[*]less / zero number of multi-platform games that often target the lowest common denominator
True
[*]as a result, games are optimized for one given hardware only
You'd think yes, but how optimised are they going to be?
[*]more games on the same platform == higher competition among those developers. As a result, we wouldn't have i.e. Ninja Theory that would escape onto a different platform (Xbox) to have the only fighting game (Dead or Alive 3) but would be forced to compete on the singular hardware with Tekken, Soul Calibur, Virtua Fighter etc
And as a result, the game would probably not be made in the first place.
Howeve, unless you make a law that every tiny little detail of console hardware should be made available to the public from day one, the platform holder is going to have a significant advantage. They could always make their games run better, and release sooner.
[*]mean no competition between different console vendors. As a result, hardware advances might be smaller and life-cycles longer
As we've seen with the handheld market.
[*]Smaller developers with a smaller budget would have it more difficult to be successful in a large and very competitive market - not only having to compete with the best outthere but with thousands of other titles.
And this would be made worse by the lack of motivation of platform holders to change this situation, which after all is likely to be in their own advantage.
Now, on the other hand, we have the systems competing partly through finding new ways of publishing games, like Xbox with Live Arcade. Whether or not Sony was going to do this on their own if Microsoft hadn't, we'll never know for sure, but we can be sure that E-distro now has to compete with Live Arcade and so can be made better.
Ask yourself, how many of todays 3rd party developers will make games that take advantage of Wii's controller or PS3's sixaxis controller if there game must run on all 3 platforms outthere?
Actually, Nintendo pushes the Wii controller so hard that it's almost impossible for a publisher not to use it. The wiimote is the default controller and it just works best if you use it as intended. Also, as games can't distinguish themselves very much by improved graphics, resolutions, or sound, they have to use the wiimote capability as an incentive to get gamers to buy their new products.
Interestingly, this partly results in more support for the Sixaxis, as company can share some of their research on Wii and implement that on the Sixaxis.
There's only so much one can do to make the same game run on all hardware yet take their different controllers into consideration. Then, after that, look at other factors that make a console unique: Sony's CELL processor with a huge amount of floating-point performance that could deliver a leap with physics in games. Or the built-in standard harddrive available in every PS3. Or some of the special unique features of the Xbox360 GPU.
The harddrive penetration is sufficient on the 360 so that, together with the PS3 having one default, it makes using it for load-times and such profitable. In fact, it's the 360 Core's lack of it that is hurting publishers a little.
Then also, ask yourself how big of a problem having a singular platform would be.
I have. It's big. I'm imagining how good Windows could be if it had competition. Almost all the drive forward in this product comes from the little competition it gets from OS/X and Linux, and OS/2 previously. Before that, Apple really needed some competition from the Atari ST to pick up. And so on and so forth.
The sole vendor of the console would need to stay somewhat cutting-edge or else they would make their market more attractive for other potential vendors to jump in with much better hardware.
You are breaking the rules, by introducing the possibility of competition. Before long, you'll suggest a five-yearly bid for the best hardware, and whoever wins, can exclusively supply hardware for the next five years. The question is though, who is going to determine what is the best hardware? The market for console games is so immensely big, that there is going to be a best hardware for large and different groups of consumers. Therefore, there is plenty of room for hardware competition on the market. These different groups are making themselves more and more visible, to the point that the hardware vendors are starting to recognise their own primary markets - witness for instance Nintendo, who is very clearly carving out a niche for itself. It doesn't have to 'win' the console war, just make a profit, and the whole Wii project is geared towards that.
Nintendo is experiencing this somewhat with the entering of the PSP, although they do both seem to target a slightly different market.
I think more than slightly, even.
Regardless, Nintendo might not have pushed the envelope where graphics are concern with the GameBoy over the years, but they did innovate by making them smaller, batteries lasting longer etc. It's not as if they stayed with the original GameBoy over the years.
If you say so, but I could hardly tell the difference. I played a lot of games on my Atari 800XL back in 1986, and until recently on the DS, games barely distinguished themselves from those days, in which, by the way, the 800XL was up against the C64.
f the price of that singular console goes up, it's because the market is willing to pay that (example: Windows). Any company, regardless if the sole vendor or in competition with other vendors has to find their ideal price based on demand and what they can afford / profit targets etc.
I can't believe that you used Windows as an example in this discussion.
At the end of the day, it's not a one sided picture IMO.
It is not a
completely one sided picture.
I would say that it is a bit like Communism vs Capitalism. Communism are cross-platform technology, like Java and XML, that bring different systems together and make for a more level playground, at the expense of using the hardware as efficiently as possible. Capitalism is hardcore, low level programming that strives to get the best out of a system in order to outdo the competition.
Without Capitalism (competition), Communism loses much of its drive and grinds to an inefficient halt. Without Communism, Capitalism (survival of the fittest) will temporarily have people pushing each other forward for the benefit of the consumer, but then favor the strongest and allow him to create a dominant position that allows him to crush or buy any oncomers, which in the end results in a complete standstil.
To keep things moving, you need a mix of both. So I think the current situation is fine. There is a lot of hardware, and there are development tools that allow you to create content that is good enough for all systems, but at the same time you can choose to target one system and do it well. In the latter case, you will sell well on that platform and distinguish yourself from others, in the former you might sell less on one platform (depending on the importance of technical merit in your game), but you will sell more on different platforms. So even here, there is a fine tension that stimulates both of them to compete sufficiently. If there weren't any games that coded to the metal, then multi-platform games could allow themselves to become very hardware inefficient and vice versa.
