Hypothesis of countries that can create consoles
- Thread starter edepot
- Start date
I think at the core of it, I'm wondering why it's an argument to begin with.
In terms of the 'hypothesis' at the root of this thread, my answer is "no."
Exactly. "Which countries have the manufacturing capacity to produce consoles?" is the question being asked now, but wasn't the point of the thread. Associating consoles with countries is a bit blinkered IMO. We live in an international world of cross-border creations. No single nation (save China perhapsI think at the core of it, I'm wondering why it's an argument to begin with.
) is designing and manufacturing every bit of their machines. Different countries have offered different expertise and resources brought together to produce finalised products throughout history for many industries.Short of chalking up a nationalistic point of 'This country makes this thing', what is the purpose of trying to resolve who makes what? Seems to me daft bragging rights is it. The consoles we have are produced and maintained by people from all natioanlities across the globe all working together. Is the location of the corporate HQ really that important?
The original SPARC64 was designed by HAL in Silicon Valley and the microarchitecture really hasn't changed much. Fujitsu absorbed HAL some years ago, but I wouldn't be surprised if most of the design work still happens in the Bay Area.
The console industry is most successful when there is a defacto monopoly, as was the case in the '80s with the NES, and the late '90s through this past generation with the PS1 and PS2. The current situation, where there is effectively a three way split, has resulted in a much longer transition than usual and much higher costs for developers looking to target a large enough market to support development budgets in the tens of millions of dollars. There's no way developers and publishers would support another upstart hardware platform -- it's already bad enough handling two or three ports (X360, PS3, and PC) and then a totally different game (Wii) as it is.
Exactly. "Which countries have the manufacturing capacity to produce consoles?" is the question being asked now, but wasn't the point of the thread. Associating consoles with countries is a bit blinkered IMO. We live in an international world of cross-border creations. No single nation (save China perhaps
Short of chalking up a nationalistic point of 'This country makes this thing', what is the purpose of trying to resolve who makes what? Seems to me daft bragging rights is it. The consoles we have are produced and maintained by people from all natioanlities across the globe all working together. Is the location of the corporate HQ really that important?
Indeed it so. But as I tried to explain. The ownership of the production and the design is linked to a few countries. There is a reason why no European country has a owners intrest in any part of the production.
You can produce any electronics anywhere in the world, the question is money. These investments comes from a few companies i Asia and the US when it comes to console.
So by knowing that I don't that any otherv region or country will overtake the US and Western asian line in design or production.
In theory Sony could open a production i Africa but it is still Sony and Sony's money, experties and so on. So regarding the thread that some other countries will emerge with companies that can design and produce in the same way that current leaders are doing is nothing that will happen in the comming 10-0 years.
Looking historical on the dynamics of the industry you will se that the concetration of the top-4 and top-10 in the world within semiconducters is increasing with more shake-out and less entry with entry-barriers very high.
The 65816 was the 16 bit evolution of the MOS 6502. The silicon inside the SNES was manufactured by mos, but it was a clone of a WDC chip design.
The engineer behind WDC was one of the original founders of MOS, but he broke off and started his own company. It's the same cpu inside the Apple IIGS.
