Sony, Microsoft Squabble Over Console Features, But the Real Opponent Is Apple

Nerval's Lobster writes "Now that Microsoft and Sony have unveiled their respective next-generation gaming consoles, the two companies have cheerfully resorted to firing broadsides at each other. Whether the current brouhaha has any effect on sales of the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 (if hardcore gamers keep complaining, they may even convince Microsoft to knock $100 off the new Xbox and bring its pricing down to the PS4's level), it's also drowning out what many perceive as the real issue: gaming consoles face an existential threat from mobile devices, most notably those running iOS (with some threat from Android). First, there are signs that the hardcore gamer market is soft: console sales in the United States dropped 21 percent in 2012, and sales of new video-game cartridges haven't fared much better. Second, PC/console games such as X-Com have begun appearing on iOS; if that trend continues, the console companies will have more rivals to fight against. Third, Apple is developing a game controller for iOS which could make it an even more dedicated opponent — and convince other tech companies to follow in its footsteps. But don't tell any of that to Microsoft and Sony, which seem content to fire at each other."

Comments

Cartridges?

[intermodal]

Cartridge sales are extremely low, but that has nothing to do with PS3/4 or the Xbox family.

Vaporware...

[mystikkman]

We can talk about the mythical Apple TV with new console generation level graphics(which will make it expensive) when I see it.

... sales of new video-game cartridges haven't....

[djsmiley]

Carts.....

So this was written by someone who understands the gaming market well then? In 1995 maybe.

Cartridge?

[HeckRuler]

console sales in the United States dropped 21 percent in 2012, and sales of new video-game cartridges haven't fared much better.

What the hell would be considered a "new video-game cartridge"?

I know jargon in certain industries gets weird. I mean, I deal with tables, floors, clouds, nets, webs, pipes, and none of those are physical objects. But whoever is using the term "cartridge", in the game industry, in this year, deserves to be ignored as they are obviously stuck in the last century. Seriously, while you're back there warn them about 9/11 and Bush.

Apple, no fucking chance

[Anonymous Coward]

People playing 99 cent time wasters aren't the same demographic as those spending $400 on a console to buy $60 games. If Apple come up with a PC type small box that runs games, and give billions to several devlopers, they will enter the gamers' market, their twee stuff on their iStuff is not taking a single cent away from xbox, ps3 or nintendo, other then child titles and all that useless fitness stuff women buy.

Lol wut?

[Wookact]

Apple is planning on taking on Microsoft and Sony. Lol with what a tablet? There is just no way a tablet alone can take on a dedicated gaming device. The deck is stacked clearly in MS and Sony's favor on that. Lets see dedicated devices do not have the same size constraints, do not have to deal with battery life, do not have to deal with powering a display, do not have to deal with mobility, do not have to deal with sketchy wifi/4g coverage.

I suppose someone will chime in suggesting they mean the Apple TV which could be a valid point, except the market penetration of those are MUCH smaller, and the fact that they do not have any AAA titles that rival the competitors.

Controller or not, there are no Apple devices that compete directly with xbox and ps.

Re:Lol wut?

[Wookact]

You miss the point. Comparing tablets/phones to dedicated gaming machines is kinda like comparing bicycles to cars.

Re:Lol wut?

[jedidiah]

No. It's like comparing tablets to PCs.

Everyone thinks that Apple products are going to displace both PCs and game consoles when in truth the Apple products are very limited. As soon as you want to "get serious", you will likely want a better and more specialized device.

This goes in general for any number of things that phones are supposed to be killing right now.

Not yet...

[RogueyWon]

18 months ago, Apple as a serious threat to the established console makers looked plausible. It looks a lot less so now.

iOS is becoming a much less credible gaming proposition with every day that passes. Why? Shovelware IAP-laden crap which barely even qualifies as "games". Ok, occasionally you get games like X-Com or Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition which try to swim against the tide; but even there, they're never anything more than slightly inferior ports of games available on other platforms.

Finding anything worth playing on iOS is getting harder and harder. Square-Enix and Cave put out a few titles worth a look - but even Square-Enix have gone down the route recently of pay-to-win shovelware.

At the same time, the low-priced offerings on the consoles - and on the Playstation Store in particular - have soared in quality. If you want a mobile device right now that can play high quality indie games, sold at a reasonable price, then you don't want an iPhone or iPad, you want a Vita.

Indeed, though the Vita's failure as a "PS3 in your pocket" is now almost complete (barring the occasional decent game such as Littlebigplanet Vita or Soul Sacrifice) the machine's sales seem to be trending upwards on the back of a decently priced but rigorously quality-controlled low-budged and indie scene.

Re:Not yet...

[RogueyWon]

No, DLC is not the same as "pay to win", at least, not as it's usually used.

There's a lot of DLC out there that's perfectly good value. Look at the Borderlands 2 DLC packs, or some of the Bioware DLC packs. DLC done right is basically what was, in ye olde days, called an "expansion pack", but split up into a few chunks. So rather than pay $25 for a single expansion, you pay $5 five times for roughly the same amount of content, delivered episodically. The value to the player is the same, but the publishers have decided that keeping a faster cycle of expansions to the core game makes people more likely to buy their content. I have bought every non-cosmetic piece of DLC for Borderlands 2 and Mass Effect 2 and do not regret a penny of it.

See, without that DLC, I still had a full sized game to play. The DLC for each game amounted to an old-style expansion pack, for about the same price. It's extra content that fleshes out the game and extends the play experience.

Pay-to-win is very different. With pay-to-win, the entire game is, in theory, available to you - often for free. The problem is that unless you fork over money, most of the game will require utterly implausible amounts of time to access. That might be time spent running in circles doing random encounter battles or the like. Or, even more cynically, it might be "real world time elapsed" - an entirely artificial time constraint where it doesn't even matter whether your device is switched on. That time has to pass - unless you press the "pay now" button.

What this means is that the game mechanics are redesigned to strip out "skill" and "fun" and replace them with "pay or suffer". The game is no longer designed to make the player enjoy it (in the hopes he'll pay for future games from the same publisher), it's designed to get him to pay more to accelerate his progress.

The freemium/pay-to-win bubble is already bursting. Expect to see a lot of companies who have invested in it go to the wall over the next year or so. Some of the smarter ones are already getting out.

Not the same market

[Anonymous Coward]

How many times will people think that the iOS gaming and the HD console gaming is the same market? this is bullshit. yes there is some overlap, yes there is a bit of cannibalisation because time is a limited ressource, but no one can compare the experience of a AAA game on a PC or next gen console with what you can get on even an iPad.
even if it's streamed on a TV, even with a controller. the hardware is incomparable, the promise of the experience is completely different.

let's stop with this "new apples are disrupting oranges!" please.

Re:Mobile is the future.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. Wrong. People play games on phones because you can, but there's no direct correlation between this and console game sales. Totally different demographic. I couldn't give two rips about video games but I'll play a game every now and then at the airport because it beats watching the guy sitting across from me pick his nose. It's a convenient time killer. Of course there are phone based games that are addictively fun to some, but they tend to be very short lived. Console and PC gamers want immersive games that a 4 to 6 inch screen cannot deliver on. They want extremely granular control that a few soft buttons cannot offer. You're premis is quite simply wrong. You're comparing apples to oranges.

Re:One of these things is not like the other

[hairyfeet]

No shit, sales are soft because the consoles are as old as dirt and all we have been getting lately is the same old same, not to mention this is the time of years when sales ALWAYS goes down because hey! Its summer, people actually want to go outside and enjoy the nice weather, who woulda thunk it?

But the ONLY console maker that has to worry about the iPad is Nintendo, they have bet the farm on the casual market who is too busy playing with their pads to care about the Wii U, especially since the big gimmick this time is the Wii U actually coming with a pad of its own and so many being burnt by the Wii being the home of a handful of decent games and a mountain of shovelware.

As for the rest of the market? Some will go with Xb1, probably more will go with PS4 thanks to lower prices on the hardware and MSFT's well publicized douchebaggery as of late, and with the prices of PCs never cheaper and the games so much more affordable some will join us PC gamers on our side of the fence, especially since HDMI makes pretty much any PC made in the last 5 years usable just like a console. Things are slowing down now because duh! Nobody is wanting to sink money into old consoles when new consoles will be out before Xmas.

Re:One of these things is not like the other

[smash]

q: how many girl console gamers do you know?

How many games do the girls you know have on their phone?

My answers are: 2 and if my ex is anything to go by, 50+. Every single smartphone owning girl I know have many games on their smartphone. The mobile gaming market is many many times larger than the console market.

Re:Mobile is the future.

[smash]

As a game developer do you: Risk a multi million dollar budget making a high def AAA title for the big consoles or spend 10% of that for higher potential return at lower per-sale price in the mobile market. Given the cost to develop, are you more willing to risk trying something original (that may flop) in the console market, or mobile?

It's a no brainer, and why the console market is the same old stale recycled garbage, and the mobile market has some of the most original game ideas seen in decades.

This whole "must be 1080p!" is what is killing the gaming industry. Because the games now cost so much to develop, no one wants any risk, and thus nothing original is attempted as it is risky. So we end up with "Call of duty 14" or "need for speed 25", which are mostly just re-skinned versions of the same old shit we've been playing since 1991.