Slashdot Mirror
EA Calls for Open Platform/Single Console for Games
eldavojohn writes "EA's head of international publishing made some interesting comments on what he'd like to see in the future of gaming. 'We want an open, standard platform which is much easier than having five which are not compatible.' While the rest of his comments imply that he simply meant 'one' platform instead of removing development licenses, it is an interesting concept. This is obviously a move designed to cut their development time and costs. But could this have other implications - like easier homebrew development for consoles?"
Short form: homogeneous consoles => fewer console sales => less money
EA's hoping that the console turns into too much of a gaming appliance, which isn't going to happen. The economics behind it are just plain shot when you take a number of products that have their unique differences, such as platform-specific games and platform-specific controllers, and attempt to homogenize them into a group that has limited differences. The asymmetric competition between the consoles is the reason why sales are quite as high as they are, since a consumer may end up purchasing a Wii and an XBox 360 if they want to play Game X and Game Y, rather than being able to purchase a generic console that will play both games and take both the wireless pad and the nunchuck.
A standard set of requirements isn't going to happen either. While Sony and Nintendo are happy to work with OpenGL, for example, it'll be a very cold day before you see Microsoft embracing modern OpenGL support alongside their DirectX baby. Each console manufacturer wants to have a share of the market based on what their console can do that others can't -- see the Wii. Some are going to go after the newest technology and play Blu-rays, others are going to have DVD remotes, some will include hard drives. The console manufacturers will not see any particular utility in adding "allows competitors to play 'our' games" to the list of requirements.
Emulation may happen, by comparison, in one fashion or another. However, the above still applies, since any game that can be run using a standard engine can also be run by their competitors.
Devs would love the idea, I'll wager. Learn the technology once and keep developing for the same, iteratively improving target. They'd love it up until the publishers stop getting paid for platform-exclusive releases.
Someone in accounting realized they could increase their profit margin if they didn't have to pay 3 teams of developers.
Rumours that this same accountant found that the sweet spot of sales was 850 copies at $77.10 each have, as yet, been unconfirmed.
And what OS are you running? I bet it's not linux or os x since there aren't very many games out for those because they're different platforms. Yet they're still PCs.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
First of all, I assume the Personal Computer does not count, because a console only has one hardware configuration (but that is what the operating system is for). The standardized game console they talk about wouldn't turn out to be too different then the PC, I can imagine, not evolving much except in minimum requirements.
Innovative features would go away. I shouldn't have to cite examples, but I know Nintendo has been on the innovative path, you would have never seen a pointer in a game controller or a touch screen on a portable, it would be the standard controller and buttons galore, not much else.
Having multiple consoles allows us the power of choice. Standards do not drive the console industry, competition does.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
A common platform for console games really only benefits companies the size of EA, and to a lesser extent, 3rd party multi platform publishers of any size. It would cut down on development costs.
However, there is no way that this will happen, at least not voluntarily. Doing this would effectively kill all but one of the platform manufacturers. Nintendo is not likely to do this. Too much history, and institutional pride. Also, even when they do not excel or lead the market, they are always profitable. Why share the golden goose?
Sony would probably not go for this either, despite the current difficulties with the PS3. The last time they tried to collaborate with another console manufacturer, they got burned by Nintendo. And they did do pretty damn good with the PS1 and PS2. And finally, assuming they do not self destruct from bleeding money and need to spin off or shutter their game development, they are playing for the long term. The PS3 is a good strategy to push Bluray along, and I have no doubt that it will work out for that if nothing else.
Microsoft may go for this. They are primarily a software house. If EA's plan did come about, I would bet that the side that works with Microsoft would dominate. Game developers just love their development tools. Having worked with Wii, Xbox360, and PS3 dev hardware, I can say that Microsoft's dev gear is the best.
Still, I just do not see this happening. Unless EA decides to boot strap the damn thing into existence, it will just not happen.
END COMMUNICATION
>Remember the 3DO?
Yes and that was the brian child of the founder of EA (Tripp). So they don't remember their own founder's failures which is even worse.
You don't need one console. You need one target platform. You have have 5 different consoles, or 50, and still write to a single common platform. It's called middleware. The middleware vendor figures out all the idiosynchracies of the different consoles, and then writes an API which sits above it. The game developer (EA or whoever) pays a license to the middleware developer, and then writes to the middleare API, and things more or less work like magic on all the different consoles. All you have to do to 'port' it to a new console, or the PC, is really deal with the input issues. A Wii is not the same as an XBox360, but when a friend of mine did the port of "Cars" to the Wii, it was really just a matter of revising the input routines, and some other tweaking.
No, it won't. While there is a huge incentive for game makers to have just 1 format, there is absolutely no incentive for game system manufacturers to allow that. All of the money that console makers earn is from licensing games and that sort of things, most of the time they lose money on each console.
If they were to start making money on the hardware, it could happen, but it is still extremely unlikely as the amount of money to be made on a single console is just not big enough to justify the change.
Basically, this is just EA's wet dream, the ability to make all of the money and leave the hardware manufacturers completely out in the cold.
With your 1080p on a 56" TV, each pixel is about the size of a baseball, and if it's a normal TV your frame rate is a truly pukeworthy 30 FPS no matter what the game may be doing. From six feet away your field of view is what, about 30-40 degrees? Normal human vision is capable of about 120.
A 24-inch 1080p monitor 18 inches away looks reasonably decent and starts to give you a little peripheral vision. It also does 100-120 Hz.
Neither of these come close to the printed page at 1200 DPI and no flicker at all, of course.
What you have is a Bubba-impressing burglar-magnet.
If we had a single console, people would make "mistakes" putting it together, and you'd occasionally have to swap to another model to play a game not supported on yours. (Sega CD BIOS and Lunar for an example of what can happen) Given MS and Java, I wouldn't want them designing one of these.
3 companies currently have a taste for the money involved with being the console provider. Which is going to willingly give it up? Whether your game rocks or tanks, you pay them for the privledge of releasing it for their console. With one console, prices would skyrocket. As it is, the greed of individual companies is somewhat countered by the fear of driving a hit to the competition. This is part of why Sony WON'T back down from Blu-Ray. Forgetting the players, owning the standard is fairly profitable. (And a powerful tool negotiation-wise, at least until it's so broken with DRM that consumers CAN'T use it and give up.)
Also, would you want Nintendo owning it, perhaps making all the games for 6 months nearly unplayable from insisting they rely on the latest gimmick? Would you like Sony to control everything, blocking series you like (Working Designs, 2D games for a while when trying to push 3D), making nasty decisions (DRM breaking consoles, going ahead with the only plays on one console game-disc).
If a system like this was incrementally upgraded like PCs, it would have the standard PC problem of inconsistent play between consoles. Remember popping DOS games on Win95-98 class PCs and watching the on-screen blur? Even little timing mismatches could be nasty for twitch games.
Competition as some have noted above means companies will take more chances on off-beat games, always a plus. Staggered releases also force a bit more exposure for well-timed games. Most anything around the release of a new console will get tried. It may be crap, but an early game will get plenty of sales form parents who don't know better just because it's there, and their kid doesn't already have it. While it pushes crap, it also pushes potentially good games that might have gone unnoticed otherwise.
We need multiple consoles to keep the console fanboys arguing. A generic system is quickly forgotten about. When's the last time you argued about which brand of TV or DVD player was best? HDTV type perhaps (lcd, plasma...) How about sound systems? Your friends might have a few compliments for your new system, but it's for most, too generic to pay much attention too. The debate over what's best keeps the buzz going, and the systems fresh in people's minds.
I am not a developer but I can imagine that it would be far far easier to develop a game that has to run on 2 or 3 standard (console)platforms then on a PC.
Every console has a fixed set of hardware. If it works on a console it simply works. No worries after that about compatiblity.
If you design a game for the PC you have to factor in a gazillion types of hardware which seems to me a much harder job to do.
Life starts at the end of your comfort zone.
It's already on the market, and most game producers are already developing on that platform. They're called PCs. PCs are cheap, and are -everywhere-. There are more PCs that are 2-years old or younger than all of the game systems that have ever been produced combined. The 'standard' PC architecture is constantly climbing in its capabilities, so any PC game produced today, even if it requires 'top-of-the-line' hardware will be usable by most PC owners within a year or maybe two, and again, we're talking about many, many times more prospective costomers than owners of games consoles. Oh yeah, and games produced for the PC today will work on most PCs that are produced two years from now. You can't say that about game consoles. All they have to do is produce GOOD products, and people buy them. (Blizzard is grossing over $1Billion/year right now. Yes, that's Billion, and that's only for WoW.)