A One Console Future? No, thanks.

We’ve all heard debates about the feasibility and value of a “One Console Future”  where all gaming takes place on a single platform. Silicon Knights President Dennis Dyack and EA executive Gerhard Florin were the last two big names to express support for the idea, and this blogger wants to share some thoughts. I love Fight Night Round 3 and I’m excited about Too Human, but I’d have to disagree with the two bosses on this one.

In the past weeks, we’ve heard top game industry executives dishing out educated exchanges on the prospect of a “One Console Future” where there will come a time we’ll all be living in a world where there’s one universal platform for every gamer to play and every developer to create games for. On the affirmative side were Electronic Arts exec Gerhard Florin and Silicon Knights President Dennis Dyack who both hinted that the scenario is certain and it may only be a matter of time before it happens.

Dyack pointed to the current state of gaming as an “unhealthy” one where people are divided into three major platforms. He said that a one console future is a state where everyone wins from the entrepreneurial aspect down to the consumer perspective.

While this blogger is by no means a top game industry honcho, my rudimentary grasp on basic economics and socio-politics sways me to disagree with Mr. Dyack. My respect for his work is deep, and I couldn’t be more excited about Too Human, but this idea of his is one that’s a little tough to swallow.

My stand as a gamer is pretty simple: The status quo may provide a situation where the industry is divided and the gamers are categorized as either casual or hardcore, but there’s really not a lot of wrong in that. As a matter of fact, I believe this is good for the industry. Let’s summarize what I mean in three simple arguments:

  

1. Competition favors the consumers – Practically anyone who ever took basic economics units would know this. The capitalist economic system which we all know and love in the free world values competition because it compels producers to come up with the best products they possibly can put out on the market for them to gain an edge. As a synergy to this, they must set a price point appropriate to the purchasing power of their target markets which is preferably lower than that of the competition’s. In most cases, this system ensures that we get the best goods at the best prices.

In the case of the game industry, we can see that this couldn’t be more true as we’ve seen in the past few console cycles that finding the right price-technology ratio has proven instrumental in market dominance. For instance, the Sony PlayStation 2 might not have had hardware chops as advanced for its time as the original Microsoft Xbox did, but it was close enough to give gamers at that time the next-generation feeling. The Sony PS2 also had an attractive price point which drew in both gamers and developers to the growing user base.

If a one console future is to be, who would pressure the single entity that manufactures the machine to improve its technology and lower its prices? The gamers? Unless everyone agrees to boycott gaming, there isn’t much of a chance that they’ll listen.

  

2. The freedom of choice – It’s a simple truth that different people play different kinds of games based on their age groups and interests. That’s clearly emphasized in this generation of gaming as the Microsoft Xbox 360 and the Sony PlayStation 3 lean towards the core gaming crowd with high-definition graphics and traditional game genres like FPS, action, RPG, and racing. The Nintendo Wii, on the other hand, caters mostly to more casual gamers, children, and females with its easy-to-learn, quick play puzzle educational and platforming games.

We see here that different hardware is used to host different game types. As far as developers are concerned, this should be a very important issue because different platforms offer different features. What’s applicable to the Sony PS3 and the Microsoft Xbox 360 may not work out with the Nintendo Wii and vice-versa. Trying to unify diverse gaming platforms would limit the artistic freedom of game developers everywhere.

While gaming is a business, driven by profits and other interests, this blogger would like to believe that developers still have that creative fire in their bellies that drive them to put their talents at work to let others experience their craft. This can only be done in the developer’s medium of choice, and forcing him to develop in an area that’s out of his comfort zone would dilute the overall value of the output.

  

3. A 1.5 console future? – Hold on, maybe This blogger is missing Mr. Dyack’s point. Maybe Dennis doesn’t mean that a single company will start manufacturing consoles. Maybe what Mr. Dyack and Mr. Florin are envisioning is something similar to the past media storage format era where VHS ruled without opposition after it toppled Betamax. Perhaps what Mr. Dyack and Mr. Florin mean is that there will be a single game machine core engine with different companies allowed to create their own versions.

Sounds pretty feasible, right? It would be like the old VHS days where there’s just one big format but an infinite number of player models in the market where you could knock yourself out looking for the one that suits you best. That way, manufacturers can add little gimmicks and have different price points for a single console type. In other words, it’ll be a one console future but not quite. Think Super Street Fighter or Street Fighter Alpha. It isn’t Street Fighter II, but not quite Street Fighter III. It’s pretty workable, isn’t it?

But wait, doesn’t this bring us back to square one? If this is what’s going to happen, what would stop console manufacturers from adding little features that would work with specific games to try and attract gamers to get their model? Won’t we end up buying games that would run, but end up being unplayable because they favor one specific model? If a game capitalizes on force feedback technology and only a handful of console models have force feedback, wouldn’t that be a bummer for people who have non-force feedback units? Eventually, the one console idea would defeat itself.

At the end of the day, this blogger sees more problems than benefits in a one console future. There’s nothing to suggest that it’s absolutely impossible, but adopting it would mean a massive overhaul of gaming as we know it. When you really think about things, what we have now isn’t so bad, and there really isn’t much of a point in trying to fix something that’s working well.