if that could be done or even if it would be a good idea.

[geezer]

Wow...

The only thing keeping the esrb alive and kicking is the fact you can't get on a shelf or a platform license without it.

Just that one little tiny thing, eh? :)

[RepoMan]

Dyack sure is a dumbass. I get more and more pessimistic that we'll ever see Too Human. He's kind of like George Broussard back when Broussard couldn't keep his mouth shut, only he's skinnier and more peevish.

I mean, what the fuck does he think drives the entire console industry? Hint: it's not just the software makers. I wonder if he's planning to sue the console makers for complicating his life so much.

The reason consoles aren't like cell phones is that there are a lot more kinds of games than there are kinds of phone calls.

[Nick Walter]

I think he's being a shade too utopian. Getting together to enforce a standard platform is what game makers should do, but they probably won't because it's difficult and would face serious resistance from the hardware makers that dream of monopolies.

[Bob Violence]

Trip Hawkins had this idea about 15 years ago. How'd that work out for him?

[BlindSwordsman]

Denis argues for the inevitability of a unified gaming format. (http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=81808)

A couple of choice quotes:

On commoditization:



On how standards would be arrived at and enforced:



How the hell is a guy with such a tenuous grip on reality running a company?
This place has really started to go to hell it seems - ad hominem attacks, soon followed by .gif discussions.

Commodification (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodification) is not something that is a simple concept so I understand it might be difficult to form some kind of argument. However, you should at least try to understand what I am saying before you post something like this.

I should post the talk at some point so more people would understand the concept better. I assure you, what I am saying is far from crazy. Ironically, it is something you would probably be very happy with as a consumer of games (assuming you play games).

BTW I never suggested that is how standards would be enforced and arrived, it one way it might happen. There are many others and it is speculative of course.

Denis

[Nezz]

Come to think of it, how were the standards for radio, TV, CD players, cell phones etc. arrived at? I'm not aware that there are boards for that sort of thing.

[BlindSwordsman]

Come to think of it, how were the standards for radio, TV, CD players, cell phones etc. arrived at? I'm not aware that there are boards for that sort of thing.

There might have been but I am not aware of these either. There is a consortium for DVD standards I think however existence of such a thing is not necessary for commodification to occur.

"Commodification can be the desired outcome of an entity in the market, or it can be an unintentional outcome that no party actively sought to achieve." - Wikipedia

The history of technology is central to this issue and even people within the games industry often do not have a firm grounding for this subject matter. Many within the industry tend to rely on the history of the video game industry instead which I feel is too short to begin to drawn long trends.

[Erlend Grefsrud]

There might have been but I am not aware of these either. There is a consortium for DVD standards I think however existence of such a thing is not necessary for commodification to occur.

"Commodification can be the desired outcome of an entity in the market, or it can be an unintentional outcome that no party actively sought to achieve." - Wikipedia

The history of technology is central to this issue and even people within the games industry often do not have a firm grounding for this subject matter. Many within the industry tend to rely on the history of the video game industry instead which I feel is too short to begin to drawn long trends. Hey, now that we've got you here and everything ... who was responsible for the E3 2007 Too Human trailer, and is that clip representative of the level of production values on the overall project, as well as of the quality of the game's writing?

Also ... can robots feel pain?

Edit: So, commodification is the point where a device's functionality is set in stone (CD players play CDs, TVs can receive broadcasts, DVD players play DVDs, cell phones allow you to call other cell phone users) and innovation in that particular segment of the market comes down to competition on price (which I suppose is driven by manufacturing techniques) and peripheral functionality such as the convergent technologies in cell phones (web browsers, java games, MP3 players, GPS). Right?

How can you say that games have come to a point where there's a minimum spec that everyone agrees on and that all the players in the market are content with controlling a small slice of the pie each? Are you saying we've come to the point where there will be no more innovation, and that we no longer needs competing companies in the market to drive innovation within it? Are you saying that videogames are, or will in the near future, be "set in stone"? Most standards were originally conceived as standards. Videogame platforms, on the other hand, aren't and have only been once.

[Rob_Merritt]

I thought communism was dead.

Communism was just a red herring.

[malphigian]

Holding up cell phones as an example of standardization is confusing. Sure, they can all make calls, but beyond that everything they do varies wildly from phone to phone and network to network. Different platforms, different OSes, endless variety of "standards", it's pure hell to develop for. Commodity -- yah, I agree, but the polar opposite of what Denis says about universal standards in response to the second question.

I usually like to point to the mobile world as an example of what the internet would look like if it hadn't been created by the government (I know, I'm now marked for attack from a horde of objectivists).

[Erlend Grefsrud]

Doesn't objectivism preach that the government as elected is obsolete, and that the brightest minds produced by society should rule it?

I wonder if Lex Luthor is inspired by Ayn Rand.

[Dave Long]

This place has really started to go to hell it seems - ad hominem attacks, soon followed by .gif discussions.

Commodification (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodification) is not something that is a simple concept so I understand it might be difficult to form some kind of argument. However, you should at least try to understand what I am saying before you post something like this.

I should post the talk at some point so more people would understand the concept better. I assure you, what I am saying is far from crazy. Ironically, it is something you would probably be very happy with as a consumer of games (assuming you play games).

BTW I never suggested that is how standards would be enforced and arrived, it one way it might happen. There are many others and it is speculative of course.

Denis
I understand what you were getting at pretty well, but I don't think we're close to where it can happen in games yet.

Just looking at this generation of consoles, it's easy to see that standardization of the game console would have resulted in stagnation of possibility. Nintendo has the magic wand. Microsoft has the tried and true more power box and Sony has ... something that does a million things but doesn't seem to focus on games too well. All of them use different hardware to arrive at this place and each has different strengths and weaknesses.

It's not really close to the point where any of them are a commodity. They're luxury items that offer entirely different features, even though they still all play games. Phones are a good comparison, but they're also not commoditized yet in the least.

No, commodity implies something like PC motherboards, where we've got standardization already in place. The PC itself is suffering somewhat from the fact that it's now commodity with less to distinguish each PC from the next outside of the video card itself thus resulting in the $500 PC that's "good enough" for the majority of the market.

...and I also disagree with your assertion that there isn't enough history in the games industry to draw conclusions from. I'd argue the exact opposite because it seems most game console makers, game publishers and game developers pay absolutely no attention to history and then go and repeat the same mistakes over and over again. PlayStation 3 is Sony's Nintendo 64 and 3DO. It "does it all" like the 3DO and was expected to sell like hotcakes based solely on the brand name like the N64. If Sony had looked back, maybe they would've avoided the situation they're in now? And game developers... how many times to we have to watch them make the same mistakes over and over again in their games?

This industry has a thirty-five year history now. In those thirty-five years we've raced from two lines on either side of the screen batting a "ball" back and forth to the likes of Bioshock and Wii Sports. Both very good examples of the depth and breadth of gaming with one that takes literary references and story to new heights next to its gameplay and the other a complete rethinking of what it means to control a videogame with motion that approximates the real-world. The point being we've come a very long way in a very short amount of time and there are major lessons that are still to be learned about that thirty-five year span of time. Lessons that many industry people completely overlook or ignore.

[Nick Walter]

It's not really close to the point where any of them are a commodity. They're luxury items that offer entirely different features, even though they still all play games. Phones are a good comparison, but they're also not commoditized yet in the least.


They are a commodity in the sense that individual units are interchangeable and they are converging in the sense that there's a small handful of O/S's that a lot of these phones are sharing now. It's not a bad example, but it's also missing the point that phones are not primarily sold for what their software can do. They have fixed functions, which makes them interchangeable. Gaming obviously doesn't fit that mold.

Games have however snuck onto platforms that have already been completely standardized by non gaming forces. Flash games spring to mind immediately. I can play those just fine on my linux workstation via my firefox browser even if they were developed by someone who had heard of neither. That's the power of standardization, and I think that's how standardization is going to creep into gaming platforms. From the bottom and edges where non gaming forces push it in.

[Charles]

There might have been but I am not aware of these either. There is a consortium for DVD standards I think however existence of such a thing is not necessary for commodification to occur.

"Commodification can be the desired outcome of an entity in the market, or it can be an unintentional outcome that no party actively sought to achieve." - Wikipedia

The history of technology is central to this issue and even people within the games industry often do not have a firm grounding for this subject matter. Many within the industry tend to rely on the history of the video game industry instead which I feel is too short to begin to drawn long trends.


Curious how you see A) Sony playing nice (as they don't exactly have a history of supporting standards, and love going their own way), and B) Consoles not morphing in to PCs if this happens.

Also, the cellphone comparison is pretty interesting, because you say they are "all pretty much the same" but this couldn't be further from the truth. Phones have different (custom) operating systems, different storage standards, and different versions of java or capabilities once you start java. They are by no means standardized except for saying "Some phones run java".

And when it comes to standards, all that is required to fulfill a standards is to meet the requirements... there's never anything preventing you from going above. Again, see PCs. Open GL and Direct X are standards. Given a PC that supports an equal feature set, performance can be radically different. And you can argue "But they have to have at least X power", but the first time a game ships that has some performance problems and only runs at 30fps, then some console maker releases an 'upgrade' that runs the game at 60fps, but conforms to the standard... well, you end up with PCs all over again.

Don't get me wrong. I would love to see a one console future. I just expect it will be more an artifact of complete market domination than cooperation.

[DavidKaye]

Holding up cell phones as an example of standardization is confusing. Sure, they can all make calls, but beyond that everything they do varies wildly from phone to phone and network to network. Different platforms, different OSes, endless variety of "standards", it's pure hell to develop for. Commodity -- yah, I agree, but the polar opposite of what Denis says about universal standards in response to the second question.

I usually like to point to the mobile world as an example of what the internet would look like if it hadn't been created by the government (I know, I'm now marked for attack from a horde of objectivists).

I don't think it's even true to say that they are a commodity product, fragmented standards notwithstanding. You don't have to look much further than the frenzy surrounding the launch of the $600 iPhone to see that we are yet to meet the performance oversupply condition that would mark a commodity market.

It's also misleading to point to the fact that phones are carrier subsidized (and therefore apparently given away for 'free' when you sign up to a contract) as evidence that are almost valueless - consumers are still paying, they're just doing so indirectly and by installments.

[father lamat]

Communism? What are you talking about?

Mostly a joke about enforced quotas or limitations on production values being set by some sort of Gaming Politburo rather than the developer his or herself. Like I said, I do see where he's coming from and do understand how it would in some cases be beneficial for the end user. It's just that a dvd player does one thing and that's play discs... well, okay mine functions as a 5.1 as well but that's really neither here nor there... a computer does a lot more.

Point is, it's an industry that relies on cracking down whatever supposed barriers there are and pushing technology to the bleeding edge, waiting for the next generation of hardware then running amok over that as well. As an end user and a gamer I know it sucks when a game like Oblivion or Bioshock comes out and you're forced to upgrade... the flipside of that is no one would be allowed to develop outside of a ruleset for a period of five years. From a personal point of view, I'd rather have a dev try set my computer on fire as opposed to selling themselves short.

[Nick Walter]

And when it comes to standards, all that is required to fulfill a standards is to meet the requirements... there's never anything preventing you from going above. Again, see PCs. Open GL and Direct X are standards. Given a PC that supports an equal feature set, performance can be radically different. And you can argue "But they have to have at least X power", but the first time a game ships that has some performance problems and only runs at 30fps, then some console maker releases an 'upgrade' that runs the game at 60fps, but conforms to the standard... well, you end up with PCs all over again.

I actually don't think that PCs are a good comparison. PC's are a non-customer-friendly anomoly to the normal behavior of consumer electronics markets. People put up with it for years because PCs were so damn useful that the hassle factor was worth it and it was the only game in town. Recent declines in PC gaming vs console gaming show just how willing people are to deal with those hassles when there's a better alternative.

[Charles]

I actually don't think that PCs are a good comparison. PC's are a non-customer-friendly anomoly to the normal behavior of consumer electronics markets. People put up with it for years because PCs were so damn useful that the hassle factor was worth it and it was the only game in town. Recent declines in PC gaming vs console gaming show just how willing people are to deal with those hassles when there's a better alternative.

Oh sure, I can agree with that. And while I won't say that standardized consoles would have the reliability problems, there certainly would still be the arms race factor. After all, the current console makers would be forced to become simple hardware vendors, and they'd have to give a consumer *some* reason to buy theirs over the competition.

[Kunikos]

Trip Hawkins had this idea about 15 years ago. How'd that work out for him?

If there had been good games for the 3DO, it would have fared better, I can tell you that. :)

As for his idea of a community based standards board, that sounds a whole lot like OpenGL. The problem you face with any such organization is that everyone wants their own specific things for their own business, regardless of whether it makes sense for the standardization as a whole. You end up with unwieldy APIs, protocols, or whatever else the board is deciding on.

[father lamat]

If there had been good games for the 3DO

Didn't the redo the graphics for Wing Commander? I remember playing a balls out version of the game on some system at Future Shop.

[Erlend Grefsrud]

The only way we're going to see a single platform next generation is if the PS3 and x360 both fail to sell more than 20 million units, while the Wii goes on to sell 200 million units.

[Nick Walter]

Oh sure, I can agree with that. And while I won't say that standardized consoles would have the reliability problems, there certainly would still be the arms race factor. After all, the current console makers would be forced to become simple hardware vendors, and they'd have to give a consumer *some* reason to buy theirs over the competition.

The free market theory here would be that price and reliability and service would be the reasons people would choose console X over Y.

The arms race you discuss can't happen without the participation of the software makers. If they are smart enough to stay out of that mess and keep developing to the simplest form the standard then an arms race won't be a danger.

[Nick Walter]

If there had been good games for the 3DO, it would have fared better, I can tell you that. :)

As for his idea of a community based standards board, that sounds a whole lot like OpenGL. The problem you face with any such organization is that everyone wants their own specific things for their own business, regardless of whether it makes sense for the standardization as a whole. You end up with unwieldy APIs, protocols, or whatever else the board is deciding on.

I think industry based standards is a much better comparison here. Things like the CD and DVD standards. These standards "Just Work" (TM) and I have no fear whatsoever mixing and matching a DVD from any manufacturer with a DVD player from any other manufacturer.

[Charles]

The free market theory here would be that price and reliability and service would be the reasons people would choose console X over Y.


I was assuming that a certain level of quality control would be a requirement for the standard, and thus reliability wouldn't be an issue. And price isn't the only way people compete in the free market.


The arms race you discuss can't happen without the participation of the software makers. If they are smart enough to stay out of that mess and keep developing to the simplest form the standard then an arms race won't be a danger.

Have you seen the games industry? How on earth can you think there *wouldn't* be an arms race, as the current one is already heavily driven by the software?

[mouselock]

As for his idea of a community based standards board, that sounds a whole lot like OpenGL. The problem you face with any such organization is that everyone wants their own specific things for their own business, regardless of whether it makes sense for the standardization as a whole. You end up with unwieldy APIs, protocols, or whatever else the board is deciding on.

The other problem (and the reason Direct X, Nvidia, et. al. have been so successful in the PC marketplace) is that community standards move slow, and there's always a chunk of the population that wants the newest and shiniest. For cell phones this is a non-issue, because all the new shiny performs functions orthogonal to the utilitarian purpose of the device. Whether I can download videos or listen to MP3s or play games on my phone is completely unimportant to whether or not I can receive and send calls. So in effect the vendors have the ability to kludge cruft onto the "standard" without hurting anything in terms of compatibility. This wouldn't be the case in games, where that console over there implementing super-parallax-bump-mapping algorithm as an "extension" to the standard puts developers in a binary situation:

Do you completely ignore it and risk the wrath of your fanbase who knows you could have done better, or do you support it and further drive the standards apart?

This is already a problem on current console generations where people equally get up in arms about the fact that cross-platform ports don't cater to the hardware they're being ported to or the fact that hardware platform X got feature Y which platform Z didn't, and the developers hate platform X and suck.

[Nick Walter]

Have you seen the games industry? How on earth can you think there *wouldn't* be an arms race, as the current one is already heavily driven by the software?

I think there wouldn't be an arms for the same reason flight sims are dead. The companies that engage in self destructive stupid behavior eventually weed themselves out of the market. The PC games industry has been slowly going the way the flight sims market went when it died. More and more focus on the desires hardcore, less and less catering to the general market.

The entire casual games market with all of its revenues was created because the conventional games companies just walked away from those consumers. And they haven't stopped walking away from the mainstream, so I have no reason to believe the trend will stop any time soon.

[Charles]

You realize that the companies that started this destructive behavior (I'm looking at you, id) are still alive and well and continuing the arms race, right? Have you not seen the trailer for Rage?

[Nick Walter]

You realize that the companies that started this destructive behavior (I'm looking at you, id) are still alive and well and continuing the arms race, right? Have you not seen the trailer for Rage?

Oh yes, and they will be for years. They might even survive the destruction of the PC games market that they themselves staked in the heart, because they can move on to being console technology providers.

[Adam B]

Something tells me that the Koreans and the Europeans have a different view of PC gaming than we Americans do.

[JD]

I attended Dyack's session at GCDC on this topic. To be frank, I expected some dreamy mumbo-jumbo, but overall the presentation was actually quite reasonable.

-Julian

[RepoMan]

I apologize for calling you a dumbass, Denis. I was an example of the Converse Internet Fuckwad Theory, which is that you act worse towards people when you're posting about them rather than conversing with them.

I think commodification is a lost cause for gaming consoles, because hardware continues to evolve at a dizzying rate with no end in sight, and games rapaciously consume any and all new hardware capabilities with each new platform generation. True commodification requires a certain amount of technical stability. That will never exist in the games industry, because games have a limitless appetite for more hardware power, new graphics architectures, new control schemes, and generally new and different functionality. This creates a lot of room for competitive differentiation among console makers, which is anathema to commodification.

The Wii is a fantastic example of why commodification is nowhere in sight -- its control innovation is exactly the kind of thing that commodification would not permit. And if you think the Wii is the last word in video game control schemes, you really haven't learned from the last 35 years.

[Nick Walter]

I think commodification is a lost cause for gaming consoles, because hardware continues to evolve at a dizzying rate with no end in sight, and games rapaciously consume any and all new hardware capabilities with each new platform generation. True commodification requires a certain amount of technical stability. That will never exist in the games industry, because games have a limitless appetite for more hardware power, new graphics architectures, new control schemes, and generally new and different functionality. This creates a lot of room for competitive differentiation among console makers, which is anathema to commodification.


I'm having a hard time swallowing the idea that hardware evolution is some dynamo that prevents standardization. Consoles seem to do fine with the static hardware for 5ish years at a pop. A standardized design could refresh just as often.

I'm also leery about buying into claims that games are somehow pushing the hardware on and consuming every drop of available power. There's lot of games that don't push anything hard, or manage to look better on a console than similar games do on a PC despite the PC having more CPU and 3D graphics power. I'm also thinking publishers would love to break out of the cycle of escalating costs where the budgets for AAA games have swollen to huge proportions. If offered a standardized platform of modest power with a potential huge market, I'm betting a lot of games manufacturers would jump right on board with that.



The Wii is a fantastic example of why commodification is nowhere in sight -- its control innovation is exactly the kind of thing that commodification would not permit. And if you think the Wii is the last word in video game control schemes, you really haven't learned from the last 35 years.

Guitar Hero is an even better example of revolutionary gameplay that required nonstandard control schemes. And that didn't require a special console. Heck, it runs on all the consoles.

[BlindSwordsman]

I apologize for calling you a dumbass, Denis. I was an example of the Converse Internet Fuckwad Theory, which is that you act worse towards people when you're posting about them rather than conversing with them.

I think commodification is a lost cause for gaming consoles, because hardware continues to evolve at a dizzying rate with no end in sight, and games rapaciously consume any and all new hardware capabilities with each new platform generation. True commodification requires a certain amount of technical stability. That will never exist in the games industry, because games have a limitless appetite for more hardware power, new graphics architectures, new control schemes, and generally new and different functionality. This creates a lot of room for competitive differentiation among console makers, which is anathema to commodification.

The Wii is a fantastic example of why commodification is nowhere in sight -- its control innovation is exactly the kind of thing that commodification would not permit. And if you think the Wii is the last word in video game control schemes, you really haven't learned from the last 35 years.

Hi RepoMan,

Thank you for the apology, I appreciate it and they are rare these days. I think your colorfully termed theory is "reciprocity" or rather the lack of it on the internet - a good theory grounded in a social and political research. Ironically, I just spoke about this term my latest 3 part interview with Gamespy. It was a very interesting interview - the other parts to air soon. :) Technology has its positives and negatives. The narrow bandwidth of communication often lends itself to such things. Thus talking in person is much better then dialog over forums.

Commodification is a natural evolution with all technology - i don't think it can be stopped. It is not a matter of if but only when. And I acknowledged that technology advance is not likely to slow. (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/38) In fact, I think this will likely increase the chance of commodification not slow it.

Take HD-DVD vs Blue Ray: Many believe this a counter to my arguments. However, 10 years from now, as technology continues accelerates, moving disks will be replaced by solid state memory chips and this particular format war will be moot as the types of storage would have been replaced by another type of technology and a standard will become defacto as other issues become more important to the need of the technology.

The Wii controller is another piece of hardware that could run on any platform - thus just another commodity. Another thing to keep in mind is that commodification increases competition not the opposite. I dont think i am ignoring 35 years or history but instead taking 1000's or years of the history of technology instead.

I hope helps explain somewhat.

Denis

[Nick Walter]

I think you are making a lot of pronouncements you can't back up there Denis. Digital technologies and the opportunities they extend for artificial monopolies are too new to really have much historical baseline to compare against. While I feel the market will keep pushing the hardware manufacturers in that direction, I'm not convinced it's a foregone conclusion like you seem to be.

Still, it is an interesting topic to discuss.

[Matt Perkins]

Denis

I think your example and theory are both flawed. Why do you think the next level of tech after HD-DVD and Blue Ray won't have a competing standards? At the very least, competing companies with similar but different products?

As for game companies leading towards Commondification, as you call it...not any time soon. Game companies are notorious for reinventing the wheel, even with all of the great engines existing out there now. Heck, I know of a company that bought an engine and for whatever reason is now writing their own :P.

And that's not even talking about the different genres where different needs drives different requirements. For as long as we have diversity in the game companies, we'll have diversity in the tools they use to create their games, the engines they run on and the products they produce. Advancing technology isn't going to change that anytime soon, imo.

Maybe I'm missing what you're getting at, but I'm not convinced of your theory as I read it now... :)

[Dave Weinstein]

The problem is that the examples being given are cases where it is the inputs that are commoditized.

The internals of cars are absolutely subject to technological arms races and market competitive pressures (hybrids anyone?). What is a commodity is the user inputs -- I can get into any car and the primary controls are standardized (although the ancillary controls are not).

With phones, there are huge arms races in terms of size, features, and perceived value -- what is a commodity is that I can call into the voice network with any of them.

[BlindSwordsman]

I think you are making a lot of pronouncements you can't back up there Denis. Digital technologies and the opportunities they extend for artificial monopolies are too new to really have much historical baseline to compare against. While I feel the market will keep pushing the hardware manufacturers in that direction, I'm not convinced it's a foregone conclusion like you seem to be.

Still, it is an interesting topic to discuss.

Well i tried to back everyone up in my talk and it is much to difficult to do it in this forum. And you are incorrect about artificial monopolies as they were around long before digital technologies. I believe the printing press and the church control over literacy is a very good example of this. I could be wrong of course but I think the history of technology is strongly on my side in this one :). And you are correct, it is a very interesting topic.

[Charles]

Well i tried to back everyone up in my talk and it is much to difficult to do it in this forum. And you are incorrect about artificial monopolies as they were around long before digital technologies. I believe the printing press and the church control over literacy is a very good example of this. I could be wrong of course but I think the history of technology is strongly on my side in this one :). And you are correct, it is a very interesting topic.

One thing I'm curious about, is how you expect a standard to work without introducing PC-like problems. If the only way two companies can compete is on price, what reason is there whatsoever for companies to actually make the devices that can play games?

I just can't seen Sony and Microsoft playing nice. There will still be a drive to add features the other doesn't have, and developers will want to take advantage of those features. So where can they differentiate? Because if they can't, there's no real competition, and then no reason for standards as one person will control everything anyway.

[BlindSwordsman]

Its getting really late here and I have to fly back home to Canada tomorrow so i cant post much more - sorry :(. I just saw the Berlin wall today at Check Point Charlie and I think it is a good place for me to end off. I remember that no thought the wall would ever fall - then suddenly it was gone. I think it will be same for our industry and commodification.

Night all.

[slantz]

With all due respect to Denis, I just don't see this happening. Or at the very least, I haven't yet seen how his theories work in some very essential facts.

First, current console manufacturers -- at least those in the graphics arms race -- sell their systems at a loss. To my knowledge, this has always been the case. Yet under Denis's system, nobody has incentive to do this. So if this standard did emerge, what's to stop MS or Sony from coming in and undercutting that standard by selling more powerful systems for less money? And if this happened, guess where customers would migrate? Back to the exact same system we have now.

Also, the successful examples he provided are typically large industries divided by many different companies, each with a relatively small market share. Under those situations, it makes far more sense for people to lay down their swords and pick up plowshares. But I argue that the console market, where there are only 2-3 major players at any give time, each have far less incentive to participate because they each think they can actually win.

Yet another difference between the console market and the successful examples in the past is the issue that consoles are platforms, and the owners of that platform generally get an awful lot of money for controlling the platform. Windows is the exception which proves my point. Windows is closer to an open, unified standard where no per-copy fees are paid to the platform owner. And it's a fucking mess for gamers. Linux would be the extreme example, and proves the point even more extremely.

The short of it is that sure, if and when the technology for games stops evolving and more competitive entities enter the space, then the planets start to align in such a way that commodification makes more sense. But that is an awful long way off, if it's ever attainable. It would require us to pass the mark of 'good enough' graphics and interfaces to suit everyone's tastes, and that's not bloodly likely to happen anytime soon.

In the meantime, you have giant companies putting billions on the table in a bid to control the industry to the greatest degree possible. And I just don't see how anyone could think a unified standard, with no central owner willing to pony up billions for it, could compete.

Sure, commodification may (in theory) be better for consumers, but so would free consoles and free games. But that doesn't make it feasible or realistic.

If Denis is saying that by the Jetsons Age, commodification will have occurred, then sure. I could see that. But it's nowhere in our immediate or relevant future.

[CharlesC]

This is a good essay about how commoditizing the complements to a product increases the demand for the product.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html

He is using it to make a point about open source software but the general principal applies to games and the hardware platforms they run on.

I think this passage is the most relevant:
When IBM designed the PC architecture, they used off-the-shelf parts instead of custom parts, and they carefully documented the interfaces between the parts in the (revolutionary) IBM-PC Technical Reference Manual. Why? So that other manufacturers could join the party. As long as you match the interface, you can be used in PCs. IBM's goal was to commoditize the add-in market, which is a complement of the PC market, and they did this quite successfully. Within a short time scrillions of companies sprung up offering memory cards, hard drives, graphics cards, printers, etc. Cheap add-ins meant more demand for PCs.

When IBM licensed the operating system PC-DOS from Microsoft, Microsoft was very careful not to sell an exclusive license. This made it possible for Microsoft to license the same thing to Compaq and the other hundreds of OEMs who had legally cloned the IBM PC using IBM's own documentation. Microsoft's goal was to commoditize the PC market. Very soon the PC itself was basically a commodity, with ever decreasing prices, consistently increasing power, and fierce margins that make it extremely hard to make a profit. The low prices, of course, increase demand. Increased demand for PCs meant increased demand for their complement, MS-DOS. All else being equal, the greater the demand for a product, the more money it makes for you. And that's why Bill Gates can buy Sweden and you can't.

Just replace DOS with games and you could see why companies would want a standard commoditized platform.

[slantz]

Just replace DOS with games and you could see why companies would want a standard commoditized platform.
I don't think that example translates as well as you think it does. In fact, I don't even really see the parallels that are supposed to make it relevant.

[JP]

This is one of my pet causes, and I really wish more people with credibility would soapbox about it.

Fact: the only people the current system really benefits are the hardware companies, and by extension the fanboys who have shackled themselves emotionally to them. And people who just like things to stay the way they are and/or feel totally powerless to change the world around them. And, incidentally, are completely wrong about that.

Everyone else - consumers, developers, publishers - would benefit from a standardized platform. There are significant barriers to this happening which is why I think it's a much longer-term change, as far out as two decades, when most game industry folks' horizons don't extend past the next fiscal year.

When you argue for this you need to make clear what about the box is standardized. The current problems we need to fix are the major architectural rifts across the current platforms that really come down to very esoteric engineering decisions that have almost no bearing on the actual consumer experience.

It's the chips inside the box that we need to standardize, so that innovation can occur in the places where it will actually benefit consumers. Innovation, at least as far as we're concerned, is not about GPU pipelines, number of cores, and storage capacity. If you think it is, you're either an engineering major or have been brainwashed by PC enthusiast media telling you that new APIs are actually what make games better.

Innovation comes from content. Sometimes that content is enabled by hardware, but that is only becoming more rare with time, and when it happens it's in generational leaps like the Wii. The soul of a platform is its content, and content is ongoing - every month, new games come out, new ideas come into fashion, the medium of games grows broader and deeper.

Wii is a fantastic example of why commodification is nowhere in sight

Actually, no. If the standardized console used Bluetooth (an open standard itself) for input devices, Nintendo could create whatever crazy new peripherals they wanted and publish software that requires it. DDR and Guitar Hero prove that this is worth the risk of a smaller install base.

In those thirty-five years we've raced from two lines on either side of the screen batting a "ball" back and forth to the likes of Bioshock and Wii Sports

With a standard box you'd have something comparable to a 360 in terms of horsepower, with the wavy gravy of new peripherals like the Wii remote. And we wouldn't have to listen to these asinine arguments about graphics versus gameplay because they'd both be great on the common system. Again, hardware companies did not give us these two works. Software people did. Remember what "platform" actually means in the most general sense.

We'd also see the end of developers having to lie right in the faces of their fans about a rumored port to another system because of some paid exclusivity deal, which happens all the time. That's fucking gross, ethically, and everyone in the industry is the worse for it. If no one company controls the platform, that puts an end to the strategies built around various forms of predatory lock-in.

One argument people bring up is that a standard that only gets a new version every few years would "stagnate" the market, but this is actually what we currently have. There is no "bleeding edge" in the console market, you have one platform update every 5 years, and even a 5 year old system still has good games coming out for it. Leave the bleeding edge to the PC market, the wild west of user mods, but also of driver problems and piracy.

Really all consoles are is a snapshot in time of what the top end of computer hardware is. It's not a strong argument to say the incentive to hardware innovation would disappear with a standard platform because most of that kind of innovation is already done outside of the console makers. Multi-core PCs were just entering the marketplace when the 360 came out, so it's not like Microsoft had some amazing world-shaking innovation to spring on the world. They took some good recent commodity tech, and sold it at a competitive price. That's the one thing I'm willing to concede might be worse with a standardized platform - the price of the box would be higher. But probably not higher than the current cost of owning all three of the big systems.

The reason it's so unthinkable to so many is because, like the correct analogy of the CD/DVD market, it is indeed a bleak(er) future for the hardware companies, eking out smaller innovations and competing on price and features that fall outside the standard (media playback, etc) while the content creators are the platform's raison d'etre. We're currently so used to the hardware guys having everyone's nuts firmly in hand.

You really need to ask yourself what the horse and what the cart are in these situations. When I want to listen to "Blood on the Tracks", I don't have to dust off my Columbia Records Music Player(tm). There is almost universal dislike for the HD video format war currently brewing, because it's clearly a shit situation when an entire artistic medium is held hostage by proprietary interests. Yet that's the status quo here in videogames.

I can't believe how many people are basically saying "Won't someone please think of the giant multinational corporations?!?" Yeah, those poor guys. It's about time someone stood up for them.

A standards-based console will happen. But first people need to realize it can, and why it will indeed be good for them.

[slantz]

I can't believe how many people are basically saying "Won't someone please think of the giant multinational corporations?!?" Yeah, those poor guys. It's about time someone stood up for them.
I'll tell you to think of the giant corps., because you're obviously not. They offer competition that a standards-based console couldn't surmount.

Your side points to examples of things that have become standardized. But I can (and to a degree, have) point to plenty of differences between those situations and the gaming industry, and why those differences make a standards-based console infeasible in this climate.

I will agree with you on one thing though. If and when innovation and the processing power arms race in gaming stops, and if the nature of competition in this space changes, then this stuff becomes more viable.

But your assessment of a (successful) standards-based console happening within 20 years seems way too optimistic to me.

[Coca Cola Zero]

If the only way two companies can compete is on price, what reason is there whatsoever for companies to actually make the devices that can play games?


Seemed to work out ok for the 3DO people... the whole having to charge full price on the hardware due to not being able to make up losses on royalties...

I look forward to the $700 next gen uniconsole!

[Factory]

I agree with Denis, at some point in time games hardware will be almost totally commoditised.
Console hardware is becoming commoditised now. Things in consoles that the same:

USB as a connector.
Bluetooth (Wii, PS3)
All the CPUs for the consoles are designed by IBM (although in collaboration with Toshiba and Sony for the Cell)
All the CPUs are PowerPC based, assembly code is prolly somewhat portable across all three platforms (although who would want to?)
Nvidia or ATI make the GPU cores for all consoles. For the PS3 the GPU is a modified form of an existing PC part.
GDDR3 is used to a lesser or greater extant in all consoles, prolly influenced by design of the GPU.

The CPU and GPU are the most telling, console manufacturers are outsourcing these parts because they don't want to have to put up with the cost of designing these parts. Combine this with the lack of companies that can supply these high performance parts to the console makers and you will get a commodification effect.

But IMHO commodification of console hardware will not come at first from a consortium of hardware vendors. It'll come from a console maker that will note that it stands a better chance of making money if it copies another successful console by using most of the standardised parts that it uses, ergo allowing for easy ports to increase it's library. In fact I suspect that this will be how any new entrant into the console market will debut it's new machine. Copy the winner of the current gen, beef it up in a way where the existing software developers can make easy use of it, and you've just made it more likely that developers will want to use your console.

[JP]

Seemed to work out ok for the 3DO people... the whole having to charge full price on the hardware due to not being able to make up losses on royalties...

I look forward to the $700 next gen uniconsole!

Wait... so you're saying you wouldn't rather spend $700 on one console that plays every game instead of ~$1100 on three consoles? Or even $850 for two?

[Alex Dolce]

I think it's a perfectly sensible and logical conclusion to draw that, at some point in the not-too-distant-future, there will be at least some level of convergence in gaming platforms. I don't know about market factors and black magic economics hoodoo or anything, but I do know that cost/benefit of computing hardware will reach a fairly solid and lengthy plateau in not too very long. When that happens, and to some extent it's already beginning to happen, then what will the Big Three be able to bring to the table individually that another of them cannot? It certainly won't be faster processors or smarter GPUs...

It just seems to me that a natural outcome will be a singular standard for at least a "base" machine. Beyond that, Nintendo could go on to continue their controller innovations, Microsoft could continue to develop and exploit Xbox Live, and Sony could...come up with something. However, they would all be working off of the same (more or less) basic machine that would end the concept of porting, or at least radically alter it as to be nearly gone.

I could be way off base here, naturally. I've never really thought about the concept until about three or four minutes ago. In that time, I haven't (surprisingly) done much research or had any meaningful ponderings...feel free to begin throwing pies at my face - chocolate, if you don't mind.

[JP]

I will agree with you on one thing though. If and when innovation and the processing power arms race in gaming stops, and if the nature of competition in this space changes, then this stuff becomes more viable.

Innovation and the CPU arms race are two very different things. Conflating the two is one of the things that's given the hardware companies so much rhetorical power. This well is going to run dry a lot sooner than most hardcore gamers think.

It's not an un-controversial statement, but I strongly believe we are within a generation or two of the point of completely diminished returns in the hardware arms race. The story of this generation is essentially that art direction trumps technical might, and that's the real philosophical turning point.

It's going to take a lot of technical knowledge to point out major visual differences between a late current-gen (360/PS3) game and a next-gen game (PS4, whatever), and guess what? Casual and non-gamers already don't care about this crap - stack Metroid Prime 3 up against Halo 3 and they both look like boring space marine games.

Once this realization propagates, that we're nearing the point of diminishing returns, things are going to change really quickly. Remember, 10 years ago Microsoft didn't even exist in the marketplace and people were wondering if the Dreamcast was going to be Sega's comeback.

[Coca Cola Zero]

Wait... so you're saying you wouldn't rather spend $700 on one console that plays every game instead of ~$1100 on three consoles? Or even $850 for two?


How about $650 for two, which is what I paid? (If I bought them today it would only be $600 because the 360 is only $350 now). And yeah, I'm saying I'd rather buy two consoles that each had a specific focus and not some lameass attempt to be an all-in-one system. That's without even getting into other flaws in the idea like the fact that if the Wii controller were just an add-on for the Uniconsole it would never get used by developers and would never catch on, etc.

I don't think Denis is stupid or on crack, but he's wrong about this topic. Luckily for us, there is no realistic chance of this happening anytime soon so its just a thought exercise.

[Alex Dolce]

I don't think there will be a "uniconsole" or anything. Rather, I think (if this concept were to happen) that there would be a "base unit" around which each hardware vendor could add their own touches, but whose core technology would remain the same. Nintendo, which is really a first-party title driven company anyway, would do just fine with their controller innovations by making the games to support them, while Microsoft could continue to grow and enhance Xbox Live, and that sort of thing. Each company would still be around (well, assuming each survives), and they'd all still be putting out their own console. It's just that having a base unit would ease the burden on developers a great deal by eliminating, by and large, the whole concept of porting.

[JP]

That's without even getting into other flaws in the idea like the fact that if the Wii controller were just an add-on for the Uniconsole it would never get used by developers and would never catch on, etc.

It can hardly be worse than the Wii's current third party support.

two consoles that each had a specific focus and not some lameass attempt to be an all-in-one system

What part of the differences in focus could not be conveyed purely through software? Aside from the Blu-ray player, what about the PS3 under the hood makes its focus different from that of the 360? And a Wii would certainly be no worse off with the horsepower of a 360 instead of what it currently has.

These differences in focus are exactly what the hardware makers could compete on via supra-standard features and the included software, instead of spending the budget of entire additional games (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_IV#_ref-20) on keeping a game off a competitors' system.

[bago]

What's different under the hood besides 3 cpus that handle 2 threads each and have dynamic l2 cache vs 1 cpu and 7 spu units with dedicated static cache?

[Erlend Grefsrud]

It can hardly be worse than the Wii's current third party support.
Current third party support, or last year's third party support? Because if you take a look around, there's a metric shit ton of Wii software coming up from every publisher out there. The only companies not moving a lot of resources onto the Wii are the traditional cutting-edge tech companies like Epic and id, whose expertise is in technological innovation, and not gameplay or input.

Sure, the Wii doesn't have Halo 3 or Heavenly Sword or Killzone 2. And maybe there won't be a Splinter Cell on Wii this christmas. So what? That's obviously not the market Nintendo is going for, and so developers are focusing their attention on titles that will reach a wider audience than the teenage and/or hardcore market. Most people would think Crackdown is silly. Hence, no Crackdown on Wii. It's that simple.

[JP]

What's different under the hood besides 3 cpus that handle 2 threads each and have dynamic l2 cache vs 1 cpu and 7 spu units with dedicated static cache?

I make games for a living. I'm fully aware that those differences are non-trivial in technical terms. I'm saying that those differences don't mean diddly to the end user, other than that some games only come out for one of those systems, and publishers spend millions porting the ones that don't.

[JP]

Current third party support, or last year's third party support?

It is starting to pick up, and yay for Nintendo. I'm saying that third party support couldn't be worse in the scenario in which Nintendo made peripherals for a standard platform versus the current one where they have a walled garden of their own that 3rd parties have been hesitant to venture into until recently.

[Dave Long]

The underlying problem with all of this talk is the word everyone skipped over in my initial post. "Luxury".

No one needs game consoles. Therefore no one needs to standardize game consoles. There's no incentive to get together other than taking the profit out of the box itself, which no company is interested in doing.

Really, 3DO tried this. It doesn't work. And that's leading back to one of Denis's other points I disagree with, that we can't learn anything from history of this industry. This industry has a wealth of important history that is far more relevant than pie-in-the-sky hopes that we can make our games for only one machine someday.

It's not going to happen anytime soon.

[Dave Long]

It is starting to pick up, and yay for Nintendo. I'm saying that third party support couldn't be worse in the scenario in which Nintendo made peripherals for a standard platform versus the current one where they have a walled garden of their own that 3rd parties have been hesitant to venture into until recently.
Yes it could. It would be far worse because without a popular piece of software included with the hardware they produced, no one would have purchased the console in the first place. It's highly unlikely that they would have been able to find as large a market on another machine, simply because its been proven time and time again that peripherals do not sell to more than 10 to 20% of the installed base of a console.

[JP]

Yes it could. It would be far worse because without a popular piece of software included with the hardware they produced, no one would have purchased the console in the first place. It's highly unlikely that they would have been able to find as large a market on another machine, simply because its been proven time and time again that peripherals do not sell to more than 10 to 20% of the installed base of a console.

So why couldn't they have done with Wii Sports what they're doing with Wii Play, bundling a controller with the game?

Doesn't Guitar Hero prove this is viable? RedOctane undoubtedly spent some real money developing and producing the controller, and yes they limited themselves to a fraction of the (enormous) PS2 install base... yet GH was a hit and spawned a franchise. How is this paradigmatically different from any other controller-based innovation?

[slantz]

Innovation and the CPU arms race are two very different things. Conflating the two is one of the things that's given the hardware companies so much rhetorical power. This well is going to run dry a lot sooner than most hardcore gamers think.

It's not an un-controversial statement, but I strongly believe we are within a generation or two of the point of completely diminished returns in the hardware arms race. The story of this generation is essentially that art direction trumps technical might, and that's the real philosophical turning point.
Who could possibly need more than a 20GB hard drive, or 640k of memory? What would we do with all that space?

[Charles]

Really, 3DO tried this. It doesn't work. And that's leading back to one of Denis's other points I disagree with, that we can't learn anything from history of this industry. This industry has a wealth of important history that is far more relevant than pie-in-the-sky hopes that we can make our games for only one machine someday.


While that is true and no one can argue against it, the games industry was significantly smaller then. I don't have numbers, but an estimate of 1/10 or so probably isn't too far out there, as after all, it was pre-playstation explosion.

I am absolutely on JPs side. And I do believe there will be a one console future. But it won't be about standards. It will be about complete market domination.

edit: And then maybe the US Gov't will enact some anti-monopoly stuff on MS, and force them to have open standards. That might be a way for this to happen. No one is going to choose to do it of their own free will though. There's just no major benefit to anyone except the end consumer, and even that is debatable, especially now that almost all games will be multiplatform.

[JP]

Who could possibly need more than a 20GB hard drive, or 640k of memory? What would we do with all that space?

I knew someone would bring up that stupid strawman. I've never said technology should stop advancing. Any open standard would get a new revision every ~5 years and we'd get the newest shiniest stuff. I'm saying we're getting closer every day to the point where the technology is sufficient to realize pretty much whatever creators can dream up.

Look at most of the games being released today and tell me that imagination and software aren't the limiting factors rather than hardware. Having infinite hardware resources doesn't solve all your problems, not by a long shot. If you think otherwise you may have swallowed some hype.

And I do believe there will be a one console future. But it won't be about standards. It will be about complete market domination.

This is totally possible, given how effective MS and Sony are at wielding their power. I'm just wondering why, if the alternative of an industry standard is clearly preferable to everyone except these companies, people aren't willing to acknowledge that and think about ways to work towards it.

We're all fuckees right now. Admitting that is better than pretending you enjoy it.

[Erlend Grefsrud]

While that is true and no one can argue against it, the games industry was significantly smaller then. I don't have numbers, but an estimate of 1/10 or so probably isn't too far out there, as after all, it was pre-playstation explosion.

According to Wikipedia, the NES sold 61,79 million units worldwide, while the SNES and Genesis sold, respectively, 49 million and 29 million. Those aren't exactly trivial numbers, and they're certainly not one-tenth of the market we've got today, considering you had considerable overlap in the NES/SNES/Genesis life cycles as well as less successful consoles like the PC Engine, which sold about 10 million units.

The industry 3DO tried to standardize wasn't that different from the one Dyack's suggesting is ripe for standardization. In fact, console capabilities back then was actually more similar than the ones we've got today. The three current-gen consoles have three different online infrastructures, three different input devices and ostensibly three different markets. Back in ye olde days, however, the Saturn and the PSX offered more or less the same experience using the same type of input, just like the SNES and the Genesis.

So, unless you consider all three current gen consoles to be fighting for the precise same niche in the market, there's absolutely no reason for any of the platform holders to want to standardize the platform they earn big bucks selling licenses for.

Edit: Why are everyone talking about the standards war as if that's some kind of protracted battle for relative market monopoly between Sony and MS? The notion that Sony would be able to lock down the market is, at this point in time, completely ludicrous. Microsoft is somewhat better poised, but their sales are stagnating and they've so far failed at expanding their traditional user base. Nintendo, however, is outselling and out-innovating both of their competitors, reshaping the popular conception of what a video game is. If anyone is likely to establish any kind of standard for video games, it's them. Unless there's a major shift in the market over the next one and a half year, Nintendo is going to rule the roost completely.

[Enidigm]

Just as an aside from an indifferent observer, i don't see any Microsoft console ever gaining traction in Japan as long as there are native alternatives. I think, pushed hard enough with the right guidance, MS might win in China or Korea, but it will never happen in Japan.

If there is a universal console it's far more likely for that to be a Sony or Nintendo item.

[Dave Long]

Has Nintendo really scared all of you so much that you're hoping Sony and Microsoft shake hands and create a single console with all that POWAH so you can make the same games again and again on one console instead of two?

Christ, Charles' post makes it sound like Microsoft has already "won" and we're only waiting on them inevitably taking over console gaming.

[JP]

The three current-gen consoles have three different online infrastructures, three different input devices and ostensibly three different markets.

The input devices would exist as they currently do with a standard. As would the online infrastructure, which is just software and service. MS could still charge subscriptions for their superior service, Nintendo could patent their input hardware and make money selling that just as they do now.

There are already different markets within any single console, from the Wii Fit moms to the guys playing Shining Force on VC. Software (and sometimes peripherals) are where the real differentiation comes from.

[JP]

Has Nintendo really scared all of you so much that you're hoping Sony and Microsoft shake hands and create a single console with all that POWAH so you can make the same games again and again on one console instead of two?

Dunno, I love what Nintendo is doing and if we're stuck with the three-party system I wouldn't mind them "winning". Disruptive innovations like the Wii tend to push markets towards greater entropy, which in a general sense makes it easier for commoditization to come about. Consumers act more effectively in their best interests when they know they have options. Part of the dysfunction of the current system is that the hardware makers have convinced people they don't have any options, which the cynicism in this thread is ample evidence of.

As benevolent as they seem now one needs only to look at how Nintendo treated everyone back in the 80s to remember that we're always safer with a future that isn't owned by any single company.

[Dave Long]

The input devices would exist as they currently do with a standard. As would the online infrastructure, which is just software and service. MS could still charge subscriptions for their superior service, Nintendo could patent their input hardware and make money selling that just as they do now.

There are already different markets within any single console, from the Wii Fit moms to the guys playing Shining Force on VC. Software (and sometimes peripherals) are where the real differentiation comes from.
You're a wacko and completely oversimplifying the market to suit your insane ramblings. You also are apparently on Dyack's History Doesn't Matter bandwagon, because it's obvious that peripherals like the Wii's standard control scheme don't become ... um... STANDARD unless you make them such with the console. Hence, no one buys them in any significant numbers and they don't get used.

Guitar Hero is a very poor comparison as it supports only one game and one game alone. You can't play God of War with a guitar (as cool as that may sound).

Hardware still matters just as much as software. That isn't going to change for a long time.

[Charles]

This is totally possible, given how effective MS and Sony are at wielding their power. I'm just wondering why, if the alternative of an industry standard is clearly preferable to everyone except these companies, people aren't willing to acknowledge that and think about ways to work towards it.

We're all fuckees right now. Admitting that is better than pretending you enjoy it.

Well, you need someone to make hardware. All the software people in the world can gang up and say "do this", but who is actually going to produce the hardware? It's not like the collective software industry is going to pool the cash to create a console.

Has Nintendo really scared all of you so much that you're hoping Sony and Microsoft shake hands and create a single console with all that POWAH so you can make the same games again and again on one console instead of two?

Christ, Charles' post makes it sound like Microsoft has already "won" and we're only waiting on them inevitably taking over console gaming.

Down boy. I used MS as an example simply because they are known to eventually end up in a monopolistic situation. I don't see Sony doing it, as they are run by retards, and I don't see Nintendo managing it, because their product doesn't currently appeal to a large amount of traditional gamers and they don't have the raw amount of monetary power and abusive marketing that MS does. And were it to come down to only one person making a console (say, MS), then Nintendo would still thrive as they could repackage their business as wacky controllers + games, without missing a beat.

I don't see nintendo ever disappearing. Morphing though? Who can say.

[Dave Long]

Dunno, I love what Nintendo is doing and if we're stuck with the three-party system I wouldn't mind them "winning". Disruptive innovations like the Wii tend to push markets towards greater entropy, which in a general sense makes it easier for commoditization to come about. Consumers act more effectively in their best interests when they know they have options. Part of the dysfunction of the current system is that the hardware makers have convinced people they don't have any options, which the cynicism in this thread is ample evidence of.

As benevolent as they seem now one needs only to look at how Nintendo treated everyone back in the 80s to remember that we're always safer with a future that isn't owned by any single company.
Nor is the future safer when it's owned by one standard.

The reason I like Nintendo's approach is because they're free to innovate in both hardware and software. You take that away and they're... Sega. Gee, that turned out great for them, eh?

Sega's best games were created on their own hardware. Coincidence? I don't think so.

[Erlend Grefsrud]

The input devices would exist as they currently do with a standard. As would the online infrastructure, which is just software and service. MS could still charge subscriptions for their superior service, Nintendo could patent their input hardware and make money selling that just as they do now.

There are already different markets within any single console, from the Wii Fit moms to the guys playing Shining Force on VC. Software (and sometimes peripherals) are where the real differentiation comes from.
Of course. I absolutely see your rationale for all this, and I see that this would likely benefit more or less everyone on a superficial level.

However, it's just not going to happen for a long, long time. Not until the market is more or less tied up by one company anyway and someone passes a legislation that forces the monopoly holder to open their standards and allow the rest of the great unwashed to mill around in their libraries and patents.

Secondly, I don't think (at this time) that a standard platform would benefit the games industry. A standard platform would certainly support two or three different online services (how is that really a benefit?), and it could absolutely support something like Guitar Hero 2 (where the game is essentially the peripheral). However, a broader and more bold innovation like the Wiimote might sink in that kind of market since it would not be a standard component of the platform. It would likely not have the same kind of weight behind it as an entire platform (meaning console, online infrastructure, new input method, etc). Of course it might-have-could-have-would-have, but that's spectacularly unlikely. I mean, the only big-name publisher that dared to back Nintendo to any considerable degree around the Wii launch was Ubi, and they tacked together a handful of rough and ready mediocrities semi-designed around the input method. What if that had been the entire launch support of such a device on a standard platform? It would've been NUON all over again.

A standard platform does not offer a good basis for competition and innovation. As it is now, games as a medium is shaped at least as much by hardware as by software (technical capabilities as well as input methods). The games libraries of the Wii and the DS are prime examples of just that: The kind of games that sells those platforms (Nintendogs, Wii Sports, Brain Training, Wii Fit) wouldn't have been made for platforms with more traditional input methods. And the input methods for those games would probably not have been made for a standard platform because a peripheral never dominates a standard. Hence, Nintendo wouldn't have earned as much money because they wouldn't have controlled the platform.

The conclusion? They would've made something else, because a pure piece of software would've stood a better chance of being competetive in a market dominated by a standard platform. Then we wouldn't have had that innovation, and gaming would've been quite a bit more stagnated by now.

To wrap it up: How many peripherals do you own for your DVD player? How many peripherals can you conceive of wanting to buy for your DVD player if they only enabled you to participate in fairly small niches in the existing DVD market, niches you had no way of knowing whether would become profitable or not? You probably wouldn't. And if peripherals are a sure-fire way of extending the possible market and range of experiences on a standardized platform, then why don't we see loads of peripherals for standardized platforms? Because I can't think of a single one, except the NUON. Which didn't quite pan out.

[Dave Long]

Down boy. I used MS as an example simply because they are known to eventually end up in a monopolistic situation. I don't see Sony doing it, as they are run by retards, and I don't see Nintendo managing it, because their product doesn't currently appeal to a large amount of traditional gamers and they don't have the raw amount of monetary power and abusive marketing that MS does. And were it to come down to only one person making a console (say, MS), then Nintendo would still thrive as they could repackage their business as wacky controllers + games, without missing a beat.

I don't see nintendo ever disappearing. Morphing though? Who can say.
You're way out of touch if you think "traditional gamers" aren't buying the Wii.

It doesn't surprise me. It's clear that a lot of "traditional game makers" don't understand what's going on in the console market right now and are severely threatened by it. I mean, what if you spent two years and twenty million on a game like Assassin's Creed and when it shipped few people cared? That's the very real thing that's going on right now in this industry. That possibility is out there for any supposed hardcore game that isn't a sequel to something established.

[Charles]

You're a wacko and completely oversimplifying the market to suit your insane ramblings.

That "wacko" just made one of the best reviewed games of all time, and insane or not, he's not lacking for intelligence.

[Dave Long]

That "wacko" just made one of the best reviewed games of all time, and insane or not, he's not lacking for intelligence.
Making games and understanding the way the console market works and why we're not getting standards anytime soon are apparently two different things.

[Charles]

You're way out of touch if you think "traditional gamers" aren't buying the Wii.

It doesn't surprise me. It's clear that a lot of "traditional game makers" don't understand what's going on in the console market right now and are severely threatened by it. I mean, what if you spent two years and twenty million on a game like Assassin's Creed and when it shipped few people cared? That's the very real thing that's going on right now in this industry. That possibility is out there for any supposed hardcore game that isn't a sequel to something established.


When I talk about my likes and dislikes as a gamer, I speak as a gamer and not as a developer.

As a developer, we know what's going on in the game industry, thank you very much. And you are out of touch if you believe that the introduction of the Wii means that people just wouldn't care about games like AC. To say that is to say that these same people, by extention, wouldn't care about Bioshock. Which is obviously not the case.

Nintendo is opening a new market as well as appealing to a subset of long time gamers.

But you are right, some of us devs don't like the Wii - I'm just finishing off making the best game I've ever worked on. And this game simply would not be possible on the Wii. Not control-wise, and not hardware-wise. If you told the team they had to make a sequel that was Wii only, I'm betting a large amount would simply quit.

Threatened though? No, not at all. If you believe that the Sony/MS style of game market is going to suddenly shrink or disappear, you are as deluded as someone who believes the Wii will die off.

[Charles]

Making games and understanding the way the console market works and why we're not getting standards anytime soon are apparently two different things.

But you do! Cause you write about them!

[Dave Long]

But you do! Cause you write about them!
I'm as entitled to an opinion as he is and I think his one console future is ridiculous.

I also think you're a lot more threatened by the Wii than you'll admit here. Your last post makes that pretty obivous.

[Charles]

I also think you're a lot more threatened by the Wii than you'll admit here. Your last post makes that pretty obivous.

That's me, quaking in my boots because nintendo is selling fitness games to non-gamers.

[Erlend Grefsrud]

That's going to be interesting, though ... the PS3/x360 18-hour epic with "HD-era" graphics assets is going to be pretty expensive. What if both the x360 and the PS3 stalls around the 20 million unit mark, leaving "hardcore" developers with the choice of building traditional and expensive games for two platforms with very limited markets (option A), or building simple and mass-market friendly games for a broad market on a platform that did not demand the same level of sophistication and graphical fidelity (option B)?

Option A is fairly risky, option B is of course also risky but absolutely not as risky. Of course, you could say that most developers and publishers have much better consumer behavior data on your average hardcore gamer than on the average Wii owner. Most publishers have a general idea of what the hardcore crowd likes, and it's relatively simple to position a product in that market. The Wii market is obviously a more unknown quantity, which may lead more conservative developers/publishers to slink away from that market until someone's made the mistakes for them.

So no, the market won't die off. But there's a fair chance that market is going to be more marginalized than it is now. It's going to turn into the comic book market, or the B-horror/splatter movie market. Sure, there's a lot of people who want that kind of stuff. But they're relatively few, and they're definitely not representative of the average consumer.

[Charles]

That's going to be interesting, though ... the PS3/x360 18-hour epic with "HD-era" graphics assets is going to be pretty expensive. What if both the x360 and the PS3 stalls around the 20 million unit mark, leaving "hardcore" developers with the choice of building traditional and expensive games for two platforms with very limited markets (option A), or building simple and mass-market friendly games for a broad market on a platform that did not demand the same level of sophistication and graphical fidelity (option B)?

Well that's easy, and companies are already acting that way. Publishers are starting to pump out mass-market friendly games to soak up money, and using it to push their big budget titles that developers want to make.

It's actually a pretty good system, because previously what companies did was pump out a truckload of mediocre licensed games and suck money out of that. But now they can put talented people on making pretty decent games for the Wii, soak up a lot of money from that, and then fund their big budget blockbusters.

I'm actually pretty happy with that. No matter how big the wii gets, a 40 million install base is enough to still make a profit on the AAA titles, it's just that the margins will be narrower than they were traditionally. And really, that's not so bad. Plus, with every new AAA that comes out, you are going to drive that user base higher.

I truly expect at this point Nintendo to probably maintain easily as many consoles as Sony and MS put together, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it go as much as double.

But in the same way that the GC and the Xbox weren't ignored in the face of the PS2, neither will the 360 or PS3 be ignored in the face of the Wii.

[Mordrak]

I'm as entitled to an opinion as he is and I think his one console future is ridiculous.

I also think you're a lot more threatened by the Wii than you'll admit here. Your last post makes that pretty obivous.

Let's not get into Wii envy.

Your position against Charles is weird because Charles seems to be saying if we see a one console future, it will be through market domination and he thinks market domination is likely because the reason consoles are popular is because they are not like PCs. Turning consoles into a consortium, in his mind, will make consoles more like PCs as hardware incompatibilities increase from improper/strange implementations of the standard. And again, Charles is saying eventually, not next week.

That doesn't seem like a controversial statement. I think it will happen eventually too, but more like 20 years from now. Right now there's too much at stake for companies to leave the market as the consoles move towards convergence devices. Microsoft is offering movies over live as much to preemptively build a market against iTV or whatever will be Apple's multimedia living room iTunes, as it is to create revenue stream now. Heck, I think Microsoft entered the market to protect its PC business as well. If it could mix up the console race, it could try and keep competitors from morphing into a living room PC. If anyone did that, Microsoft wanted it to be them.

[Charles]

Anyone who thinks I'm talking about next generation needs to spend more time thinking outside his little fanboy brain.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a one console future 2-3 new generations from now... but I also wouldn't be surprised to see someone else jump in to the console ring. 15 years is a long time to expect that nothing new will come along.

Plus, you can't discount technology that will let you plug your brain in to the machine!

[Mordrak]

I wouldn't be surprised to see a one console future 2-3 new generations from now... but I also wouldn't be surprised to see someone else jump in to the console ring. 15 years is a long time to expect that nothing new will come along.

Agreed. This whole discussion is hypothetical anyway, so getting worked up on this issue is a bit extreme. I mean, none of us are deciding the fate of multi-million/billion dollar companies based on a message board thread.... I hope.

[JP]

Nor is the future safer when it's owned by one standard.

Please explain in more detail.

The reason I like Nintendo's approach is because they're free to innovate in both hardware and software.

Nintendo's innovation has come from peripherals and software, which would continue unchanged under an industry standard. Is spending several million developing a custom CPU and GPU with IBM really the best use of their resources when in the end it makes so little difference to consumers?

peripherals like the Wii's standard control scheme don't become ... um... STANDARD unless you make them such with the console. Hence, no one buys them in any significant numbers and they don't get used.

Actually Nintendo very explicitly supports multiple peripherals because they realize mandating the remote and only the remote would kill the breadth of their catalog. Fighting games will come out for Wii and thank god you can use the classic controller or a 3rd party arcade stick for them. Peripherals aren't where you should standardize because they directly affect the player experience and so will remain a potential avenue of innovation.

The way any peripheral gets big is it gets a killer app. The Wii remote would have sunk in the marketplace like a worthless hunk of plastic if Wii Sports hadn't been there to show people why it was so cool.

However, a broader and more bold innovation like the Wiimote might sink in that kind of market since it would not be a standard component of the platform.

Again, how is this different from the current situation where the Wii is kind of off doing its own thing? As the Wii's software catalog rounds out, it just builds a bridge into the rest of the market, which looks more and more like the landscape would if they'd introduced a new peripheral for an open standard and slowly got more people supporting it.

How many peripherals do you own for your DVD player?

None, because movies aren't interactive.

You also are apparently on Dyack's History Doesn't Matter bandwagon

History does matter. Which is why holding up one failed implementation of an idea as proof something can never happen, ever possibly in a million years, is silly. If people gave up on new ideas that easily the Wii remote and Xbox Live wouldn't exist.

That "wacko" just made one of the best reviewed games of all time

I'll totally cop to the wacko thing. I just hope I've given people some food for thought.

Again I am NOT saying this will happen soon, easily, or even at all. Just keep in mind that markets don't ask the status quo for permission to change, and that change happens faster than you might think if you're observing closely day by day for years as all of us are.

[Erlend Grefsrud]

The way any peripheral gets big is it gets a killer app. The Wii remote would have sunk in the marketplace like a worthless hunk of plastic if Wii Sports hadn't been there to show people why it was so cool.



Again, how is this different from the current situation where the Wii is kind of off doing its own thing? As the Wii's software catalog rounds out, it just builds a bridge into the rest of the market, which looks more and more like the landscape would if they'd introduced a new peripheral for an open standard and slowly got more people supporting it.

Agreed. You're completely right about that. However, I think it's even harder to sell a peripheral as a must-have because in the perception of the consumer, it's just a different doohickey to plug into their box. It's okay with Guitar Hero, since that's ... well, the concept behind Guitar Hero is more or less conveyed through the peripheral alone. You automatically get Guitar Hero. You understand why you need the peripheral to have that particular experience. With the Wiimote, however, which is a lot less transparent, you need a package. You need a number of features that justify the existence of the controller or peripheral, in order to convince the consumer that they simply can't be entertained without one.

For an example, look at the Gametrak PS2 peripheral. It came with a bunch of games, and that was it. It didn't sell, it didn't attract any developers, nothing. Their USP was basically "golf", which is not that far away from Nintendo's approach. Why didn't that succeed? Well, apart from limited marketing and the fact that the Gametrak device itself was a bit strange, it's fair to assume that most consumers just didn't have any faith in the peripheral. They couldn't see it pan out and become a "second standard" on the PS2, like the Buzz controllers and EyeToy somewhat succeeded at.

I don't think the Wiimote would have been able to build much credibility either, had it not been for the fact that it was backed by an entire platform, a very nuanced business model aimed at exploiting all the niches traditional game consoles did not (which would have been a moot point in terms of a standardized platform: Why would anyone who didn't own the standard suddenly want to buy into it because of a peripheral?) and a lot of tempting features apart from the controller itself. Or maybe I'm simply reading it all wrong.

Hm. I feel doubt creeping into my mind here. I can't really argue well for why a peripheral like the Wiimote wouldn't be able to cut the mustard on a standard platform. My primary argument is that the Wiimote is not a self-explanatory device that would be able to communicate its relevance as a non-standard device on a standard platform. However, when the controller is surrounded by a platform and a business model, it gains more traction because people see more than just the controller: They see Nintendo's marketing effort, they see the cute little box, they buy the Wii brand and not just the controller. In fact, even though the controller is important, I think it's the very profile of the Wii that makes it so intriguing. Even if Nintendo had chosen to go with something more traditional, their branding and marketing would go a long way to sell their platform.

To sum it up: As long as Nintendo doesn't control a platform, it's hard for them to shape the public perception of that platform. Their marketing of a Wiimote peripheral would likely only cater to existing users, since it'd have to be marketed as part of the platform and not as a stand-alone device. If their marketing message contradicted the marketing message of the platform, the consumers would probably be confused. And they'd buy neither. As it is, Nintendo's platform is an intriguing offer as a whole. Nintendo doesn't just market the experience of the Wiimote, they're leveraging the Nintendo brand (which a lot of people know and have some kind of experience with) and selling an entire platform (which seems far more credible, at least to my mind, than some solitary remote-like thing hanging in a shop proclaiming to be "the next big thing").

Gah. Completely unstructured. May god have mercy on whoever attempts to read this.

[Nezz]

Hm. I feel doubt creeping into my mind here. I can't really argue well for why a peripheral like the Wiimote wouldn't be able to cut the mustard on a standard platform. My primary argument is that the Wiimote is not a self-explanatory device that would be able to communicate its relevance as a non-standard device on a standard platform. However, when the controller is surrounded by a platform and a business model, it gains more traction because people see more than just the controller: They see Nintendo's marketing effort, they see the cute little box, they buy the Wii brand and not just the controller. In fact, even though the controller is important, I think it's the very profile of the Wii that makes it so intriguing. Even if Nintendo had chosen to go with something more traditional, their branding and marketing would go a long way to sell their platform.
True, but why does this brand, this platform have to be a physical box? Why couldn't it be a label constructed around the experience? The marketing would be very similar.

[RepoMan]

If it were a label around an experience, the physical box it came with would have to have the right price point. The Wiimote sold for the current 360 (let alone the PS3) would not have moved nearly as well, since the total cost of entry for the experience would have been so much higher.

Also, selling only the Wiimote would have meant that Nintendo's entire profit would have had to come from the peripheral and the software alone, and that might not be enough to support Nintendo's immense first-party operations, which are what drive the Wiimote's value in the first place.

This conversation is nearing insane levels of hypotheticality, but bottom line is that owning the entire platform allows much greater control over the total consumer experience AND over the economics of developing for the platform. As Nintendo has shown, the hardware can be a profit center in its own right as well as being at a truly mass-market price point.

The mythical "one-box-fits-all-market-segments" console being theorized about in this thread would suffer greatly from a lack of a coherent marketing strategy. Maybe in a few more decades the gaming industry will settle down a lot and the segmentation will be purely in the software realm, but right now, there are distinct segments that have distinct hardware needs, and there is room to create a unified marketing push and hardware design that reinforce each other -- as Nintendo so brilliantly did with the Wii. If Nintendo hadn't been able to control the whole platform, they might not have been in a position to fund the necessary innovation in the first place, or to come up with a model that they expected to be profitable.

[Erlend Grefsrud]

What he said. Roughly.

[Bill Dungsroman]

Apropos of nothing, but for laffs I did a Qt3 Search, poster Dave Long and search term "Nintendo."

The results maxed out at 500 posts. And it only went as far back as the middle of last May.

[Dave Long]

I just did the same search and it goes back to April 2003 on page 20. I think you're wrong.

I also did the same type of search with Jason Cross and Xbox and that only goes back a little further. *GASP* WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?!

[Bill Dungsroman]

Alas, I am. It's much less damning that you've maxed out on 500 posts talking about Nintendo regardless. Maybe I should see how many of those are you being a ridiculous overbearing defender of them.

Turns out it's most of them, of course. This (http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showpost.php?p=624790&postcount=384), however, will always be my favorire. "They called it the Wii so nobody would know it was for gaming." That's just fucking brilliant, Dave.

And Jason works for MS. He's supposed to be on the take. What's your excuse?

[quatoria]

I just did the same search and it goes back to April 2003 on page 20. I think you're wrong.

I also did the same type of search with Jason Cross and Xbox and that only goes back a little further. *GASP* WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?!

Well, I'll say this - I don't recall Jason Cross ever trying to tell me I was scared of the Xbox, Dave.

[Charles]

Well, I'll say this - I don't recall Jason Cross ever trying to tell me I was scared of the Xbox, Dave.

Well, unless he was making an omg its huge joke.

[John Doyle]

You're way out of touch if you think "traditional gamers" aren't buying the Wii.

It doesn't surprise me. It's clear that a lot of "traditional game makers" don't understand what's going on in the console market right now and are severely threatened by it.

The stats I've seen show that the Wii is being purchased by traditional console gamers as a second or third console. As cool as the Wii is, I don't see it replacing or dominating the traditional game space. As Charles mentions, I'm fairly certain most game makers do pay attention to and understand the current market.

[Dave Long]

Alas, I am. It's much less damning that you've maxed out on 500 posts talking about Nintendo regardless. Maybe I should see how many of those are you being a ridiculous overbearing defender of them.

Turns out it's most of them, of course. This (http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showpost.php?p=624790&postcount=384), however, will always be my favorire. "They called it the Wii so nobody would know it was for gaming." That's just fucking brilliant, Dave.

And Jason works for MS. He's supposed to be on the take. What's your excuse?
Jason Cross changed jobs? He worked for Extreme Tech/ZD and CGM before that when the majority of his posts were made. If he's at Microsoft now, that's something relatively recent.

Also, your post makes it clear that people here do not read what I post but interpret it in the way that suits what they want to believe about me. I said nothing even close to "They called it the Wii so nobody would know it was for gaming."

Nintendo used the Wii name to separate their system from the status quo in games aka bald space marine summer blockbuster nerdfests. Seems to have worked out just as they planned.

[Dave Long]

The stats I've seen show that the Wii is being purchased by traditional console gamers as a second or third console.
References and links please? I do not believe you have anything that backs this up.

[Erlend Grefsrud]

Jason Cross changed jobs? He worked for Extreme Tech/ZD and CGM before that when the majority of his posts were made. If he's at Microsoft now, that's something relatively recent.

Also, your post makes it clear that people here do not read what I post but interpret it in the way that suits what they want to believe about me. I said nothing even close to "They called it the Wii so nobody would know it was for gaming."

Nintendo used the Wii name to separate their system from the status quo in games aka bald space marine summer blockbuster nerdfests. Seems to have worked out just as they planned.
Ah, but that's the issue, Dave. People like Mr. Dungsroman aren't nerds. They're sophisticated!

[John Doyle]

Sadly, no links. I was recalling something I'd recently read. It was likely from a piece of consumer research.

[Bill Dungsroman]

Jason Cross changed jobs? He worked for Extreme Tech/ZD and CGM before that when the majority of his posts were made. If he's at Microsoft now, that's something relatively recent.
Yes. I got him confused with someone else. You're the one throwing him under the bus, at any rate. Which is what you always do when you get called on your rampant fanboyism.


Also, your post makes it clear that people here do not read what I post but interpret it in the way that suits what they want to believe about me.
Give it up, Dave. That thread and many others are full of hideous damning evidence serving as testament to your weird bias for Nintendo. I didn't jump on any bandwagon, I've watched you show up in every thread about Nintendo just as sure as the NMA losers show up in Fallout threads to push your warped agenda. You show up, call people names, then declare yourself misjudged and persecuted when you get called on it.


I said nothing even close to "They called it the Wii so nobody would know it was for gaming."

Their whole message has been how games are fucked up and they need to do something different. You can't do that if your machine's name screams videogames as loudly as possible.
Can we start with Nintendo deciding gaming is fucked up? How about, that they need to do something different? Yes, that's clear by all the utterly unique games for the Wii - we'll have no more Mario, Zelda, or Metroid games. Games are fucked up! It's amazing watching you defend such asinine comments.

Nintendo used the Wii name to separate their system from the status quo in games aka bald space marine summer blockbuster nerdfests. Seems to have worked out just as they planned.
Um, no, it's because the games are different - or rather, the same type of games Nintendo has always had for its consoles (see above). Like, you know, the GASP Gamecube. As mentioned in that thread, it's the Nintendo ___. People buy it for the Nintendo name, not the magical spooky Wii name. Who cares, it's an old argument, one you lost horribly. Also, God it's weird the way you act as their unofficial spokesman. Please tell me you get payola from them somehow. Reps take you on skiing trips or something.

[Shadari]

Am I the only one here who has the balls to admit he's a fanboi?

Hell, I'm a proud fanboi. Screw all you console folks! :P

[jfletch]

I am taking a quick scan of Nintendo's Wii output on Wikipedia and there are no new franchises from them through the end of the year. None. Everything is from something which already exists. You can stretch with Forever Blue, but that series originated on the PS2 (part of the Evil Old Era of Gaming According to Dave).

The Wii output is, to put it clearly, the status quo to Nintendo. Yes, Wii games are different from PS3 and 360 games, but Nintendo platforms have always had different outputs. It is not new, it is not revolutionary, it is not reason for Dave to be so orgasmic over it. And let's be real, the Wii system might not have the bald space marine summer blockbuster nerdfests (except it does, and its named Metroid), but the BSMSBN games fucking sell, they sell way better than Cooking Mama or whatever other lukewarm experience Dave wants to hold up as the beacon of the New Era of Grandma Gaming.

[Matt Perkins]

Am I the only one here who has the balls to admit he's a fanboi?

Hell, I'm a proud fanboi. Screw all you console folks! :P Being a fanboi is like being religious in lots of cases. You can easily be a fanboi and not be an asshole. But sometimes you get those asshats who have to push their cause/religion/game/company/etc on you to defend their their position or whatever.

Fanboi == not necessarily bad

Annoying, loud, can't be logical or accepting of their fanboiness == asshat.