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The Console War Is Not Good For Gaming
Seleeke Flingai writes "Of all the loose baggage the videogame industry prides itself on, the famed 'console wars' are probably the most divisive. Every four or so years, we hungry gamers gather round and clamor for our favorite side. But you know what? Screw the console wars. They are NOT good for gaming. Why?" From the article: "The console war brings with it great competition, which has created some of the best consoles around. But the console war has also had its share of casualties - some of which were some of the best consoles around. And that is why I think the console war, despite all of its good intentions, is not good for gaming."
I kept waiting for the author to make his point but all the did was prove that poor planning, marketing and spin control lead to failure. The article should have been called how to really screw up gaming in spite of innovation. In the end it was just another ode to the Dreamcast with is has become as common as Browncoaters whining about Firefly...its over get over it.
Sega was a great company (sorry but I dont concider the shell that was left after the Sammy merger Sega) but they screwed the pooch. Sega released the Dreamcast way to early compared to the other companies next generation consoles, they had too few 3rd party games and though good for hardcore gamers too many quirky titles and not enough mainstream ones. Take Shenmue as an example, it was a beautiful game that was fun if you were into that kind of thing, but for the masses that title was destined to go nowhere. Super Magenetic Neo was another that I loved but outside of the "gamers" it was just a quirky title that didnt sell, you simply have to have the shoveled mainstream crap to survive. Add in the fact that the Dreamcast was cracked wide open before the other consoles even hit the shelves and the writing was on the wall.
What happened to "Sega Has What Nintendon't" and agressive marketing that showed off the platform. All they did was had people doing mundane things suddenly screaming Sega!, that doesnt sell product it just encourages the use of the remotes mute button. Don't blame competition, lack of competition is never a good thing. Poor timing, poor execution, poor security and poor spin control = poor SEGA.
Redundant: I challenge the author to finish the sentence "The console wars are bad for gaming because..." without using the word "Dreamcast."
Insightful: I say the console wars are good for gaming because they force companies to make better consoles and better games. But also the console wars are bad for gaming because too much effort is going into doing what everyone else is doing, but doing it slightly better, and not enough effort is going into creating something new and interesting. Nintendo appears to be trying a new direction with Wii, but only time will tell how creative it is, or if it's more of the same with a new gimmick. But at least they're putting their balls on the line and trying some innovation, rather than the Xbox 360 (Same games, better graphics!) or the PS3 (Same games, higher prices!).
Troll: Blah blah bad article blah blah Zonk blah blah idiot.
Funny: In the Soviet Union, wars are not good for game consoles!
I wholeheartedly agree that we should have just one console. I think Microsoft should make it. In fact, Microsoft shouldn't sell the console. They should license it for $800 and have $200/year subscription fees for their online service. This would certainly be far better for gaming than the current situation where there's so much confusing competition going on. Everyone knows that competition is bad for innovation.
What a bunch of crap.
Misa no botha with yousa.
Most games rock hard on my PC, and my video card cost about $200. How much does a 360 cost now? At least $100 more, right?
And I bought it a year ago.
Yeah, I have that option. Console gamers don't. Your games stay at around the same quality over the years, and the developers get to make that choice for you -- "Are we OK with dropping the framerate to 10fps here to get the effects we want?" By the end of a console's life cycle, your games don't look that much better than they did at the beginning.
Which means that by the time you're deciding whether or not to buy an Xbox 360 -- which will do absolutely nothing for your current Xbox games except maybe not be able to play them -- basically, do you want Halo 2 to continue to work well, or do you want to play Halo 3? And what about all the other games -- are you buying a $300 system just to play Halo 3, or are there actually any other good 360 titles? And are you going to buy a PS3? A Wii?
Whereas I can buy a game, play it on my current system, and if I find I really am cutting down too much on the quality, I can buy a new video card. That new video card will make all my games improve, unless they are so ridiculously old (Quake 3) that I can already play them at 1600x1200 with every scrap of quality turned all the way up.
In other words, I can try before I buy, and I still have the option of playing new games on older hardware. You don't even get that option -- if Halo 3 is a 360 game, does anyone really think it will exist for the old Xbox? From the point of view of a programmer, it looks like it would be much harder to port a game between consoles, especially generations of consoles, than to make it scalable on PCs. And even if they did, would you be able to buy it for the Xbox and also get the 360 version, or would you have to buy it again when you bought a 360?
The trick is to not quite buy top of the line, since that $500 card isn't really $300 better than my $200 one, and in another 2 or 3 years, $200 will buy me more than that $500 could buy me now.
You know what else I can do? I can play free games. Everything about consoles is driven by money -- even the Xbox Live Arcade (or whatever) is going to cost you at least $5 for a game. You spend $60 on a game that I pay $50 for, at most, and you get just the one game. I get another 20 or 30 free mods to go with it, and I can still go with the Xbox Live Arcade model (via Steam), but with 100 gigs of space (just my Windows partition) instead of 15 or 20 to put downloaded games on -- which means that downloaded games, free or not, can meet or exceed the quality of games I buy on a disc.
But I think the amount of free games I can get more than justifies the cost of hardware.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
You're right, the PC is just another console. It happens to do more than the other consoles, but from a gaming point of view it's a console. You don't have specific revisions (like NES -> SNES -> N64 -> GC -> Wii), but you'll still have to upgrade to play the newer games. You can't play, for example, Civ4 on a 386.
However, your argument of "if I buy a console game, I have a one in four shot of it playing on a popular console" is rubbish. You purchase games for your specific console. Just as you wouldn't buy a game built for OS X and expect it to play on your PC, you wouldn't buy a game built for the Xbox360 and expect it to play on your PS2.
Neither insightful, nor even interesting. Just plain wrongThe Dreamcast was strong technologically (to the point that the PS2, released a year later, had trouble bettering its graphics) and had great games. Why did it fail? Lots of reasons, all of which had nothing to do with the quality of the console or of its games. The same can be said of the NEC console, and a few others.... Whether a console is a hit or a miss from a business perspective hinges on marketing, word-of-mouth, business decisions, operations, production, retail channels and more, just as much as it hinges on games and plain quality.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
(ok i haven't read any of the article on the link but i want to say what i want to say anyhow :P )
I think console wars are bad simply because it cost too much for everyone:
-the game maker needs to remake a big part of the game for it to work on many consoles because he wants it to go to a wider audience
-the gamers who can't afford to buy another console just because they want to play that very good game that isn't out on the system of their choice
-the console makers who can't do anything much except hope that good games will be made and lots of sales will come from that... then make the next one and hope for the same thing...
i heard that Resident Evil 4 was really great... but it took forever to get on the PS2.. then when it got out, i was too broke to buy it... now i heard that it was gona get out on pc.. been waiting for that for many months...
What did i win? nothing, i didn't get the game i wanted to play on the console i wanted to play it....
Who won? nobody, i didn't spend my money...
Did console superiority do anything? PS2 is market leader, but i prefer to play on the pc, so i'm still waiting with my money in my hands....
Like every war, Console wars only leaves victims and scars, nothing else...
The winner is the one that still have the strengh to get back home....
This sounds like another 'PC gaming or no gaming' rant.
These are two completely different markets.
At one time, I played only PC games. Then I played PC and console games. Now I only play console games. Consoles are not wrong, they are just another choice.
PCs are there for people such as yourself that (based on your above post) base their purchases on graphics. Consoles are available for those who dont feel the same way.
See, is it that hard to balance the news out that much? I have no interest in either the PS3 or the 360 (at least right now--on a budget, and it'll be a Wii for me, plus I NEED my Zelda fix and then my Super Smash and Mario fix), but there are still articles for the other systems that I find interesting. Leave your bias at the door.
Read my blog posts on usability.
Honestly, I think that (except for a few people) the question isn't really console vs. PC because (for the most part) they satisfy different gaming needs. One of the biggest benefits for the console is that many (if not most) games are designed to be played with local multiplayer (with a few doing local+online multiplayer); most PC games are designed to be locally single player only (and even if they do have local multiplayer the controls tend not to be all that well set up or fair; sports game where one person has keyboard+mouse and the other person has controller, a well configured controller will own).
At the same time MMO games have only been well made for the PC and you can not get a decent MMO game for a console.
As for console games do not improve over their lifetime, I would disagree with this but (regardless) Resident Evil 4 still looks impressive even though it was released on a system which (if you spent $1000+) was released against a Pentium 3 1GHz and a Geforce 3 [if you spent $2500+ you could have bought a pentium 4 1.3 GHz and a Geforce 4].
I used to be an exclusively PC gamer. I've slowly switched to being primarily a console gamer. Not so much because of the PC upgrade cycle (which does suck) as the simple fact that PC gaming is in a rut, and I got tired of playing the same games over and over. Occasionally there's something really cool like Space Rangers 2, but for the most part it's just incremental improvements in graphics and features (if you're lucky) but fundamentally the same games. All the really innovative stuff is happening on the consoles. There's no technological reason why Animal Crossing or Resident Evil 4 couldn't have been developed on the PC, but they weren't.
PC gamers see a division between the PC and consoles, as if all consoles can be lumped together. Console gamers see the PC as just another platform, with its own strengths, weaknesses and exclusive titles.
Bite the hand.
But if you want to construct a set-top gaming PC, you also need to buy a case, motherboard, CPU, RAM, and drives. Can you get all those PC parts for $100?
Assume that I have a set-top gaming PC and four USB gamepads. What free four-player party games do you recommend that match the fun of Super Smash Bros. Melee or the Bomberman series?
All right, competition can, and often is, a good thing for the consumer. But usually, it's only good if the market/consumer drives the competition. The current next-generation console competition is not a response to consumers; it's being rammed down the consumers' throats.
I read the article and never really bought his analogy. I think the Dreamcast died for much the same reason as the Atari Jaguar died and that I think the PS3 will die; we game consumers don't really want or need that much power, at least not at that price. One of the reasons that I picked up my PS2 (after not owning a console since my Genesis) was because PC games were starting to focus on pretty (and expensive, in terms of video cards) graphics at the expense of story, playability, and entertainment value. Specifically, when I found that the latest entry in a franchise that I'd been playing for years required a video card that cost, at a minimum, half again as much as a PS2, I bailed on PC games for a while.
If we really want competition to serve the consumer (rather than settle a "bet" over which unnecessary new DVD format will be forced down our throats), we need another player. Nintendo might play that role, but I realy think what we need is a good console (not a spectacularly extravegant one) that plays cheap games. In my dreams, this system an open source, both hardware and software, but it doesn't have to be. Keep the graphics around the same level as the current gen to force the developers to think in terms of gameplay instead of flashy crap. Avoid the licensing fees and marketing BS that drives prices up. Is an offical NFL lisence necessary for a good football game? Does a movie tie-in improve a platformer?
I'm looking forward to the unfortunately named Wii far more than the PS3 (both for its lower price tag and all the potential wrapped up in that weird controller), and so far I have not seen anything on the X-Box 360 that justifies its price. Either way, it feels like this iteration of "competition" is not doing anything for the consumer except digging deeper into our pockets for the gaming equivalent of bloatware.
"I'm a scientist! I don't think, I observe!" - Dr. Clayton Forrester
Much of the reason people prefer consoles over PCs is that they want a simple, reliable experience. Just pop the disc in and start playing, no worries about installation or whether your machine will run it.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Actually, that's quite the opposite with console gaming. The first generation of titles generally don't look that much better than the previous one, because the developers haven't had much experience with the hardware. Compare some early PS2 titles with late PS1, or early 360 titles with later Xbox games. Certainly you'll see the same thing with the first PS3 games, compared to some of the final PS2 games coming out this year (like FFXII perhaps).
Console gamers get that improvement in visual quality essentially for free, no need to buy new expensive hardware or anything. But obviously it takes time. That's probably one of the downsides to being a console gamer. Being an early adopter doesn't make sense since you're buying into a system that's at its most expensive, yet the games are at their lowest potential. The only gain you get is being "the only kid on the block with system X".
That trick is the same with console gaming. Don't buy the console when it first comes out for $400, or in the PS3 case, $600. Wait a year for the price to come down, or at the very least, an attractive bundle comes out. By then, the 2nd generation of games will be out, and many of them will be better than the few launch titles you would have been stuck with as an early adopter. And if there was a launch game that was genuinely great, chances are it'll be heavily discounted, or even better, available as a combo pack with the console. Why do you think PS2s are still outselling every other console there is?
The mod potential is a great point. Oblivion on the PC is far better than on the 360 for that point. That said, I think you put too much emphasis on money and consoles. EVERYTHING is driven by money, PC or console. You seem to gloss over the fact that many downloadable games on the PC (at least the decent ones) cost money as well. The only exceptions are mods, which I agree with are often fantastic and don't cost a dime. (Although sometimes the popular ones, like Counter-Strike, often tend to be bought up and made commercial
One thing I do like about the console space is that it's finally starting to adopt some of the things that worked so well for PCs. The concept of try-before-you-buy? The only reason I bought Dead Rising for the 360 because I randomly decided to try out the free demo, and got hooked on it. Gee whiz, who woulda thought the whole "shareware" model still works! *sarcasm* And it's not limited to the 360, as I imagine Sony and Nintendo are now working on similar abilities for their respective platforms (PlayStation Network and Virtual Console)
Anyway, I still do a lot of gaming on both consoles and PCs. There are definately pros and cons to each, and I don't think they're mutually exclusive. So no need to bash one totally in favor of the other.
-- jchenx
You're missing something important. Traditionally, game consoles have run at some resolution that approximates NTSC broadcast. Usually not very closely, although admittedly that did change in the 3D revolution. The point? Game consoles have traditionally run at 352x240 or less resolution. PC games are typically 640x480 and higher - these days, usually much higher. Being around 1/2 the X and Y resolution means you're around 1/4 the pixels, which means you need only 1/4 the fill rate and 1/4 the polygons to use the available screen space as clearly as you could use up the larger display.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"