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The 5-Year Console Cycle Is Dead
Pickens writes "The Xbox 360 recently turned five years old, and with no known successor on the horizon for the 360, PlayStation 3 or Wii, Cnet reports on the death of the 5-year console cycle — one of the video game industry's most longstanding truisms. For example, the Nintendo Entertainment System came out in 1985, followed by the Super NES in 1991, the Nintendo 64 in 1996, the GameCube in 2001, and the Wii in 2006. But now, why should console makers upgrade their offerings? Consumers are still buying their machines by the hundreds of thousands each month, and ramped-up online initiatives are breathing new life into the systems. A lot of it has to do with the fact that with the current generation of consoles, each company found a way to maximize either the technology behind the devices, or the utility to a wide range of new gamers."
the downturn in the economy has claimed consoles as a victim, which a lot of people are not sad about.
Yes, they've lowered consumers' expectations. It's not a function of "business model" so much as a function of the effectiveness of marketing. Look, they sold these millions of console buyers on the idea that it's better to have obsolete hardware. And this person at Naughty Dog is part of the sell job. "Yeah, it's so much better to have old hardware, because we don't have to give the customer as much. And that of course, is a win for everyone (except the customer, but fuck him)". Hey, Mr. Naughty Dog, I'm sure it's nice for your bottom line to dig the same whole over and over again, using bigger and bigger budgets to make games that provide less and less value. Nice setup you've got. It's basically what the pop music industry did for years. "Yeah, it's costs 10 million dollars to make an album of music by some tired super-mega-star going through the motions, but the fans appreciate it that much more because it's famliar". Goddamn, you want to gloat about your inflated business model that's fine, but save us the lecture about how much we should appreciate it. The music industry might have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for those meddlesome kids with their Internet and mp3s and torrents. I hope the game industry realizes that the clock is running for them, too.
Shamefully, a lot of consumers will always line up to have someone piss on their heads and call it Heavy Rain.
When I put forth the proposition that marketing and advertising are the most powerful influences in every single one of our lives (especially those that believe they are not affected by it), I am being very serious. Every single one of our tastes, from our preference for skinny and shiny to our political beliefs, our concept of beauty, our desires, hopes, even the structure of our families has been brought to you by our sponsors. Do you think a Lexus coupe is more attractive than a 1973 toyota pickup truck? Well thank J. Walter Thompson.
Mad Men is not a soap opera so much as the history of the decline and fall of Western Civilization.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The vast majority of a game's level of fun has little to do with hardware. About the only two times where hardware becomes an issue is when the hardware isn't adequate to show you all the information you need or with loading times which completely screw up immersion.
Yes and no. There's a fundamental limit to what you can do with whatever hardware you have available, and that directly feeds into how much fun the game can be. In particular, the more CPU power you have the better you can make in-game AI... except, oh, consoles have crappy CPUs so we can't make a game with AI that takes advantage of the vastly superior performance of the PC because it has to run on five-year-old cut-price hardware.
If hardware didn't matter, we'd all still be playing Pacman or Manic Miner.
Perferably moonwalk away after that spin.
Yeah, that's what the image shows, fuckstick.