Slashdot Mirror
David Jaffe - In Ten Years Just One Game Console
The folks at 'The 1up Show' had the chance to interview David Jaffe, the well-known designer behind God of War. They discuss his upcoming project for the PS3, Calling All Cars, the future of the God of War series, as well as the ever-increasing price of making games. From the article: "A lot of games recently it's cell phone, PC, DS, PSP, if you look at EA they blanket it -- it's everywhere. As a gamer, I kind of miss the 'you can only get it on this system.' There's kind of an excitement that was about that back up until recently. With this new hardware, though, that idea is seems to be going away. Is it really all going to come down to first party now? Or it ultimately going to come to one system? 'Cause 10 years from now there's going to be one system because there's so much more third party software than first party software from any hardware manufacturer. It may not be feasible to make it the war of the first party or the war of the exclusives." The entire interview is viewable online.
As a gamer, I find this kind of statement asinine. I really only have the budget for one console, so I am forced to miss out on some games. I love the Gran Turismo series, but am not going to buy a PS3 just to play that when I have a perfectly good xbox 360. So I miss out on that game. To me, the console is a platform; I am not choosing an allegiance to one side or the other.
He is assuming that all the consoles will be essentially the same, just by different brands.
Which, essentially, is true. Up until now at least. The Wii and the DS both have completely different input methods, which makes entire genres of games available which weren't available for other systems.
As long as new systems are not just "the same but FASTER", this prediction won't come true.
The Fanbois will never let this 'only one console' thing happen. They'd launch some kind of jihad against the surviving consoles the likes of which the world has never seen. The aftermath would leave the world a scorched earth, barren, desolate place. No life would remain, only the scarred, smoking rubble of a once proud gaming civilization. Perhaps the consoles themselves would rise up and enslave the populace, using the humans as living pawns in their own games. Interestingly, these scenarios are only marginally worse than the existing console related threads which appear routinely on /.
This sounds very much like: "In the future, all restaurants are Taco Bell."
/sig
Um... It hurts them too. Remember when Nintendo had 90% share with the NES? The put 3rd party developers over the barrel. Because they could. Sony was no different, and I can't imagine MS being more 'benevolent'. Having solid competition between 2 or 3 providers is healthier for developers.
Exclusives are important as they drive sales of any console. Most people only buy 1, and they buy the console for the games, not the other way around.
There are exclusives for all the systems, but they aren't iconic in the ways they used to be.
15 years ago the average gamer age was much younger than it is now. Gamers were kids, and kids identified with icons. Whether it was TMNT or ghostbusters on the television, Nerf or Super Soakers in the back yard, or Mario and Nintendo we were young and brand loyal.
In short, things felt a lot more black and white then. There were a lot of excellent and appealing iconic games. Sonic was arguably at the best he ever would be. In fact, many people feel the same way about Mario, Link, Samus and more. Something was lost between the SNES/Genesis days and the polygonal era that followed.
To some extent, it was the exclusive games. In those days most games of note were on one system or another, with key differences notable between the ports when they weren't. The difference between the systems was much more palpable.
Beyond that, it was quite simply easier to play. That's not to say it was easier to win, I'd be shot by many gamers if I claimed the old games were easy. What I'm suggesting is that it was much easier for anyone to simply pick up a game, a controller, and have fun.
This is something that up until recently the market had forgotten. Regardless of whether I like playing games for 15 minutes or 15 hours (ah, college) it's nice to have fun the moment I start playing. The longer it takes to get the ball of fun rolling, the less likely I am to maintain interest.
In conclusion, games should live by the Othello motto. "A minute to learn, a lifetime to master". Complicated and confusing controls/gameplay do not a deep game make anymore than confusing and disjointed plot/dialogue makes a good movie.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
Yes. In fact, if you print out this article and fold it in properly, it becomes a whole different story.
Sweet informative mod.
> Console developers could come together and make a hardware/api "standard." Same type of disc, same hardware capability, etc. [...] Each console would then have its own flavor around it. [...] Game developers then could make just 1 game for all consoles that meet the "standard" and would be assured compatibility.
Welcome to 1993 -- it's the 3DO all over again.
Comment removed based on user account deletion