Right at this moment it seems the most successful products in the console industry and the games industry haven't followed the typical development path of major advances in performance between iterations. The three major success stories in the current console cycle seem to be the Wii, Kinect and the Xbox 360 S redesign in terms of sales and profitability and the two major failures are the Xbox 360 original and PS3.
The dilemma I see at the moment is how to reconcile the needs of the less 'needy' people who use their consoles as media centers and whom don't want to pay too much for their consoles or need specifically much higher performance if at all from next generation consoles with those who demand high performance and expensive consoles. The relative success of Kinect, Wii and the development of the Wii U suggest that catering to the wider audience is wildly more profitable than catering to the core/hardcore gamer though that audience is significantly more active and brings in more revenue per person.
With a complex, high performance console it is difficult to cater to the less demanding part of the market because lowering the price to an appropriate level if you've got mandatory HDD's and complex memory, I/O and processing sub-systems is difficult to do profitably. The only systems which do cater to both parts of the market are the next generation interfaces which allow new ways to play games, consume multimedia and can give rise to new innovative uses for the console hardware. So where to draw the line at the needs of the many with low requirements matching the needs of the few with high requirements?
The current generation HD consoles are already stretched well beyond what their original designs anticipated when they were drawn up almost a decade ago. Can they keep up with the evolving requirements to compete with cheaper, more versatile and more up to date machines? If all console makers anticipate keeping their previous generation machines viable in the next generation, will there even be space for 6 consoles on retail shelves or will some be summarily curtailed in favour of the new? The idea which circulates is that cheaper current generation consoles will hold the fort in the lower end of the market whilst more expensive new consoles cater to the higher end, however this idea may not hold in the face of an evolving reality.
If in order to compete effectively in all markets the old must be updated then what we think of as the new may need to be rethought. The Wii U is a sideways expansion of what we call current generation HD consoles combined with the Wii, so what will become of the HD consoles as well call them? Perhaps the best clue is Kinect due to the fact that the hardware and capabilities of the camera interface are significantly greater than what the current Xbox 360 can deliver. Why was hardware which cannot be used effectively now installed in an interface at the expense of higher cost if that performance was never anticipated to be useable?
We have seen the effectiveness of a tick-tock type strategy from Intel, Apple has gone 3G, 3GS, 4G and 4GS so why won't we see Xbox 2, Xbox 2 S, Xbox 2 SS where SS defines the console as Slim/Speed. We have rumours about low relative performance to the PS4 from a future Xbox console, why can't that console be a refined current generation console? Kinect exists with the capability to take advantage of a faster console with better I/O hardware and forward compatibility was talked about by Microsoft quite a while ago. They can update again when or if the need arises and maintain profitability throughout the console cycle instead of risking boom/bust with each iteration. Consoles as we know them may go sideways to cater to new or existing customers and may never attempt to leave the current users behind ever again. Apples strategy works for what is effectively a console platform, why not apply it to what are traditional consoles?
The dilemma I see at the moment is how to reconcile the needs of the less 'needy' people who use their consoles as media centers and whom don't want to pay too much for their consoles or need specifically much higher performance if at all from next generation consoles with those who demand high performance and expensive consoles. The relative success of Kinect, Wii and the development of the Wii U suggest that catering to the wider audience is wildly more profitable than catering to the core/hardcore gamer though that audience is significantly more active and brings in more revenue per person.
With a complex, high performance console it is difficult to cater to the less demanding part of the market because lowering the price to an appropriate level if you've got mandatory HDD's and complex memory, I/O and processing sub-systems is difficult to do profitably. The only systems which do cater to both parts of the market are the next generation interfaces which allow new ways to play games, consume multimedia and can give rise to new innovative uses for the console hardware. So where to draw the line at the needs of the many with low requirements matching the needs of the few with high requirements?
The current generation HD consoles are already stretched well beyond what their original designs anticipated when they were drawn up almost a decade ago. Can they keep up with the evolving requirements to compete with cheaper, more versatile and more up to date machines? If all console makers anticipate keeping their previous generation machines viable in the next generation, will there even be space for 6 consoles on retail shelves or will some be summarily curtailed in favour of the new? The idea which circulates is that cheaper current generation consoles will hold the fort in the lower end of the market whilst more expensive new consoles cater to the higher end, however this idea may not hold in the face of an evolving reality.
If in order to compete effectively in all markets the old must be updated then what we think of as the new may need to be rethought. The Wii U is a sideways expansion of what we call current generation HD consoles combined with the Wii, so what will become of the HD consoles as well call them? Perhaps the best clue is Kinect due to the fact that the hardware and capabilities of the camera interface are significantly greater than what the current Xbox 360 can deliver. Why was hardware which cannot be used effectively now installed in an interface at the expense of higher cost if that performance was never anticipated to be useable?
We have seen the effectiveness of a tick-tock type strategy from Intel, Apple has gone 3G, 3GS, 4G and 4GS so why won't we see Xbox 2, Xbox 2 S, Xbox 2 SS where SS defines the console as Slim/Speed. We have rumours about low relative performance to the PS4 from a future Xbox console, why can't that console be a refined current generation console? Kinect exists with the capability to take advantage of a faster console with better I/O hardware and forward compatibility was talked about by Microsoft quite a while ago. They can update again when or if the need arises and maintain profitability throughout the console cycle instead of risking boom/bust with each iteration. Consoles as we know them may go sideways to cater to new or existing customers and may never attempt to leave the current users behind ever again. Apples strategy works for what is effectively a console platform, why not apply it to what are traditional consoles?
