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The Changing Face of the Console Wars
An article at Gamasutra explores the decisions by Microsoft and Sony to launch significant hardware additions — their respective, upcoming motion-control schemes — in the middle of a console cycle, rather than waiting until the next generations of their systems are ready. It's indicative of a change to the established pattern of console wars; nowadays, it's more about adding features and gadgets to improve existing products than developing entirely new ones. Quoting:
"... for Sony and Microsoft, motion controllers are their next-gen consoles. And it's a damn sight easier than launching Xbox 720 or PS4. They can debut these peripherals without needing to engineer completely new boxes for consumers, potentially bundle them over time, and they have a much better chance at getting exclusive games, thanks to the specificity of the hardware (something that's happened a lot for the Wii). Thus, both hardware manufacturers and publishers like EA see these controllers sparking new interest in Xbox 360 and PS3, which will delay the next dreaded console transition for another few years."
The extension of consoles is the defacto behavior for consoles, and always has been. In modern times it's been things like Wii Fit, the Eye Toy and so on, but nobody here has forgotten the Power Glove or the Power Mat, the Sega CD and the Sega 32x, and indeed that pattern goes back into the 70s, with the Intellivision overlay system and the Commodore 64 Extender.
Indeed, it's only the last generation or two which have skipped it. Anyone who believes this is new has only been gaming through one generation of consoles, and that should be their first red flag that they're not ready to talk about the history of gaming.
Could not be less correct.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
Very true, they always launch some sort of add-on, and no really buys them and very few games will use it. When they do use the new controller, they still support the old one because that where all the sales will be. I can't even think of one new controller/add-on in mid-cycle that even sold had more than 50% of the players adopting.
The current generation of consoles are TERRIBLE compared to PCs. A new PC with a Radeon 5870 has nearly 6-8 times the graphical processing power.
Most consoles games run at sup 720P resolutions and are upscaled to fit a 1080p screen, view distance in console games is terrible, textures are blurry messes, and frame rates suck.
The fact that you can't see a difference between the xbox to xbox360 is laughable.
Just because you have low standards doesn't mean the tech can not advance much further than it already is.
Either way, eventually the hardware will get powerful enough to run real time ray tracing in HD, or at least a mix or real time ray tracing and rasterization, this is when consoles will most likely achieve very long life cycles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitar_Hero has proved, to the tune of $2 billion in sales, that you *CAN* "requir[e] people to buy some new fangled, overpriced gadget in order to play your game".
Clearly people *ARE* willing to fork out double the cost on an accessory and a game, instead of just buying two regular games, for the same price *IF* you create a game that makes it sufficiently more enjoyable to play with the accessory. The announcement of Guitar Hero for the PSP demonstrates that the game does not require the accessory controller, but who honestly believes it would have been as successful on the major consoles if it had used just the standard controllers?
Game graphics advances will be stunted
And some of us gamers cry "Thank effing baby Jebus" for that. Have you missed all the complaints about how gaming is too dominated by graphic card wank fests over who has the best lighting effects or water reflections? Or how the hardware has advanced too much along the polygon count side, actually making it difficult to do anything else other than service shiny graphics, enemy AI or any other intellectual concerns be damned?
I guess the bright side is I won't be blowing $300 every 2 years on graphics cards.
Yeah, bingo. People are getting tired of that. A friend showed me a newer PC FPS a couple weeks ago. Pretty as all hell, but just another goddamned shooter with dumbass enemies and puzzles for the short bus crowd. Whee!
Gimicks are gimicks. They are not the future of video games. In modern games, I need to control movement of a character in 3D environment, while maintaining camera control and awareness, and while maintaining quick acess to broad array of functionality and abilities, all while making room for meta and system controls. How do I do this by waving my arms or shaking the controller? How would you perform all the functions needed in say, Super Mario World with a motion control system, while retaining the same level of responsiveness and control. You can't. The standard controller is a proven method of such control and this has not happened by accident but rather by design, and it would be the height of folly to disregard that
I guess someone here didn't play Super Mario Galaxy
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.