FEATURE: The Road to a Universal Platform
- Thread starter TheChefO
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The downside you're describing are anything massive, and the upside is more than making up for theses.
This generation competition gave us more than that. We saw a player backing out completly from the technological arms race bacause they had to release a product on a timely manner because of the competition already did and they couldn't afford the expenditures attached with the latest technology; we also got a player who went way too far in that race causing its product to be an over engineered piece of machinery that underdelievered because of its retail price; we also witnessed an empowerment of some key publishers, who thanks to the agressive competitions between the manufacturers got their ways and had the MSRP of games raised by 20%, as well as a virtual carte blanche when it comes to the manufactuerers quality assurance tests.
With regards to the question of technological features, why would one exclusively link theses with the fact that there are different consoles standard on the market? Did this environment forced Nintendo to release a console on par with the PS3 and X360? Did it get Nintendo to price the console on par with what its really worth? Did it get Sony to release a reasonably priced console?
New technological features are included in new designs because with time passing by, new technologies are created, and thanks to time again and the inherent economy of scale, they become affordable to include in your product. Also worth of note, some of these technological features, the software based ones, do not add to the BOM, they are an upfront R&D investment.
With that said, nobody said that having a console standard would mean the end of the competition on the hardware market.
Let's take an example, the DVD-Forum, a consortium comprised of CE manufacturers and movie studios, created a format: the well-known DVD. They set the product specifications and the rules the licensees have to abide by. But they don't dictate what extra features the retail product could have.
You can buy a plain, simplistic, DVD player, or a DVD/VHS VCR combo setbox, just like you can buy a TV with an integrated DVD player in it.
In other words, getting the advantages of a defined and common strandard and getting the advantages of a competition fighting for your hard earned cash are not mutually exclusive concepts.
First thing I'd like to say is that I'm not certain that having a product, alone on the market, supported for a long period can be considered as something negative to the consumer. It might be a negative point for us, the folks I call the graphic connoisseurs, but in the end it means that you get more life out of a product, just as the longer period on the market permit the product to reach a wider audience, on the basis that with the years, the cost of the hardware will reduce significantly, introducing more people to the media.
Now that was for the theory, in the facts, the next-generation will combine two things: a really nice example of the diminishing returns theory, and complex multi core machines that won't be close of being taped out anytime soon.
Theses two factors alone may make the idea of having the same machine of the market for more than 5 years, before any other products is released on the same market, a more bearable idea for everyone, graphic connoisseurs included.
Once again, you're talking about a close to monopolistic situation. With one company, creating a product, producing it, licensing the software running on it and controlling the distribution and prices.
That is different from having a consortium comprised of major player of the video gaming field, including the actual big manufacturers (without them it would just be another 3DO, costly, experience) coming with a mutual standard.
After reading these post of mine, you probably got to understand that I'm an obvious advocate for an unified standard for consoles.
A few years ago, during GDC 2005 or 2005, I think, J.Allard entertained the idea of a creating a hardware agnostic platform. It's an interesting idea, and fit quite well woith the Live Anywhere project, but it might be a bit too ambitious for the incoming years. A more likely scenario would be for MS to create a platform specification, basic hardware functions included, in commun with Sony and Nintendo.
Personally, I think if the Wii-experiment comes to fruition, in the long-run for Nintendo, the company might prefer keep doing its thing on its side. On the other hand, MS and Sony have some real incentive in doing so, they're competing for the same audience, they're producing the exact same machines, and they're bleeding way too much money and making way too little cash, if any, on this battle for this to worth it as it is.
A side note, though, if the Wii-experience, like I dubbed it, turns to be extremely profitable for Nintendo and allow them to earn a significant part of the market, if not the biggest part of the three, by the end of this generation, we might witness the competition going on, with one adjustment done: Sony and MS would withdraw from the technological race too. That way, fierce competition or not, the two companies will at least be able to make money, fast, on their product in lieu of taking long term bets like they do today. That potential success of the Wii would also lower, significantly, the barriers-to-entry of the console market and we might witness another low-cost player try its luck. Maybe that player would be a consortium of some CE giants and/or some big publishers which would prove to be a great moment of irony.
In any case, this purely speculative situation, but still a possibility, will see the competition going on, with all its downsides, and it won't give us much of its upsides anymore. A terrible scenario for the folks who like to have both great graphic capabilities and great game design.
One can only come up with negative points if one's assuming that the companies who will create a commun standard will decide to offer a product that will not expand the market. I fail to see why a consortium that would make money out of the amount of software sold would like to do something like release an unattractive product. If they did that, they'd know that they would just greenlight the entry another competitor on the market, who unlike the consortium, would release an attractive product.
There's no point of creating a consortium and a standad if the partie involved plan on reducing the height of the barriers to entry for the market. That would be completely senseless to do so, and expecting them to do that would be preposterous, it would be just like insulting their knowledge of basic economy rules.
With a solid and open enough standard -which would evolve more rapidly than other media standard, because of the continual advancement done in the graphic computing technologies- the involved companies would increase the height of the barriers to entry, by offering a product that no other company could feel worth competiting with, in other words a good product.
How a common platform could be a negative thing for smaller companies?
With a common platform, and longer cycles, there will be a larger base than anything before it, coupled with the fact that the "entry fee" for the platform will go down over the years (cheaper tools available, etc...), this could only mean that the smaller player would have more chances to break even than what they are doing actually.
Right now, the competition means that to have more exposure and availability, a publisher has to release a SKU for all the platforms, which is costly. Also the smaller devs/publishers can't rely on getting a lot from their investments in the, numerous, devkits and tools necessary for creating the games and content, since due to the competition cycles are short, if not getting shorter because the various manufacturer try to be the first on the market with a "new generation product."
Not to mention that the smaller publishers, now, get the worse deals of the bunch when it comes to licensing fees.
It won't happen because one console simply cannot encompass every good idea. You'll always get someone who wants to compete with what they believe is a cool new direction for gaming.
Yeah but my idea was that if they wanted to do this without merging (not something any of the three would want to do).
I'd think that if they did something like this, they'd want something that gives more long-term profit and the obvious way is that they raise the royalties and prices of games with the justification that you're saving money by buying it for "one system".
Well consider that some companies like square or Kojima feel an obligation to make exclusives for playstation whent they could make much more money having no exclusives.
Most games that get huge budgets, get ported. Similar to how mostly mainstream films are the ones that would get huge budgets.
That was more of a joke.
DuckThor Evil
Legend
I have a feeling that unified platform might be really bad for smaller companies, because I see it could lead more into the "Nintendo situation" where usually the First Party titles have dominated the market. Now with just one platform the small games wouldn't compete against just one first party company, but multiple huge first party companies, I could easily see that small games with limited budget for marketing etc. just coulnd't compete, naturally there would be exceptions and it would probably spun some innovation in order for smaller publishers to differentiate them selves, but on overall it might a rocky road.
As for the hardware, it makes a lot of difference whether there is only one standard box, or common standard, but each manufacturer would sell their own box. Subsidying the cost of hardware would cause some serious issues, which would probably lead to not so cutting edge tech in the box, which would naturally be somewhat compensated by the loss of multiplatform developing.
This theory has lot's of nice plusses, but the current HD DVD vs Blu-ray is a good example that common platform is a state that is very hard to reach, even if it makes the perfect sense and unified console platform doesn't make nearly as much sense as one disc standard.
Having only one console is not such a grand idea. Merging the PS and Xbox consoles together, however, is a great idea. It would still get adequate challenge from the Wii, handhelds and PCs, but it would not suffer from the semi-artificial exclusives that many single console owners do without.
From the highest bird's eye view, the magic is in software, not hardware. So from that point of view, it's a matter of implementation as to whether a single console would be good or not. I suspect that no single console would do very well at all things because it would either forbid specialized accessories (technically or practically) or would have too many/overlapping specialized accessories.
From the highest bird's eye view, the magic is in software, not hardware. So from that point of view, it's a matter of implementation as to whether a single console would be good or not. I suspect that no single console would do very well at all things because it would either forbid specialized accessories (technically or practically) or would have too many/overlapping specialized accessories.
Uh..yeah..then SONY goes ahead and develops their own console outside the GAME Forum while sandbagging progress inside the GAME Forum..
They then wait patiently as an active member of the GAME Forum while adding the same controller features developed for the unified console to their own console but making it completely incompatible with software made for the unified console. They then invite (pay) developers to make exclusive games for their console.
Yeah I would love to see that...
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Uh..yeah..then SONY goes ahead and develops their own console outside the GAME Forum while sandbagging progress inside the GAME Forum..
They then wait patiently as an active member of the GAME Forum while adding the same controller features developed for the unified console to their own console but making it completely incompatible with software made for the unified console. They then invite (pay) developers to make exclusive games for their console.
Yeah I would love to see that...
Funny stuff - and I'm sure its a situation that would have to be accounted for contractually on all sides from SW devs to HW devs. As we know sometimes even getting certain companies to pay for things they rightfully should sometimes does not work out so it would have to encompass the entire ecosytems of games development.
If the HW developers were all involved in the spec of THE MACHINE and all would get a royalty check instead of subsidising $100+ /console, we could be looking at a NG machine with a Cell cpu, xenos gpu, and wiimote + wireless sixaxis w/rumble in the box.
Lets say this box initially cost $500 (remember the board would not be getting BR royalties so minus that cost and the standard HDD). While this is expensive the cost would continuously decrease (we would not have to wait for a strategic decision for decreased cost) and it is significantly less than purchasing all the current consoles but this one would be the better given that it has combined the best features of all the consoles in one box.
Imagine VT3 with the wiimote. or GT5 with rumble or gasp playing Halo and GT5 on the same box!
It would be more expensive that is for sure. However the price would come down and the featureset would be unreal. Don't forget that even though they would not have the same open competition that exists today, they would still be competing with their own history and would want you to upgrade to their next box so in order for that to happen it would have to contain a measurable improvement.
/dream
This would certainly be the death of "first party" games. As it is today, those games are well funded to push the plattform and in turn get revenue from licensing. This falls flat if there are no competitors, and the Hardware-plattform is fixed and open for multiple manufacturers.
Im sure EA will be happy, but those that love the "big" games for consoles could just use a PC, as Im sure those Consoles would be nothing else than common parts in the end (say hello to the "Phantom")- means theres no incentive (sp?) for console-exclusives either.
Well, its the death of consoles in other words.
Im sure EA will be happy, but those that love the "big" games for consoles could just use a PC, as Im sure those Consoles would be nothing else than common parts in the end (say hello to the "Phantom")- means theres no incentive (sp?) for console-exclusives either.
Well, its the death of consoles in other words.
DuckThor Evil
Legend
Well the licensing money wouldn't go anywhere, instead it would be splitted by the manufacturers, which there would only be 2 or 3 and certainly some sort of deal would quarantee much higher pay out for the first party publisher that publishes the game and only peanuts to the other manufacturers. Still I don't think this happens or even think that in the end it's a good idea. It has many plusses though.
A very good point.
I don't see this happening; both MS and Sony come into the console race from previous collaborations - Sony with Nintendo before Nintendo reversed course, and MS with SEGA on the OS and graphics API before they decided to go full bore themselves. They've both invested too much to go back to that, and they both have too much riding on the digital living room strategies which their consoles are eventually supposed to gateway to come to any sort of accord. It's simply about more than gaming at this point for these companies, and the overarching interests involved are in competition with each other the same as the platforms to begin with.
Indeed but in both cases their purposes can be served on neutral hardware through software services. Not saying this makes the concept bulletproof, just that if it were simply a matter of MS wants a doorway into the livingroom and so does Sony, they can both realize these desires through software control on common hardware.
What is the likelihood of that, though? MS and Sony agreeing on something as profitable and vital as console hardware is quite unlikely. They would disagree even if there were no real technical issues. Carl-destroyah is right in that gaming is really not the thing holding back the tide.
I don't think having a single/unified platform would be a good idea. If one day we'll have a single dominant platform it should be cause gamers decided so voting with their wallets, still we have to leave room for innovation (newcomers to the market) as a single platform would slowdown innovation (no doubt about that).
Look at how pressure from Microsoft has forced Sony to vastly improve the quality of their devs support (PS3 dev tools/support is so MUCH better than the kind of support we had in the PS2 days) and their internet gaming support.
I can surely see a single platform dominating a specific market segment though, nothing wrong with that.
Look at how pressure from Microsoft has forced Sony to vastly improve the quality of their devs support (PS3 dev tools/support is so MUCH better than the kind of support we had in the PS2 days) and their internet gaming support.
I can surely see a single platform dominating a specific market segment though, nothing wrong with that.
First, let's consider: how could this ever happen? A single unified hardware platform is a fundamentally different business model than what exists today (the "razor and razor blades model"). There couldn't be a company subsidizing the hardware in exchange for royalties, since the hardware would be made by many different manufacturers. From that point it follows that whatever this new business model was, it would absolutely be opposed tooth and nail by the existing console makers (whoever they may be), since their brand and their entire business built around it would be invalidated by this shift. And from that we can deduce that the only way this would ever come about is if the current "razor and razor blades" model collapsed and all console makers started losing money (perhaps from masive R&D expenditures, perhaps from declining unit sales). Whatever else you think about a unified hardware platform, recognize that only the complete failure of the current model could bring it about.
Second, this new "standards based" model would be very fragile with respect to the experience. Standards work well for things like movie playback because the output is really a binary proposition - either it keeps up with the reading, decoding, and rendering of the movie, or it doesn't. Games do not really work that way. There would likely be lots of little variations in the computing power of different incarnations of the platform. The result is that the game experience would be slightly different on every model, and I'm not sure how you could normalize for these. Perhaps the effect on the gameplay would be subtle, but it could just as easily be drastic and perhaps even unplayable in some instances. It's not hard to imagine a scenario where some games only are only "recommended" on certain, newer model systems, or perhaps it'd be an open secret that they can't be played on older systems. I suppose the point here is: how do you enforce uniformness of experience across different hardware? How do you enforce these standards with respect to computing power?
Third, this "standards model" would be equally fragile with respect to "extending the standard". Imagine if a manufacturer implemented the standard but added their own small peripheral to the mix (perhaps a camera, or some new pointing device, etc.) that the standard did not already cover. Then they released it with some custom developed software title that needs the peripheral, and it turns out to be a huge hit. Then they start evangelizing its use to other developers, realizing that this peripheral allows them to push their own hardware over competitors. Already right there we're be moving back to the old model; manufacturer with custom hardware developing first party software and bringing third parties aboard to help push the hardware. The "unified platform" would start to fragment, just a little bit, but if this repeats itself out a few times over the 10 year lifespan of the platform, then it could get messy.
Lastly, the unified hardware platform may not just fragment internally, but externally as well. As others have pointed out, you could easily have a repeat of HD-DVD vs. BR where competing standards are floated. This would have all of the downsides that we have today but without the subsidized hardware. Also, it may not even occur at the same time. Perhaps a company doesn't want to wait the 10 years for a new standard to be written and rolls their own proposal 5 years into the cycle. The market has shown its willing to tolerate a 5 year life cycle, so trying to push a longer lifecycle is an invitation for some company to take advantage of that and co-opt the process.
This all goes back to my first point: unless there's a market failure of the current model, the model will not change. The current system would have to collapse for any such "unified platform" model to emerge. Perhaps the current cycle of escalating costs of game development will drive the industry to this model - perhaps - but judging by the profits that many developers are still able to bring in, I don't see the current model collapsing any time soon.
Second, this new "standards based" model would be very fragile with respect to the experience. Standards work well for things like movie playback because the output is really a binary proposition - either it keeps up with the reading, decoding, and rendering of the movie, or it doesn't. Games do not really work that way. There would likely be lots of little variations in the computing power of different incarnations of the platform. The result is that the game experience would be slightly different on every model, and I'm not sure how you could normalize for these. Perhaps the effect on the gameplay would be subtle, but it could just as easily be drastic and perhaps even unplayable in some instances. It's not hard to imagine a scenario where some games only are only "recommended" on certain, newer model systems, or perhaps it'd be an open secret that they can't be played on older systems. I suppose the point here is: how do you enforce uniformness of experience across different hardware? How do you enforce these standards with respect to computing power?
Third, this "standards model" would be equally fragile with respect to "extending the standard". Imagine if a manufacturer implemented the standard but added their own small peripheral to the mix (perhaps a camera, or some new pointing device, etc.) that the standard did not already cover. Then they released it with some custom developed software title that needs the peripheral, and it turns out to be a huge hit. Then they start evangelizing its use to other developers, realizing that this peripheral allows them to push their own hardware over competitors. Already right there we're be moving back to the old model; manufacturer with custom hardware developing first party software and bringing third parties aboard to help push the hardware. The "unified platform" would start to fragment, just a little bit, but if this repeats itself out a few times over the 10 year lifespan of the platform, then it could get messy.
Lastly, the unified hardware platform may not just fragment internally, but externally as well. As others have pointed out, you could easily have a repeat of HD-DVD vs. BR where competing standards are floated. This would have all of the downsides that we have today but without the subsidized hardware. Also, it may not even occur at the same time. Perhaps a company doesn't want to wait the 10 years for a new standard to be written and rolls their own proposal 5 years into the cycle. The market has shown its willing to tolerate a 5 year life cycle, so trying to push a longer lifecycle is an invitation for some company to take advantage of that and co-opt the process.
This all goes back to my first point: unless there's a market failure of the current model, the model will not change. The current system would have to collapse for any such "unified platform" model to emerge. Perhaps the current cycle of escalating costs of game development will drive the industry to this model - perhaps - but judging by the profits that many developers are still able to bring in, I don't see the current model collapsing any time soon.
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