Gaming on a Universal Platform?

Riffing off of David Jaffe's earlier comments, an article up on the Next Generation site theorizes about a single unified gaming platform, ala the music and movie businesses. He proposes a 'videogame standards commission', which could look out for the future of the industry as a whole. They might, he says, not even agree with his conclusion that a global platform would be a good idea. The point, he says, would be to maintain "a detailed yet flexible long-term plan for progressive development of the medium. The board would assay in accordance with a constitution of irrefutable primary standards and ideals ... From what I can see the only way such a body could conceivably be formed is by appealing to the idealism of visionary designers and executives across the spectrum - your Satoru Iwatas and Ken Kutaragis, and Will Wrights and David Jaffes. The Game Developers Conference and other gatherings already embody some of the spirit of this proposal." Curmudgeon Gamer has extensive commentary on Eric-Jon Rossel Waugh's piece.

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[Canthros]

You've mangled that linke to the Curmudgeon Gamer article.

Re:Universal?

[7Prime]

What are you talking about? Maybe EA and a number of smaller companies are doing this, but most of the biggies are exclusive. Think about all Microsoft's first/second party games (Bungie, Rare, etc), all the Nintendo first/second party games, now add the fact that Square-Enix, though not exclusive as a company, is exclusive on a game by game basis. That's 3 out of 4 of the largest game developers in the world (excluding EA). Sony's no small developer either, Blizzard and ID primarilly stick with PC, with an occational XBox port, Capcom, Kojima, and Rare are pretty much exclusive on a game by game basis. The list goes on and on.

The bottom line is, yes, there are many non-exclusive titles, but they're mostly all by smaller companies that can't aquire good exclusivity contracts, and a large percentage of those are uncreative fluff. Just think back on the last decade: out of every major title, how many of them were non-exclusive? Not many, and the one's that were non-exclusive were either PC ports to one system, or ported to only one other system.