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When Consoles Lose, Everyone Wins
Ground Glass writes "Does the traditional knowledge that 'history is written by the winners' hold true with consoles? Perhaps, but there's more to it than that. Sometimes, systems that fail do so because their most salient concept was one no one was ready for - these provide future 'innovations'. Sometimes their loudest message was one only a niche group would ever want to listen to - they provide much needed perspective. In an early medium, the failures are the ones questioning what a game should be. It's no wonder the winners keep writing their ideas back in."
The value to any one person is based on perception. If you perceive worth, then it is valuable.
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
What a great console. First to have online gameplay (for all 4-5 games that had it) and it was night vs day compared to the PS1. Too bad piracy, Sega pissing off EA, and a multitude of other problems caused it's downfall. It served it's purpose and paved the way for what we have today but think about what the world might be like if Sega was still in the console business...
I keep telling myself I'm not the desperate type.
In an early medium, the failures are the ones questioning what a game should be. It's no wonder the winners keep writing their ideas back in.
Was this submitted by Nietzsche?
...and why should she get a Dreamcast?
From the more cryptic than usual subtitle up through the ambiguous main title (I thought at first glance this was going to be one of those PC vs. Console flamewar threads), right down into the body of the summary, this whole thing is incomprehensible.
Ever since that whole "Carnival of Games" debacle I have upheld that Zonk posts certain stories because he's either lost a bet or is banging the submitter. Even the blatant slashvertisements manage to slide through here with a lower WTF-quotient then some of these in-bred gamer-blog linkages.
Sure, I'm off-topic and I should be modded as such, but please, guys, take a little bit of this to heart and start taking the time to re-read these game section submissions not as professional game reviewers who are "in the club" but as a human might read them.
That zonk's bias isn't towards the 360, but rather consoles. I don't mind his stories, and neither do most people. The ps3 fanbois just cry a lot because it's all bad news about their consoles. They never stopped to consider that it's simply because there's no _good_ news about their infamous ps3.
The big problem I have with the TFA is that it states that the purpose of niche products is to drive innovation among the market leaders. From a whole-market perspective, that may be the role they end up fulfilling, but that is not their purpose at all... their purpose is to make money for their producers. Failure to enter the market strongly is still failure.
In any established industry (as the videogame industry has become) there are market leaders with enough 'mindshare', and enough resources, to adapt innovations for their next release. As large companies, and given the nature of consoles, they are not likely to take a big risk with a major release (as stated in the article). Other, small, companies take those risks, and the next generation of major consoles will incorporate some of those innovations. This is just like a lot of industries -- look at the airline industry and how most of the large airlines now have regional affiliates modeled on JetBlue's pricing and service.
What's important to note, though, is that the Wii (which, in the end, is the focus of the article) doesn't fit the bill as well as the author would like. Nintendo is not a new, small company taking a risk by innovating. Nintendo is a former giant that that still commands a loyal following, yet is now more agile than its main competitors. What Nintendo has recognized is that there is no room for three 'major' consoles. So instead they opt to compete at a different level.
Not to knock on the Wii, but it really reminds me of Go-Bots... transformers for people who don't want to spend as much cash. The differences are that they have a following that will continue to love them despite the inferiority of their machine, they have a gimmick to promote interest in the new console (the controller), and the game franchise history they've established will sell consoles and games.
In the end, I think the Wii will be successful -- not because of any innovation, but because of pricing and because Nintendo will stick with the tried-and-true focus on games for kids.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Print version
Nintendo and Microsoft aren't really taking any risk, Sony is. Microsoft has lost so much money on their console business that throwing the XBOX 360 out there as quickly as possible made sense - it gave them all of the customers who didn't want to wait for Nintendo and Sony. Nintendo is releasing by far the cheapest machine that, except for the controller, is full of very solid technology. Very little risk there since the controller is a great gimmick and they can always change and they will always have their own games to rely on.
Sony, on other hand, doesn't even want to admit its box is "a mere console" and it is completely full of expensive new technology that gives it a huge price tag. Worse, it's hard to develop for and its price tag has to be making developers nervous. This probably means more expensive games for a more expensive console.
Sony and Microsoft seem to want to turn the console industry into something else while Nintendo is very happy making boatloads of money doing what it knows best. I don't know about you guys, but I am not in the market for a media center or another PC. Personally, I think the concept of a media center is some sort of corporate attempt to make me pay for a bunch of crap I don't need and won't use. And I definitely do not need another PC, especially one made by Microsoft. If I wanted to play PC games I'd play them on the several thousand dollar computer I already have, not a few hundred dollar console.
Here's my question: if the PS3 flops where will Sony's followers turn? Microsoft? Nintendo? Or will they abandon consoles entirely? I'd like to say they will turn to Nintendo, but I'm not so sure. I'm certain the Wii will do well, but I seriously doubt it can steal Sony's market share back. My fear is that certain developers will turn to developing solely on the XBOX and Nintendo / games / console will become the next Apple / OS X / Mac situation.
Of course, the PS3 is not here so this is all theoretical. Only time will tell if Sony's big investment will pay off, but if it fails I sincerely hope Microsoft does not get put in a position to dominate the console industry the same way it has dominated the OS industry or non-PC games are doomed.
Haiku for you!
Claiming to speak for "most people" as an AC? Needling the straw man of PS3 fanboys? Insight isn't what it used to be.
(For that matter, the original post here is in a deep muddle. The headline about "when consoles lose" implies that consoles as a whole should go down, not that failures in the business often seed future development.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I guess I'm getting a PS3 after all!
(ducks)
BTW, this comment from the article: 'Who would have ever thought that Mattel's unlikely Power Glove would become a prototype for Nintendo's primary controller?'
Um... everybody? I sure did. It was a freaking VR glove! I swooned when I saw that thing! Like the Wii Remote.... er. oh. hm.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Sega launches the Genesis, and people went "ooooooooooooooooo... Altered Beasts looks just like the arcade version!" and Sega smiled. Countless arcade ports, Madden, and fighting games later and, arguably, the most innovative game released for the console is still prety much unknown. Herzog Zwei can credit itself for bringing us Dune II, Warcraft, Starcraft, and pretty much every other RTS game being released, but was a flop by 1989 standards (or any other for that matter).
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
I'm really tired of this next-gen.biz editorial magazine getting onto slashdot all the time, and I'm starting to think there's some conspiracy here... No magazine is good enough to be slashdotted every week.
+5, Truth
I have read interesting, and positive, things on the PS3 off and on ofer the last year.
None of them ever made it to Slashdot.
It's pretty easy to understand your ignorance however, if all you read is Slashdot games then the primary view you'd have of the PS3 would be negative. If however you broaden your console reading to other sources you can find positive material for all three consoles.
There's nothing wrong with reporting neagitve stories; I welcome negative stories about any console, as it can be helpful to understand drawbacks as well as positive aspects of a console. What I object to, and where I think SLashdot is falling down, is repeated negative stories on the same topic (sometimes when thew first post was previously debunked as being false!) and as noted the outright lack of ANY positive articles when there are some to be had.
Not all people interested in a console are a Fanboi. Some of us just want clarity of communication so oursleves and others can make rational choices.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Microsoft has lost so much money on their console business that throwing the XBOX 360 out there as quickly as possible made sense
First of all, I had to comment on this line which I thought had some really odd logic behind it - losing money? Throwing it out faster should help!
I believe the old saying goes "throwing good money after bad".
Not that I think the 360 is a bad console but it's gotten there with booster rockets spouting pure money, and it's yet to be seen if ther overall choice to fire the boosters up again was a good one in the long term.
Here's my question: if the PS3 flops where will Sony's followers turn? Microsoft? Nintendo? Or will they abandon consoles entirely? I'd like to say they will turn to Nintendo, but I'm not so sure. I'm certain the Wii will do well, but I seriously doubt it can steal Sony's market share back.
I would say that's a pretty huge if, but "if" there were no PS3 I as a gamer would go wherever the bulk of Japanese developers went. The people writing Ico or Katmari - they are the ones I follow, not any one specific console. I admire fresh an innovative ideas in consoles and more often than not such ideas come from abroad (we do get some from the US as well, just not in the same quantitiy and rarely with the same polish).
That is why the recent article on the 360 "not needing Japanese developers" seemed to me very wrong.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Which is the only console that can win the next generation console wars? The console that contains no next generation components, just tried and true parts beefed up from the last generation!
I wonder which console THAT could be...
In fact the 360 is so tried and true they even removed a standard component from the last generation (the hard drive), just to be sure they were totally tried and true.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
the last few third party developers. Half-Life was a done deal, and never release, and not just because Sega and EA didn't see eye to eye (EA didn't like competing with Sega's better sports titles). The only other console in history that you could pirate games that effortlessly for was the Famicom Disk System, which was officially killed by piracy.
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Someone joked that the author sounded a bit like Nietzsche, but I think he really sounds like G.W.F. Hegel. From Hegel's Wikipedia entry... "Modern philosophy, culture, and society seemed to Hegel fraught with contradictions and tensions, such as those between the subject and object of knowledge, mind and nature, self and Other, freedom and authority, knowledge and faith, the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Hegel's main philosophical project was to take these contradictions and tensions and interpret them as part of a comprehensive, evolving, rational unity that, in different contexts, he called 'the absolute idea' or 'absolute knowledge'." This concept is also known as the "world spirit", and this teleology attempted to synthesize the world's successes and failures into a positive betterment of humankind. A Hegelian will argue that the Holocaust has a potentially positive effect on the world, ultimately; because we have suffered a single holocaust, the world spirit will advance beyond the conditions that would allow such a thing to happen again - thus bettering the world. Hegel is notoriously abstruse in his writing, but it is clear that the author of this article has only a cursory understanding of his philosophy. First off, it is entirely unclear as to whether or not any of these "advances" in video games are actually leading to a better video game experience. I think a strong argument can be maintained that console/generation x was the pinnacle of gaming enjoyment, and subsequent generations are simply decadent. Also, Hegel was comparing the actions of nation states; by evolving this scheme to include corporations we are inclined to accept more than the straightforward conclusions presented. Hegel was notorious for defending the existence of the nation state as being entirely rational and necessary, and for this reason he was highly admired by Frederick William III, and a major boon to the budding concept of nationalism. This focus on the nation state completely deemphasizes the individual, a main criticism of Hegelianism and nationalism. Corporations and nations are not real people; to focus only on the achievements of "Nintendo" or "Sony" is essentially a dehumanizing insult to worth of the individual and a reiteration of the complete modern acceptance of corporate fascism.
... which I doubt will happen, as even with the insane price tag, Sony 'Losing' means that it'll probably only sell 10 million of the things compared to the PS2's 100 million, and those numbers still beat the 360 either way...
If it happens, Nintendo wins by default because we know the 360's Japan support is weak. Like it or not, Japan is the driving force of the consoles, Which means in the end it's either Sony or Nintendo. Without a strong Japanese base, the 360 is irrelevant.
While they are losing less per console now, they also have a large 360 R&D cost to recoup. On top of that is XBox Silver service offered for free (though Sony is going there as well with a free online service as well).
I think they are safe from monopoly persecution in this case because they are not a monopoly in the game industry - interestingly there is nothing illegal about using a vast sum of money you have got from a different monopoly to attept to storm a different industry through sheer ability to outspend.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Okay, let me see if I get this straight: the increasing (well, really depends on where you are) ubiquity of always-on high-speed connections leads to consoles adding features to take advantage of them (XBox Live, for instance). This, in turn, enables console games to be expanded via post-release downloadable content (Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, I'm looking at you!). All of this is a good thing.
It also means that there's no reason why these sports games can't offer new rosters as downloadable content - barring, of course, core engine updates. The same could also be said about fighting games, for that matter. So if it's technically possible, why don't we see this?
Conversely, and admittedly unrelated: the availability of reasonably-priced USB gamepads also means there's no technical obstacle to having the likes of, say, Tekken 5 running natively on a computer.
- White Knight of the Order of Mihoshi Enthusiasts