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The Economist Looks At The Console Industry
Fromeo writes "The Economist is running an interesting article discussing the state of the console industry, along with their usual interesting graph, showing the cycle that the industry follows."
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Exclusive games? Better graphics? Hdtv support? They don't crash? They don't make you use windows? Cheaper? They don't require upgrades every 2 years?
theres more reasons, but the simpsons is on.
Why buy a $1500 gaming computer, with all the worries about compatible hardware, flaky software, etc. etc., when you can buy a $300 console, plug it into your TV, and be on your way? I have a console because I use linux on my main box, and if I'm working and want to take a break, I don't want to have to save everything, shut down, reboot into Windows, play the game, shut down, reboot into Linux, and re-open my work. There are also all kinds of games (like Gran Turismo) that are unavailable on the PC.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Just one minor note... Yes, it's the software that makes the money on consoles. But, not all that profit goes to the console maker. If EA or Sega or someone else develops the game, I believe M$ makes about $10 on each unit that developer sells for the X-Pox. That $10 is a licensing fee of some sort. When M$ is the game developer (as in their first big seller-- Halo) then they probably get something closer to $40. Anyway, rumor has it -- http://www.redherring.com/insider/2002/0624/xbox06 2402.html
-- that M$ will lose about $2 Billion (with a B) on the X-Pox over the next two years. Don't feel sorry for them. They have something like $40 Billion in the bank.
Just finished a read that covered the beginnings of the console wars pretty well called The Ultimate History of Video Games, while it's not quite as complete as the title would have you believe, and it's not the easiest read in the world, it's still has a lot of information about how the economy and people who purchase video games drive the market.
It will be very interesting to see how the competition pans out over the years... Microsoft and Sony make quite an assumption that gamers are really looking for the "Total-Multimedia-Experience" and "Network Gaming". Personally, I'd just like to see innovation replace the same old styles of games being re-released with a facelift every year...
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I've had to create 4 new accounts trying to avoid karma... dammit!
Rather frightening that on the graph, everything pre-nintendo is labelled "Atari systems". Of course, society back then pretty much equated Atari with video games (see: Blade Runner for a good chuckle).
I know the VCS pretty much decimated all competition back then, but does anyone have any harder figures? Adding the Colecovision and Intellivision into the pot, there must have been some signifigant inroads into Atari's numbers.
The funniest though, has to be the fact that they say Atari systemS. Sorry folks, but other than the venerable VCS/2600, Atari didn't really do squat in the marketplace.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Nintendo stated many times that they plan to eventually offer the Gamecube for $99 and they will still be turning a profit on the machine itself. However, they didn't plan on cutting prices so soon to fight the competition. As usual the person writing the article just assumes all the consoles are losing money when in fact Sony has refab'd their system for the pricecut so they dont lose money, and Microsoft has done nothing but lose tons of money from the start.
Perhaps the reason why 'gaming is no longer the province for children and teenagers' is because that when gaming consoles became popular (i.e. in the day of Atari/Colecovision and then NES/SMS) these same people were children/teenagers themselves? (Ok, that may be stating the obvious)
And why didn't NEO-GEO make it into the chart? That was by far the best console during that time...too bad it was $100 a game (or some ungodly price like that) and some ridiculous amount for the console. I knew a kid who had one, but he was a prick and never invited me over to play it, because he was a spoiled brat.
People who arnt in the business of comparing (ie, not techies or wannabe techies) rarely make that comparison. Doubly so for products they would never even be comparing when making purchasing decisions.
Its just a number for sales people to rattle off to parents, who invariably think one of two things:
- gee, that number's higher than the last time I heard it
or even worse
- gee, that number's high
It was like MMX - it was a useless feature when salespeople were pushing it, but shoppers really seem to be fooled by numbers and acronyms. The only part that ticks me off is how hard it is to teach a non-technical person to never put stock into what they hear, and more importantly, never put stock in their own ability to interpret it. For some reason, people dont all seem to act like they can talk the talk with cars, planes, other technical things - but there is something about technology that makes lots of newbies think they can get some sense of perspective in the jungle of specs and features out there. I know I might sound somewhat elitist, but I hope for my sake a mechanic knocks some shit into me if I ever go off on engine specs and prepare to drop serious money on my assesment of the sales lingo I'm presented.
"Old man yells at systemd"
When the xbox was first brought to the public's attention, one of the strengths mentioned was that since it was at heart an intel cpu and nvdia gpu (which are common in PCs), a great quantity of games would quickly be ported from the PC to the xbox. This has not happened, and the lack of game titles available has become a very severe criticism of the xbox.
What is preventing PC games from being ported?
Sony approach:
Big R&D up front for in-house solution
= Low incremental cost of production
= No leakage of profit to suppliers
= obscenely profitable as quantities get larger.
Microsoft approach:
Use mostly off-the-shelf components from third-party suppliers:
Gets machine to market quickly
Reduces R&D costs (reasonable if you're just putting a toe in the water of a completely new market).
HOWEVER
the *incremental* cost does not go down nearly as fast and there is leakage of profits to the suppliers.
My guess is that XBox is a comparitively low cost market-testing exercise and the second-generation example (if M$ has half a brain) will be built more on Sony/Nintendo lines.
"They didn't throw in all the power that the other two companies did planning to instead rely on the power of their collection of games as incentive to buy. "
Don't be silly. The Gamecube/Dolphin is faster processor-wise and graphics-wise than the PS2. It should be...the design is 2 years newer.
I own all 3, so I can tell you that the "power" of each is so close that it doesn't matter. They're essentially the same machine from an end-user standpoint.
What's the bet that Microsoft will release Xbox 2 and 3 in a short time period? They will stick to the PC mindset which says "why squeeze most out of a system when you can upgrade?" That will be the downfall of the Xbox (and its predecessors) because they won't push the system to it's full potential. The original playstation had every bit of power used in its later games. This is what allowed it to become top console because it was around for years without changing (originally the ps2 was to be released in 1998 and ps3 in 2001/ 2002 but this was obviously pushed back).
Anyway, that's my 2
Does this make my brain look big?
The reason to buy a gaming computer is because consoles don't work well for a whole lotta games -- and there are all kinds of games that are unavailable on consoles.
Conversely, some games work better on consoles -- or at least on a controller. You can always hook up a controller to your computer, but if you're mostly going to be playing those types of games, you may, indeed, want to dispense only $300 of your money.
But the gaming world only uses software as an excuse -- I can't imagine being bereft of my beloved Civ III, Heroes of Might and Magic IV, Deus Ex and Homeworld, but I think people tend to classify themselves as a console or PC gamer, and stick to one to the exclusion of the other. I'm a PC gamer, and my pet peeve is whenever someone refers to computer games in general as "videogames". Even though I should know better, I ignore most things happening in the console world, with the exception of some exceptional titles that remind me of my early days on the SNES -- like Metroid Prime. And for the past half decade I've been bereft of Metal Gear Solid, and every Final Fantasy after VI.
So, should I have forgone the complexities of my dual-boot Mandrake/WinMe system for the PSX, PS2 and XBox? Well, the consoles may be simpler, and cheaper, but it doesn't matter, because I can honestly say the PC games I've played are worth the thousands of dollars I spent to play them. My advice is, go into debt and buy everything, because games are more important than money.