GC: Silicon Knights' Denis Dyack

By Tom Bramwell Published 22 August, 2007

On a unified gaming format and why it will happen.

Of all the discussions at the Games Convention Developer's Conference, Denis Dyack's stood out partly because he was making a contentious point rather than a safe one, and partly because of the sheer degree to which his argument inspires discussion. At the time of writing, our write-up of his speech has been met with nearly 250 comments - more than three times as many as Julian Eggebrecht's keynote, which effectively had full-on pornography in it. Dyack believes that a unified gaming platform is inevitable, arguing that the history of commoditisation in other industries guarantees it. We sat down with Dyack, president of Too Human developer Silicon Knights, and put some of your and our queries to him.

Eurogamer: To a lot of people in the games industry - and Don Daglow was the example yesterday - there have been very obvious and recurring cycles of console hardware, and you obviously see things changing, and you're casting your eyes wider than simply the games industry to inform that view. Even put into the perspective of the arguments you were making, however, there's quite a lot of scepticism, and disbelief that Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo will stop throwing money at console development.

Denis Dyack: I absolutely think they will never try to give that up, but market forces and the forces of monetisation have historically always overthrown those forces. You cannot stop commoditisation of technology, and the more toys and widgets that you put into something, it's almost inversely proportional to value.

Take a cell-phone as an example. When you first got them, they could do one thing - they could take calls. Now you can play games, you can get email, you can listen to music - but the prices of these things are continuing to drop as it's becoming commoditised, and now if you look at the cell-phone market generally there's hundreds of different kinds of phones and they're all pretty much the same, and they have no value, and they're given away with cell-phone plans.

The monopolistic model works well when someone dominates the market, because then you can predict where your sales are going to be. In this current games marketplace where the split is becoming very difficult, I think it's just going to accelerate the commoditisation, where the business model won't hold any more, and it's not a matter of whether Microsoft or Sony wants to stop; it's if the market forces can bear that type of monopolistic model, and I don't think they will. I think eventually it's going to fall through.

'GC: Silicon Knights' Denis Dyack' Screenshot 1

Eurogamer: People were struggling to grasp how a unified specification would exist without companies like Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, and what kind of role they would have. In this kind of cycle there needs to be overlapping R&D cycles, and people want to know who would be responsible for that in a unified console market.

Denis Dyack: I think it would be something that would be very similar to the ESRB (Entertainment Software Ratings Board). Essentially you have all the publishers and developers getting together and saying 'here's the standard specifications that we're going to go with', and obviously I'm not saying that technology is going to stand still - I talked about how it's been shown that technology is logarithmically increasing - so every five years or so they would adjust the standard.

The really important thing is that it's just like a DVD player - when you buy that disc, you know it's going to play in that system, and it's that kind of specification that we have to have, and it's essentially a consortium of people with common understanding. Eventually, as the technology advances, the difference between the technologies is going to be so small that there might not even need to be an understanding.

Eurogamer: You were saying that at the moment there's effectively a convergence of end product in that the PS3 and 360 are pumping out the same stuff. I think it's just difficult for people to see how what you describe would happen on a micro level, because I think they can see the bigger idea as something that could take hold - they just can't really make the leap in their heads along the different stages.

Denis Dyack: These concepts - I guess they're micro and macro economics - aren't things that people particularly think about in the videogame industry. I certainly don't know a lot about those things. I come from a human interface perspective, I understand the history of technology and how technology affects society, and because of that I've been exposed to commoditisation and some of the good and bad effects of that, and these are really complex. You just can't sit back and really take it in very quickly.

Some would define the videogame industry from Nintendo on. If that's really the case, there hasn't been a lot of time yet in our industry. That's what I said earlier with Don's talk - I really liked it, but I think it really missed a lot of the long-term stuff and I think that we're not going to continue to cycle. I don't think we can, because we're getting to the breaking point now where games are becoming so expensive, under so many market pressures, that the old model won't hold any more.

One thing he said that I really loved was that the definition of a next-gen product is how big the marketing budget is. I thought that was absolutely true because, if you look at what I'm saying, there really is no true next generation. The technology's ceasing to matter, and the software is overcoming the value of the hardware.

'GC: Silicon Knights' Denis Dyack' Screenshot 2

Eurogamer: With a lot of the technologies you mentioned like DVD and cameras, the actual core element of it - the moving picture, the capturing of a picture - was crystallised very early on, and has been evolved. But with interactive entertainment, there is more of a fluidic technological side to it - Nintendo Wii obviously is doing things that none of the consoles beforehand were really doing and I'm wondering if that throws anything else into the mix that maybe suggests you can't map it to that model.

Denis Dyack: It could be that we take longer because of the current market, but I would actually say the Wii, in most cases, if you take away the input device, it's really similar to the GameCube, and so they've got a single piece of hardware, and the question to ask is 'would that piece of hardware work on the 360?'

Eurogamer: What I'm saying is that with interactive entertainment what you're doing with your hands is as vitally important as what you're seeing on the screen - I suppose the thing is if you feel it has already become standardised. I think you touched on that yesterday, briefly?

Denis Dyack: I said it wouldn't matter. At least I tried to say that. I think the answer to what you're saying is the whole idea of accelerating technology. A lot of people say that Moore's Law is going to stop the speed at which computers evolve, but Moore's Law and what it limits is going to be superseded by a different technology like optical computing or parallel computing or molecular memory. Another type of divergent technology will come in and take over that.

I think the controller for the Wii is one type of those types of technology. Whether we're using a monitor or we're having games directly piped into our retinas - because I think that will eventually occur - that is really not going to dictate how fast we come to a standardisation. And, actually, the more of these things that happen, the more likely standardisation is to occur.

Eurogamer: Nintendo will have sunk a lot of money into the R&D of Wiimote. You clearly think that interface innovation will continue to occur even in a unified console format.

Denis Dyack: Yep - that's one of the broadly misunderstood concepts of commoditisation. Monopolistic markets stifle innovation. In a commoditised market, innovation and competition is much more rapid, so the amount of money of people competing in an open marketplace is much higher. Have you ever heard people complain about the cost of a hard drive for this particular console and why it's so expensive compared to a PC? That's because it's a non-competitive market. Every first party's guilty of this. That's why it's a closed system.

The big difference is people think that this current marketplace is more competitive - that Sony is competing against Microsoft is competing against Nintendo, and Nintendo's come right forward and said, overtly, 'we're not competing', because it's a non-competitive model, and they can work within this model. If we're in the open marketplace I'm talking about, competition would be much more fierce, consoles would be much lower in price, games would be lower, and when you bought a game, you would know it would work on your system. You wouldn't have to buy a Nintendo to play Miyamoto-san's games, you wouldn't have to buy a Sony to play a Ratchet & Clank game, and I think that's better for everyone.

The one thing would I say to everyone is that with commoditisation, the consumer almost always wins. It's cheaper games, cheaper hardware, and more availability and standardisation for everyone. You look at some titles like first-person shooters - Resistance: Fall of Man came out the same time as Gears of War...

'GC: Silicon Knights' Denis Dyack' Screenshot 3

Eurogamer: Yes, you made the point that they weren't competing.

Denis Dyack: They weren't competing at all, and shouldn't they have been? There you have a non-competitive marketplace, and you have to really ask yourself 'is that good for the market?' Why shouldn't they be able to play both and compare on one system?

When technologies like the sewing machine are introduced, they're personified as these freeing, liberating, just awe-inspiring things that are going to change our lives for the better. That's how consoles are always introduced. The sewing machine was introduced to free up women's time, but what happened when it was mass-produced is sweatshops were created, and it had the exact opposite effect.

Technology really needs to be understood from that level, and I don't really want to talk too much about Too Human, but that's a lot of the things we're talking about with technology in Too Human - is really understanding the effects of technology on society.

Eurogamer: And it doesn't rule out the possibility that the systems you're buying from certain manufacturers that subscribe to this unified standard can have other features as well.

Denis Dyack: Absolutely. Which is the same as when you think about buying a DVD player, or the same as buying an automobile, quite frankly. There's Porsches, and there's Minis, or whatever. There's different types of cars, but they're all cars, they all push on the pedal for gas and you turn the wheel to drive it, and that's it.

Eurogamer: You made a point in answer to one of the questions about how Xbox Live might fit into a unified model. I think you analogised it to the service industry - like Blockbuster is to film. Could you expand on that?

Denis Dyack: I actually think that Microsoft has been the most proactive in the Internet space.

'GC: Silicon Knights' Denis Dyack' Screenshot 4

Eurogamer: Do you think maybe they see it coming?

Denis Dyack: I actually think that's their real console.

Take technology from an infinite standpoint of imagining memory where there's no limits, and the computing is so fast you never have to wait for anything, and the graphics display, whether it's your retina or whatever, you can do as many colours as you want and there's nothing limited. Internet bandwidth is absolutely limitless - it's just as fast as your GPUs or your CPU. What happens is there's no hardware. Imagine it being so small you can't even see it any more, and all you really have then is your Internet piped to your service provider and that's Microsoft Live.

I think Microsoft has been really forward-thinking in that way, and I actually think it could be their future console in the end, because if you talk about what I'm saying to the extreme, the hardware gets commoditised to such an extent that there absolutely is no value, whereas the value is all in software. Live is software, and that's what Microsoft is known for - software - and certainly they're very, very smart people. And I think from that perspective it's something that nobody else can do.

Eurogamer: Sony's obviously been making noises since PS3 came out about how they don't see the cycle playing out the same way, and they see things moving away from elements of hardware and optical media and so on.

Denis Dyack: Also very, very smart people, and where they're going they're certainly being very experimental with Home, and stuff, and I'm really interested to see where that goes. I think that's got potential.

And Nintendo, who's been traditionally wary of online is now stepping into the fray as well. I don't think anyone can ignore that space. I think whether you're playing a multiplayer game or a single-player game that's going to be the future mode of delivery, because of piracy issues and all kinds of other things. In the issue of piracy, a movie's linear, you can record that and get the same experience once you record it. If you play a videogame, you can record yourself having that interaction, but it's not the same as you actually having that interaction, so the problem with piracy is people take something, make a copy, and then duplicate it and pass around - you cannot make a copy of you interacting, so with an online delivery standpoint, imagine things are so fast that you don't even get the software any more - you just hook into a central server and you can play.

Eurogamer: One of the other things you said was that predicting four or five years down the line was like trying to predict the weather, but at the same time you did say that you felt this unified console could happen as soon as the next generation.

Denis Dyack: I think it could happen next console generation. If this ends up being a true three-way split, and everyone has one third of the pie of this current generation, everyone's going to be bleeding. That would mean that the first parties didn't do as well as they'd hoped because they all hoped to win, and the third parties are likely to not have guessed properly, so they didn't make as much money as they thought they could.

I'll say it right now - I'm going to be pretty confident that all the first parties have already started their R&D for the next generation, and - I guess from the perspective of someone who's looked at technology over time - what they're going to try to do now is create technology that's going to differentiate them from their competitors, and it's getting more and more difficult all the time. They're going to have to spend more money to do so.

In the end you really have to sit back and say with Sony, was all that money they spent on R&D for the PlayStation 3 worth it? Are they are a content company or a hardware company? Microsoft is traditionally a software company, and should they be working on software or hardware? Look at Nintendo - how many times have you heard 'shouldn't Nintendo stop making hardware and just make games?' I'm not saying I'm a proponent of any of that - but these are legitimate questions that they all have to be asking each other, and I think just to be really clear that it's really hard for them too. I think this marketplace has been becoming increasingly difficult for the hardware manufacturers, and we've already seen a few go and die and never come back. Now you're left only with players that have billions of dollars.

It's gone from the really homegrown environment where anyone could make anything happen to these really huge conglomerates - and even they are now feeling the pain, and I think it makes it really tenuous. The argument for commoditisation makes a lot more sense every time we talk about it.

'GC: Silicon Knights' Denis Dyack' Screenshot 5

Eurogamer: We've seen shades of this in the past - there was MSX, where somebody tried to put forward a unified format, and there was Saturn, where SEGA let other companies like JVC make one. Did that fail because it was the wrong time? Because the competition was still relatively strong compared to those products? Because development was cheap?

Denis Dyack: I think it's because you had billion-dollar players coming into the marketplace - compared to SEGA who really didn't have that much of a war chest. And you've got these really big players coming in who think they can dominate this market. It takes a lot of capital to do that, and these are the things that forced out the smaller players, so I would say it was a bit too early, and I think moving forward the forces of commoditisation are going to overcome the forces of these billion-dollar companies.

In the early Nintendo days, if you weren't a first-party exclusive to Nintendo, you might as well not even be in the videogame industry. You had to fight and claw your way to become an official Nintendo publisher, just to give them a percentage. Now you hear how much companies are paying for exclusives that are not even really exclusive, they're timed exclusive - it's millions and millions, and it's insane. You've got to sit back and wonder: is this R&D really paying off, long-term? Where are we really making the money?

I said what I think - I think it's coming, and we'll see. The one thing I stand behind and say 100 percent is that all technologies become commoditised. There's nothing stopping that. It will not stop. It has to happen. It's gonna happen. Whether it results in a single unified console is one thing, but I think it will. It usually does.

Eurogamer: It's interesting you mentioned companies receiving a lot of money to become exclusive, because you're exclusive to 360. The fact that Too Human is a trilogy - conceivably could you end up making your second and third games for a commoditised unified gaming format?

Denis Dyack: Yep. Yep. I think so. Well, Too Human is exclusive to 360, and it's ironic because obviously in some ways in this marketplace right now you're forced to pick and choose and our hope - and I think we will - is to get Too Human out before the 360's life cycle's gone.

Eurogamer: You mean all three games?

Denis Dyack: Yeah, all three games. And so - from a perspective beyond that though, it's really going to be a Wild West out there for a while. You talk to certain publishers now and ask what console they're backing, and you get one answer, and you ask about five years from now and you get another answer.

Eurogamer: At one point in your discussion there was a bit of knowing laughter when the conversation swung to engines and that's obviously because of the very public spat that you've had with Epic about Unreal Engine. Is there anything you can say about that?

Denis Dyack: I will say that we strongly believe in the complaint that we've served them with, and we're really concentrating on making good games, and we're going to concentrate on doing that. We have a law team that's really fantastic and they're going to get the case out there and I am hopeful and confident that justice will be done. Besides that I really can't comment.

Eurogamer: Is it likely to impact the release of Too Human?

Denis Dyack: No, it absolutely will not affect Too Human. In no way.

Eurogamer: I am struggling to work the Internet in Germany due to user errors, but I caught wind of something yesterday about a release date - Q1, was it?

Denis Dyack: Yep, Too Human is coming out in first quarter. We're going to invite the press down in October, so if you'd like to come we'd love to have you down. You'll get a chance to play it. So yeah, Too Human is going extremely well. I can't wait.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (156) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • afghan_jones #1 5 years ago

    Oh do stop it.

    The very idea of devs & publishers all getting together and all agreeing on what the tech limitations will be and then being able to lay down the law to hardware companies on what they are allowed to produce and when is an utter joke.

    Penis Dyack should shut up and get back to trying to actually make Too Human. Despite it sounding more and more like a pile of gash as time goes by.

    in a unified environment the wii wouldnt have happened. It would have bee nakin ot the lightgun where one company makes it for one game but there is little need for other devs to make games that use it. The whole success of the wiimote is that its tied into the hardware.

    The guys living in a dream world.

  • aabyssx #2 5 years ago

    > just like a DVD player - when you buy that disc, you know it's going to play in that system

    Blu-ray VS. HDDVD, anyone?

  • SIDEARM #3 5 years ago

    Denis your just embarassing yourself now dear. Why not have a nice cup of tea?

  • zoidberg #4 5 years ago

    woohoo "RETINA games" woohoo!

  • JohnnyWashnGo #5 5 years ago

    I really don't think he understands economics at all judging by what he is saying. I also think he is trying to push forward an agenda of which he is the only proponent.

    A unified console would not work, full stop.

    His examples are all bad to begin with. Mobile phones, which being near ubiqitous, still have different OSes meaning that an app written for Windows Mobile will not run on a phone with Symbian etc. You could argue that a java jvm on each phone solves that problem but as a java developer I would tend to disagree, it just brings it own unique flavour of problems.

    Dvd players are another example which he likes to throw around. Well, let me tell you that my first generation Kenwood dvd player (which is very nice btw) will not play DVD RW or DVD R. There is a platform that takes shiny silver DVD discs and plays them well, but only if they are original, bought from a store DVDs. If you burn your own, it will not play them.

    I would rather not get into a situation where my games console only plays a subset of the games it could play because I happened to by the Sega version which doesn't support something or other. Which is probably the way the 360 is going with it hard drive attachment or lack thereof for some people.

    Get we treat this guys ramblings in the same way we would treat the words of peter molyneux - with a great big pinch of salt and something to forget about in 10 seconds?

  • zoidberg #6 5 years ago

    oh, second to last question is not bolded and eurogamer-ed...

  • afghan_jones #7 5 years ago

    Thinking about it, there simply are no existing truly unified formats for anything.

    DVD - HDDVD, BluRay, DVDR+. DVDR-, DVDRW, UMD

    VHS vs Betamax

    CDs, MP3CDs, CDRW, CDR, CD-ROM, DataCD, MINIDisc

    Its all bollocks. And half his examples make no sense. Car simply are not comparable as there is no equivalent of a 'game' which they have to all be able to accept. The only thing you put in them all is petrol, and even then, there are several different kinds anyway.

    Mobile phones dont have to accept a 'game' equivalent except java games and even then they need optimisation for each platform.

    Them ore I think about it the more I think the man is borderline insane.

  • TonyCocaCola #8 5 years ago

    usually standardisation occurs within a few years i.e betamax and VHS and im guessing we'll see the same thing with HDDVD and Bluray. Im sure if there was ever gonna be a standardisation of gaming hardware then it would have already happened.

  • Dr.Mott #9 5 years ago

    As much as I know it will never happen, I wouldn't mind being able to buy Halo, Mario and Ratchet & Clank for a single platform.

  • cubbymoore #10 5 years ago

    Cars run on roads. Jesus work it out.

  • Sebo #11 5 years ago

    I'm absolutely astounded that this guy is the president of a games company. His inability to grasp how key players in this industry make money just flabbergasts me.

    He constantly uses the word commodization, suggesting that we are reaching the point where the technology can no longer get any better, yet according to him one day games will be beamed into your retina. Somewhat of a contradiction there Mr Dyack is it not?

    Having thought long and hard on this, the closest we will get to a basic standard is that if a group of publishers, say EA, Konami, etc get together and develop their own chip set for Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony to incorporate in their machines? The amount that would cost them in R&D, it would probably be worthwhile that consortium releasing its own console to make a return. But with Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft still there, it just makes the market even more fragmented - FURTHER AWAY FROM UNIFIED THAN BEFORE!!!



  • Rev.StuartCampbell #12 5 years ago

    "Thinking about it, there simply are no existing truly unified formats for anything."

    Oh do shush. DVD is in every meaningful sense unified - you'd have to be some sort of spacker to buy a DVD player that wouldn't play any DVD. TV is unified. Music is unified (sure, you can buy it on different formats, but everything will plug into the same amp). Radio is unified. Blu-Ray vs HDDVD is a different kettle of fish altogether - it's not unified, and look what a fucking mess it is, and how few people are prepared to buy into it until it is. Sooner or later one or the other will come out on top and we'll have a de facto unified format for high-def video. Unification is always the way of the market, and it's only the ingrained economic immaturity of the videogames business that's delaying it. It'll be very interesting to see how many players there are in the next generation, now that there's basically nowhere meaningful to go with tech specs.

    Still, congrats on the "Penis Dyack" gag. I'm sure your mum is really proud of you, even though it doesn't really work because "Penis" doesn't rhyme with "Denis". It's trying your best that matters.
    Edited by 1 at 22/08/07 @ 09:06

  • Arwin #13 5 years ago

    Obviously this is what you get from working with Microsoft too long. What he basically means is that now he's been over to the dark side, he's absolutely sure that the Empire will win the day. ;)

    All joking aside, I don't think he's even close to right. As the market expands, we will get more players and more niche players. We'll see some level of standardisation on the software side (akin to say Java and Flash, or even Id and Epic's engines), but in terms of the hardware that will run the games, they will diverge and get unique features that will (continue to) be fully exploited by dedicated developers.

  • Bertie Verified Senior Staff Writer, Eurogamer.net #14 5 years ago

    oh, second to last question is not bolded and eurogamer-ed...

    Whoops. Will fix.

  • Sebo #15 5 years ago

    @Rev Stuart Campbell,

    All of those things you mention, TV, DVD, music, don't use the player itself to create the art. That is a fundamental difference.

    Standardisation will only ever occur in this industry if one company creates a monopoly. In other words it has to reach the point that two of the current big three no longer finds it financially viable to have their own consoles, and not other outside company finds it attractive either.

    Nintendo are making a packet from the Wii right now, as far as I know the 360 is turning over profit too. Only the PS3 is struggling and that's simply because Sony overestimated the spending power of the market.

    A unified platform won't make any of the big three any more money. Some developers are just going to have to learn to scale back their projects if they want to make cash. Sad, but true.
    Edited by 1 at 22/08/07 @ 09:18

  • Strac #16 5 years ago

    Actually, the MSX was quite a good example. Lots of good games (until it went too japan-centric and I could not read anything anymore ;) and an open platform supported by Panasonic, Philips and Sony all of which ran the games.
    Most of the Konami NES games were remakes of the original MSX versions (like Metal Gear, Vampire Killer/Castlevania, etc)
    The only thing is that I don't really see a difference between a PC and a console in this way (the MSX was sort of both too actually). Mostly it would be a standardized pc with minimum specs and a standardized gaming OS. why not?

  • afghan_jones #17 5 years ago

    @Rev.Stuart

    DVD is currently unified to an extent, yes, but as you mentioned the industrys inability to reach agreement on the HDDVD Bluray issue is an indication of why this wont work for games. Dyack describes companies getting together every 5 years and deciding a new standard and we all know that just cant happen.

    Radio isnt unified, theres DAB, FM, AM , MW , LW and not every radio supports every type of broadcast.

  • IAmBatman #18 5 years ago

    > just like a DVD player - when you buy that disc, you know it's going to play in that system

    That's not even true - a few years back I remember there were lots of problems with certain discs not working in certain players.

  • IAmBatman #19 5 years ago

    > sure, you can buy it on different formats, but everything will plug into the same amp

    Using that argument consoles are already unified, because they all plug into the same TV. You need something before the amp that will play all of the different formats.

  • TonyCocaCola #20 5 years ago

    I knew what he meant

  • Schiraman #21 5 years ago

    @Rev. Stuart Campbell
    +1

    You guys need to wake up and start looking beyond the teeny-tiny console world. The current situation with consoles is the exception, not the rule and Dyack is right: sooner or later economic pressure is going to force a more standards-led approach.

    He's also right that it'll be a very good thing for gamers, so what you're all bitching about is beyond me...
    Edited by 1 at 22/08/07 @ 09:34

  • Zomoniac #22 5 years ago

    Aren't AM and MW the same thing?

  • IAmBatman #23 5 years ago

    > He's also right that it'll be a very good thing for gamers, so what you're all bitching about is beyond me...

    If you leave it entirely up to publishers to decide when their game is okay to release, you're in for a shock. Platform holder requirement checklists have saved gamers from more pain than they realise.

  • kangarootoo #24 5 years ago

    @Rev. Stuart Campbell

    "Music is unified (sure, you can buy it on different formats, but everything will plug into the same amp)"

    Sorry man, but that analogy sucks ass.

    By that measure all games consoles are ALREADY unified (sure, they won't play the same games, but everything will plug into the same TV).


    All you seem to be saying is that some things are unified (tea cups for instance) and some things aren't (music players, despite what tosh you suggest to the contrary), which is the same thing everyone else is saying. The only difference is you are being your usual rude and superior self from the off.

    Oh and well done indeed for being the first full grown adult I have heard in years use the word "spacker" as an insult. How extraordinarily mature of you.


    Aaaanyway, the one thing Dyack doesn't discuss at all is licensing revenue. The main source of income for any console vendor is the licensing fees from games published on their platform. A open unlicensed platform would kiss goodbye to that revenue, so where exactly is the motivation for any of the big three to make a console?

    Mobile phone companies make profits from each actual phone sold. We the customers don't pay that full whack, it gets subsidised by the phone service supplier, who make their dosh back via your contract.

    I'm not saying no other solution exists (there are a few, which we can discuss here of course), but for Dyack to not even mention it doesn't really suggest things have been thought through properly.

  • kangarootoo #25 5 years ago

    @IAmBatman

    snap :D

  • tiddles #26 5 years ago

    stuartcampbelllol

  • kangarootoo #27 5 years ago

    @Schiraman

    "The current situation with consoles is the exception, not the rule"

    The exception to what exactly? Games consoles have operated a closed platform system since their very creation.

    PC gaming is the only open (as in unlicensed) platform, and even that is not completely unified as several PC platforms exist (MacOS and so on).


    As for whether its good for gamers, no one is "bitching" about that. People are simply saying they don't believe what he describes is feasible. A hyperthetical but unworkable situation is not good for gamers if it can't exist, right?
    Edited by 1 at 22/08/07 @ 09:46

  • figgis #28 5 years ago

    Games are very much lead by technical advancement. A unified format will make things much harder for the layman wanting to get into gaming. Each player will not be identical, certain things will work with certain players and not with others. Look at the PC gaming market, do you want console gaming to become such a minefield?

    If you want to push a unified format release the game on the PC and don't sign an exclusivity agreement with MS. Wait a minute that won't make you as much money will it?

  • kangarootoo #29 5 years ago

    Now I think about it, there are plenty of apparently unified markets that are in fact not entirely unified.

    1. I can't put diesel in my petrol engine powered car.

    2. I can't fit any old blades to my lawn mower.

    3. Even my curtains rails aren't all of the same type.

    4. If I go on holiday, I need an adapter to plug in my electrical devices.


    I could co on. Unification, my arse.

  • TripSkyway #30 5 years ago

    Interesting interview. Nice one.

  • Martin #31 5 years ago

    I think the guy's spot on.

    It won't happen within the next generation of consoles but at some time we will reach a point were it's very little to gain from improvement.

    I hate car comparisons but I will resort to one as they work very well. Looking back we can clearly see that the early cars were slow, dangerous and uncomfortable. Today you can walk in off the street and buy a great car for very little money.

    Sure, car manufacturers are pouring money into R&D but on the whole the basic Mercedes, Volvo, Vauxhall/Opel, Volkswagen, what have you have been the same for decades.

    The new Mercs/Beemers/Audis have very nifty high-tech gadgets and the new Volvos become more and more safe for every iteration and so on but it's not like yesteryears model was a horrible car that no-one likes.

    The minimum requirements of a car (for the vast majority) has been set 10-15 years ago.

    I know you have the Bugatti Veyron and all the other supercars but these are so niche that they're insignifaicant on the whole - even if the Bugatti costs £400k or whatever it is. They're not setting any standards - quite the contrary.

    I think that consoles will reach this stage sooner or later as well. Yes, a console is quite a bit more complex than a car but as hardware capability rises, complexity can actually decrease.

    Let's say, for the sake of argument, that C# takes off as a platform independent language. When you have insane amounts of processing power - as Dyack suggests - it won't matter that C# is 10-30% slower (wild guesstimates) than compiled code as the console runs at a billion GHz anyhow.

    This means that all developers can write their code in C# and have it run on all consoles - no matter the manufacturer.

    Just because it didn't work on mobile phones (which still only have a few players when it comes to OS's) doesn't mean it can't work on concoles.

    You have to remember that he isn't talking about Sony, Microsaoft, Nintendo and others to join hands and start making The One Console to rule them all. They would still make their own consoles - just made to a industry standard set of specifications.

    Compare with the current gen. Let's ponder for a moment what the playing field would look like if the PS3, Wii and X360 all could play the same games - what would be left to compete on?

    Well, the PS3 can do a lot more than play games - it is after all being branded as an entertainment hub. Would that be enough for you to go with a PS3?

    The Wii is small, quiet and has a very interesting interface model in the shape of the Wiimote. It wouldn't work great on all games but those that used it are often very fun. Would that be enough to buy a Wii?

    The 360 has a competitive price but up until recently also problems with overheating. MS has a very well done on-line component that handles (among other things) patches and voice-chat though. Would that convince you to buy the 360?

    So no, I don't think Dyack is off his rockers but I do think that we'll have to wait another generation or two before this happens.

    Edit: Damn, I thought I had all the typos before I pressed submit. :/
    Edited by 2 at 22/08/07 @ 09:55

  • afghan_jones #32 5 years ago

    @kanga

    exactly. there are no truly unified markets that I can think of.

  • TonyCocaCola #33 5 years ago

    I think a unified format would push prices up. I mean, you would walk into a game store on one side you have your pc games, on the other you have your unified console format. Who gets the money for the games sold? Is it some of it split between each console company? Do you have to regester the game on your console so the companies can work out whos owed what? If none of the money goes to the console companies then they will push their prices up, there would be no more subsidizing of console prices.

    Lets say someone makes a game with sex in it, nintendo arnt gonna want that game on their platform, could they stop that game from being used on their platform? If so then that would defy the whole point of the unified game media.

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #34 5 years ago

    Oh, christ, didn't we go through this all yesterday?

  • TonyCocaCola #35 5 years ago

    Its an interesting subject man.

  • Rodney #36 5 years ago

    Wouldnt it be great if there was a unified standard and Sega re-entered the market with the Mega Drive 3! That would make me so happy.

  • mingster #37 5 years ago

    'spacker' is a good word.

    Slightly non-pc but good still.

  • Martin #38 5 years ago

    The whole point of a "unified console" is to make sure that it's easier to get a game to work on the console, not the other way around.

    You can't compare it to PC gaming because there is no standard whatsoever for what a "gaming PC" is supposed to be.

    Developers aren't shunning the PC because lack of licensing money - they shun it because it is notoriously hard to develop for it.

    As for Nintendo deciding that they don't want sex on their console - well, if they agree to this set of unified console standards it's not up to them to decide that anymore.

    Then again, you can't hold them liable for that just as you can't hold Panasonic liable if someone watches child pornography on one of their DVD-players.

    The question "how will the hardware manufacturers make money" has already been answered; just like the mobile phone manufacturers. If Microsoft gets a good enough online service up and running they might as well just drop out of console hardware at all, pay Sony for a console and bundle it with a 24 month subscription to Live.

    I'd also like to point out that comparing consoles to lawnmowers is, well, incredibly stupid. They really don't operate within the same type of market.

    Edit: In a hurry + a lot to say = speling eorrs.
    Edited by 1 at 22/08/07 @ 10:06

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #39 5 years ago

    > TV is unified

    Why can't I watch Lost without buying a satellite dish and a Sky subscription then?

    Even TV isn't completely unified, and it's in the middle of a format transition that's due to last until 2012 to boot.

  • zuljin #40 5 years ago

    @afghan_jones
    "Thinking about it, there simply are no existing truly unified formats for anything.
    DVD - HDDVD, BluRay, DVDR+. DVDR-, DVDRW, UMD"

    I think you may have missed the point. It is still a standard, so if you buy a DVD player, all DVDs you buy should work on that player. Notice he also says the standard changes every 5 years or so.

    EDIT: typo

    EDIT 2: Got to the party late and Rev. Stuart Campbell has sorted everyone out already. Damn me for getting up late.
    Edited by 2 at 22/08/07 @ 10:11

  • Sebo #41 5 years ago

    @martin

    For typing a very very lot, you've said very very little my friend.

  • mingster #42 5 years ago

    What i don't get is its been done before and didn't work..
    3DO and MSX even Saturn and wasn't there a panasonic gamecube.

    So why would it be different in the future?

    Why are there different kinds of plugs for power outlets in different countries...

    Why aren't all lightbulbs bayonet fixings? some are screw in etc..

    Even nature likes diversity... if everything was the same it would be boring.

  • Sebo #43 5 years ago

    Does anyone know the average amount a company has to spend on porting a title to another platform? I'd hazard that its a drop in the ocean in their finances in comparison to how much the big three risk to lose in a unified standard market. Thus, it shall never happen.

  • afghan_jones #44 5 years ago

    @zuljin

    Yes, he says that the standard changes every 5 years but there are literally no examples of this. the closest we have is DVD changing to HD/BluRay. The DVD 'generation' has gone on for closer to 10 years now and all signs indicate that it will be a good while yet before HD/blu ray becomes the standard if it ever does.

    its all pie in the sky ideas with little thought to how it would actually work in practice.

  • TonyCocaCola #45 5 years ago

    @ Sebo
    Exactly man
    Edited by 1 at 22/08/07 @ 10:22

  • Monkey-Wizard-Ken #46 5 years ago

    A standard set-top box that plays games is defiantly on the horizon.
    But it'll have someone’s logo on it.
    Why else would MS and Sony be throwing billions into this industry?
    In the short term, a unified game format is just one developers dream.
    In fact, Denis Dyack should probably shut up and concentrate on making games.
    And stop upsetting Epic

  • Schiraman #47 5 years ago

    @afghan_jones: "exactly. there are no truly unified markets that I can think of."

    Well I can think of quite a few, and several have already been mentioned, so I'm guessing you weren't paying a whole lot of attention.

    DVD players for example: lots of different companies make them, they have varying features - but they all play DVDs, because DVDs are an agreed-upon standard. This is what Dyack is suggesting could happen with games consoles - that developers and hardware companies could come together and agree a standard in much the same way as DVDs were agreed upon.

  • Schiraman #48 5 years ago

    @kangarootoo

    When I said the current console market is the exception not the rule, I meant it was the exception to normal business practice in the electronics market. In general the big players in any market are those that are more standardised. You don't see Toshiba or LG selling their own non-compatible TVs that won't work with PAL or NTSC but only receive their own, special format. When companies try that kind of thing it either dies, becomes a small niche (like MiniDisc or UMD) or is accepted as a standard and takes off (like CD or DVD).

    You give power sockets as an example of something that's non-standard. But actually that's a really bad example, and pretty obviously so: any device you buy in the UK will use the same, standard kind of socket. That might not be the same standard as sockets in the US, but that's like TV being split between PAL and NTSC - they're still standards, there are just several standards split by region - because those regions aren't in competition with one another.

    It's not as if every time you buy a toaster you have to decide whether you want a Microsoft plug or a Sony plug for it. You buy a toaster and it has the right plug for your country. Because it's standard.

    The fact that diesel and petrol cars aren't compatible with one another is also not a good example: they are also both standards. It's not as if all Fords use petrol and all Vauxhalls use diesel. Both companies make both.

    So yes, you might end up with multiple gaming standards too: for example a high-definition, expensive standard (let's call it the Extreme Gaming Standard) and a lower-priced, more conservative standard (Family Gaming Standard) that could co-exist - with various different companies (Sony, MS, LG, Hitachi, etc.) producing consoles to meet both standards.

    That would still be a much more unified, standardised marketplace than the one we have currently, and would be much better for gamers. As Dyack said - you wouldn't catch MS charging £100+ for a hard-drive in a competitive, open marketplace...


  • zuljin #49 5 years ago

    @afghan_jones
    I disagree, I think its a fantastic idea, but yes you're right, it will need a heck of a lot of thought.

    @Sebo
    "I'd hazard that its a drop in the ocean in their finances in comparison to how much the big three risk to lose in a unified standard market. Thus, it shall never happen."

    Hardware is a big loss to Sony and MS. Standardising a single console means they can focus on what makes them more money, games. Not to mention a single platform could end up having an audience of about 200 million.

  • Hunam #50 5 years ago

    Can you change the picture, im sick of looking at his stupid smug ignorant face.

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #51 5 years ago

    Could you imagine how horrible it would be if the EU, US and Asia-Pacific each had seperate standard unified consoles, just like there are different regional TV and mobile phone standards now?

    It'd take decades for first-party Nintendo games to reach us!

  • Moz #52 5 years ago

    What a twat!!!

    There already is a unifided platform it's called a PC and it courses all kind of problems for developers as you have to cater for different standards and speeds of hardware!

    If you had a unified console where all the inputs and outputs where the same and the bit in the middle was of equal power then the market would just stagnate, cos who would then develop the next generation, the compainies would never agree on a new set of standards and then it would be Blu-ray / HD-DVD all over again!!

    If anything no one would bother making a next gen cos all the time the competion is equal-ish to them then customers have no other choice and you'll continue making money on what would become cheap and easy to produce hardware, as people replaced old broken systems.

  • Sebo #53 5 years ago

    "So yes, you might end up with multiple gaming standards too: for example a high-definition, expensive standard (let's call it the Extreme Gaming Standard) and a lower-priced, more conservative standard (Family Gaming Standard) that could co-exist - with various different companies (Sony, MS, LG, Hitachi, etc.) producing consoles to meet both standards."

    How is that any different from what we have at the moment?

    Unified means that format works on every available player. Every game plays on every player is what dyack is touting. That can and will never happen and your own argument states that.

    DVD was and is not a unified standard, it was the biggest visual medium backed by a consortium, but there were and are alternatives, VHS HDDVD and Blu-Ray.

    So if you take the medium of movie, you can't go into Virgin Megastore, buy any movie and it will play on any movie player. Likewise, you will never have a situation where any game plays on any games players.

    Could a consortium form and take the majority share in gaming, yes, that's very possible.

    But the Playstation 2 had a ridiculously huge market share in the last generation, so unless this consortium can reach a new market, like Nintendo has, they would only be in same position Sony were last time around - not an industry standard.
    Edited by 1 at 22/08/07 @ 10:44

  • Sebo #54 5 years ago

    @zuljin

    "Hardware is a big loss to Sony and MS. Standardising a single console means they can focus on what makes them more money, games. Not to mention a single platform could end up having an audience of about 200 million."

    Games make them money through licensing fees. And who's spending the money on developing the hardware if Sony and Microsoft are focussing on the games.

    And 200million???????? Let's just pluck figures from the air that mean absolutely nothing huh!!!

  • Moz #55 5 years ago

    "

    And 200million???????? Let's just pluck figures from the air that mean absolutely nothing huh!!! "

    To be fair 200 million is probably afair acurate figure for the end of the current generation.

    Sony has sold over 120 million PS2s with about 20 million each for xbox and GC.
    given that the Wii is expanding the gaming market in new directions all ready a 200 million install base for all consoles collectively sounds about right.

  • Schiraman #56 5 years ago

    @Sebo

    Having a standard doesn't mean that everything all has to work that way, it just means that many companies can all produce compatible hardware to match that standard.

    Yes DVD is a standard, and obviously so. It's not owned by any one company - lots of different companies make competing products that all match that standard. Just because it is replacing an older standard (VHS) and is one day likely to be replaced by a new standard (HD-DVD or Blu-Ray) doesn't stop it being a standard - that's just the generation change for that market.

    The important element is not whether there will be a single standard for all consoles, or whether two or more might coexist, the key point here is that the current anti-competitive situation (where Sony, MS and Nintendo all operate their own closed consoles and have absolute power over them) is likely to come to an end sooner or later and be replaced by a more open marketplace. This is a good thing.

    Maybe it won't happen for a long time, maybe it will start to happen soon - who knows? But I think Dyack is right, it does seem to be the pattern in other markets, so it is likely to happen in console gaming too.
    Edited by 1 at 22/08/07 @ 10:49

  • Strac #57 5 years ago

    @mentalist(air)
    Actually the MSX had a worldwide standard. It also had revisions every so-much years (MSX1, MSX2, MSX2+, MSX Turbo-R). I know it never was very popular in the UK (I think in Europe it stayed mostly in Holland, France & Spain), but it worked quite well until western developers stopped making games for it due to the high amounts of piracy

  • Fitzmogwai #58 5 years ago

    Bored of this after yesterday. Dyack's interest here isn't for the gamer, it's for himself. What he as a developer wants to do is cut his costs by only having to develop one version of a game and thus avoid costly ports, and maximise his opportunity for profit by selling that one version to the entire market. Naked self-interest. It's a shame for him that the naked self-interest of the console manufacturers will mean that won't ever happen. Get over it, Denis!

  • Rodney #59 5 years ago

    So many people are missing many of the points he has made.

    DVD is a standardised. PC's are not.

    all unified console swould have to meet a minimum standard so all games could be played on them. If a company decides to add extra mulitmedia capabilities then this would not effect the game playing capabilities of the consolse. but it would allow greater consumer choice.

    unified console format would drive prices down. You would be able to buy your cheap Chinese no-name brand from Asda and you could get your higher build quality Sony/Microsoft/Toshiba et al brands for the more discerning consumer. peripherals would become cheaper because manufactorers would not have a monopoly on what brand peripherals would work on their machine.

    Games would be cheaper to produce for developers because multiformat coding would not be a problem and the market would be much bigger. Developers would also be able to devote more time to the actual creative process of designing the game, not optimising and and making compromises to make multi-format games, as they do now.

    Also, many have pointed out there would be no incentive for any one company to push the next-generation in a unified market model. But the point this guy is making, very soon the hardware capabilities are going to be so powerfull this will become a moot point any way. Perhaps this is not one generation away, but towards the end of the next decade, surely this will be the case.

    the PS3/360 model really does not benefit the consumer. They basically offer exactly the same gaming experience but to enjoy all ps3/360 games you have to spend 1k. If they were unified you could enjoy all PS3/360 games for the price of a core 360 SKU. £179. How does this not benefit the consumer?

    I cant believe some people's blind corporate loyalties are so strong they cant let go of this bilateral market model which only benefits the corporate winner, not the consumer.

  • Schiraman #60 5 years ago

    @Fitzmogwai

    Has it never occurred to you that what is good for developers will also be good for gamers? If it's cheaper for them to make games, then they can sell them for less money and still make a profit - hence cheaper games for us to buy.

    Also porting games to multiple platforms tends to reduce the quality of the game in the process - having games released on a single standard would therefore be likely to increase quality too.

    Finally, if anyone can make a console and have it be compatible with all the existing games then that really encourages competition between hardware manufacturers and will drive prices down - especially on things that currently tend to be rip-offs, like peripherals (I'm looking at you MS).

    Really, it might be bad for Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo if they lose their current dominance of the market - but it wouldn't just be good for developers if that happened, it'd be great for gamers too.

    @Rodney

    Well put.
    Edited by 1 at 22/08/07 @ 11:01

  • Sebo #61 5 years ago

    @schirman

    If we are using the term "standard" as in the saying "it's the industry standard", then the Playstation 2 was already there. And you are right, DVD is an industry standard by that definition. But there are still alternatives to it.

    Dyack is specifically talking about a scenario where all games play on all machines. Not all movies play on all movie players.

    Although the basic standard might be a possibility, even that is fraught with problems.

    I've said it earlier, this basic standrad will only happen if its led by the developers. It doesn't make financial sense for the big three to make life easy for their competition so they certainly won't be spearheading this.

    The developers will have to create this universal chipset, this basic standard, that Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft agree to use in their consoles.

    Ofcourse, having spent on the R&D for this set, now these developers are widely out of pocket for doing what they do best, create games. Where are they going to make their money back on the R&D they did??

    Oh wait, they are going to release their chipset as an actual console and now they are in competition with the big three. Are the big three going to be happy with that situation? No, what they are going to do is keep having games which are exclusive to their machines so that they are ahead of the pack.

    Although our basic standard for third parties is in place reducing costs for them, we remain in a situation where not all games play on all machines.

  • zuljin #62 5 years ago

    @Sebo
    Thanks Moz for picking the numbers from my head. Games are becoming bigger business, so I don't think it is a wild estimate that consoles will sell more than last generation.

  • IAmBatman #63 5 years ago

    > If it's cheaper for them to make games, then they can sell them for less money and still make a profit - hence cheaper games for us to buy.

    Or sell them for the same cost and make more of a profit, hence not cheaper games.

    Which of the two do you think a company would opt for?

  • Schiraman #64 5 years ago

    @Sebo

    Honestly I'm pretty sure what Dyack means is that a DVD-like standard is likely to be adopted by the console games industry, I don't think he's trying to define exactly how that will work, so much as giving examples of the kind of thing he means. I expect you would have at least a 'home console' and a 'portable console' standard, for example, but that doesn't invalidate his point in the least.

    And no, I don't think it would be just down to developers to come up with a chipset, etc. I imagine what you'd see would be developers and hardware manufacturers (which might or might not include Sony, MS and Nintendo) coming together to develop a standard, and then sharing R&D costs to some extent to make that standard a reality.

    Bear in mind that there are lots and lots of other hardware companies beyond the console 'Big Three'. IBM, for example, produces or co-produces the processors in all three 'next gen' consoles. I imagine they, and companies like them, could easily manage the R&D required for a console standard - with or without the help of the Big Three.

  • Daymare #65 5 years ago

    Dyack got me thinking: wouldn't it be great for everybody if Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo would get together, together designed The Next Console where each three would provide the third of what it would be made of and all games would be compatible with it? Before anyone starts shouting how naive I am; yes, I know it's a naive idea, but why? Because we're already so used to the fact that modern capitalism has basicly one main motto: "grab everything for yourself".. Dyack's sort of an idealist and that's the only thing that's "wrong" with his idea.

  • Schiraman #66 5 years ago

    @IAmBatman: "Or sell them for the same cost and make more of a profit, hence not cheaper games. Which of the two do you think a company would opt for?"

    I think they'd make them cheaper and so sell more copies. Look at the PC games industry, PC games are cheaper than consoles games because they're cheaper to make.

    If that's not enough proof on its own, then just remember that without any big company to set the prices for the console, devs could charge whatever they liked - so competition would naturally tend to drive prices down.

  • Dinoli #67 5 years ago

    How on earth can you gamers be so hostile towards Denis' ideas? Is it because you need to have one console to root for so you can participate in heated fanboi arguments on forums? Even if his visions were unrealistic it'd still be an enormous boon to us gamers if unified console development took place.

    Accidentally, just before reading his visions, I happened to contemplate how nice it would be if there was one console that'd be backed up with all the manufacturers and developers, but I thought such a good thing wouldn't happen. After reading this interview I'm quite convinced that console unification will happen, althought it can't be said for sure.

    Why it'll happen: because developers and manufacturers will make more money with smaller risks. This's due to the fact that research&development costs drop radically for both hardware (no need to develop dedicated technologies like CELL, Xenos, Bluray) and software, and game developers will always have a 100% market to aim for.

    Why it should happen: so we gamers wouldn't need to spend so much money on our hobby. Because of non-monopolistic nature of hardware (and since research costs will be lower), their price will come down. Also, as there is little reason to buy more than one console for a given generation, as all games will work on it. Game prices might as well drop, but for now I can't reason why.

    Think of the benefits, won't ya? =)

    (typo hunting!)
    Edited by 1 at 22/08/07 @ 11:20

  • Daymare #68 5 years ago

    Oh, and, don't take that "unified" idea so damn literally - of course Nothing is really unified, that would sort of make everything equal. But every time someone says "cars are not unified, they run on diesel and gas" I can say "oh, but they are, they're all meant for driving". The problematic part is, where's that unified "point", that would make game developer's and console maker's lives easier..

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #69 5 years ago

    The problem here is not with the ideal. The ideal of consoles being universal and developers having to produce things for only one format is a laudable one.

    BUT

    The practicalities of implementing it make it infeasible for the forseeable future. Gaming hardware is going to get more powerful for a couple of generations yet, and even one standard will take a long time to thrash out. And when the inevitable time comes to change the standard, the whole thing will start over again, and there are risks that one corporation won't back down to another and we'll have two competing standards, which is EXACTLY what's happening with video discs right now. Either that, or it's the piecemeal upgrade path of the PC market (which actually benefits to some extent by standardisation in the form of revisions to DirectX, just try playing a 3D PC game from 1995 - shudder).

    And as other people have pointed out (including me yesterday), one should not dismiss the role of platform holders outright as pure profiteering. The level of quality assurance they provide (for the consumer) and technical support and advice they offer (for the developer) are of considerable benefit to the industry. Or are we assuming in our standard format Utopia that the big players would cooperate nicely on all that as well?

  • Fitzmogwai #70 5 years ago

    It won't happen, because of the fact that we live in a market-driven economy where every manufacturer looks for a competitive advantage. It's basic economics.

    Currently the manufacturers get a slice of every game sold on their console. That's how they make their money. If there's an open unified console spec, who's going to get the license money? Will there even BE any license payment? So Sony, MS etc will lose their revenue stream, because they certainly aren't making any money on their hardware sales at the moment.

    But what about a commoditised market where prices come down? You either have a spec for a high-powered machine, like a PS3 or a 360, but without console prices subsidised by games sales, the street prices on these will be huge, because each console sold will have to make a profit. Or you have a spec for a low powered machine, like a Wii that can sell for a profit, but Sony and MS will see their income shredded because they're taking a much smaller slice of a much smaller pie and not gatting any cash from other sources, i.e. licensed software sales. So what's in it for them? Nothing.

    Not to mention the fact that there's nothing to stop a competitor company with deep pockets from launching its own console that will outperform your unified console and be "the games machine to own this christmas - makes the GameBox look like a snail - exactly what MS did to Sony, in fact.

    It won't happen because the money's not there. Stop dreaming!

  • Sebo #71 5 years ago

    Believe me, I would love this to happen. I'd love to have one machine that plays all the games. I have all three at the moment because I like gaming that much.

    But it won't happen.

    @dinoli

    "This's due to the fact that research&development costs drop radically for both hardware (no need to develop dedicated technologies like CELL, Xenos, Bluray) and software, and game developers will always have a 100% market to aim for."

    So technological innovation is dead in this utopian new games market. Actually, on second thoughts, I'm completely against this basic standard, it would ruin gaming.

  • Sebo #72 5 years ago

    @Moz

    A lot of those 160 million consoles sold, will have gone to people as second and even third consoles, so you can dramatically reduce your figure for a unified system right there.

  • IAmBatman #73 5 years ago

    > I think they'd make them cheaper and so sell more copies. Look at the PC games industry, PC games are cheaper than consoles games because they're cheaper to make

    PC games are cheaper and still sell less than the more expensive console games. Why is that? Why are you sure the single format would buck that trend?

    > so competition would naturally tend to drive prices down

    Actually there's a psychological thing whereby if a game is released at a lower price people will think that it's inferior to a similar title that's released at the "expected" price point, so they will often buy the more expensive option, regardless of relative quality.

  • Daymare #74 5 years ago

    But we all probably agree that changes are gonna have to be made at some point, 'cause wherever this is going.. it ain't good. Maybe the costs of developing games have to radicaly go down - the competition is getting harder and harder, costs are going up, while the market looks to be growing a little slower.. Or maybe that's just my impression.

  • Rodney #75 5 years ago


    Another thing has occurred to me.

    manufactueres would not make any profit from software sales as they do now. They could not sell consoles at a loss.

    Every machine would have to be sold at a profit. But I predict prices would quickly fall because of mass market adoption. just as they did with DVD players, there would be a snow ball effect of increased units shifted and reduced supplier prices to source from.

    The market would be driven by software sales alone once mass adoption of the standard had been achieved. There would be no market share/dominance by one manufacturer.

    6 month old games in the bargain bin for under £10. cheap consoles. Sounds great to me.

    This is stupid I know, but I'd love to own a next-gen SEGA console!

  • Dinoli #76 5 years ago

    @sebo

    Certainly technical innovation wouldn't die. What I meant is that there wouldn't be need to develop redundant technologies to handle on thing: now we have Xenon and CELL, both which take care of one thing. Ideally instead, there'd be just one XeLL =) (and be better than Xenon or CELL, as it'd have more resources available to develop it)

  • Schiraman #77 5 years ago

    @Fitzmogwai

    I don't understand why you're so against this idea, but never mind.

    Consoles are currently in a weird situation (compared to most electronics) - with their hardware being subsidised by software sales. There's no reason to believe that they have to work this way, things can change.

    With the rigorous competition an open console standard would produce, you'd expect hardware prices to be driven down to the point where they wouldn't need to be subsidised. R&D costs would be spread out amongst many companies and key parts could be mass manufactured on a scale that simply isn't feasible in the current market.

    If this really wasn't enough to do away with subsidies completely, then the consortium that set up the standard could collect money from software firms in the same way as it's done currently, and then share that money out between consortium members (probably in proportion to the amount of money they'd contributed to R&D costs, or whatever).

    So really, it's not as far fetched as you seem to believe. It's a model that already works for many types of products, and there's no special reason why it wouldn't work for consoles.

    As for why Sony or MS might support this standard, it's simple. Both companies seem to be struggling under the current model: they're pouring a lot of cash into their next-gen machines, and so far they're nowhere near making that money back. Perhaps they will eventually, perhaps they won't - it's too early to be sure - but when they look at the next generation (or the one after that, or the one after that) it's not hard to imagine that they might decide the risk is simply too great to keep going under the current system.

    Finally, the simple reason why a single new competitor is unlikely to power past a standard console once it's established: a consortium of companies will have far deeper pockets than any one company. It's like saying that Microsoft could release a new type of DVD all on their own (which only their own special players would play back) and expect to out-compete the various groups backing DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray - it really doesn't make any sense.

  • Sebo #78 5 years ago

    Developers need to stop spending money they can't make back.

    Even if they had a bigger market as a result of a basic standard, whose to say they'd make more money because in that market set up they would face much more competition, there game would be less likely to be recognised.

    Nintendo with the Wii and its games catalogue is exactly what the profitable games industry looks like. Lower-budget titles with mass appeal.



  • Sebo #79 5 years ago

    @shirman

    "Finally, the simple reason why a single new competitor is unlikely to power past a standard console once it's established: a consortium of companies will have far deeper pockets than any one company. It's like saying that Microsoft could release a new type of DVD all on their own (which only their own special players would play back) and expect to out-compete the various groups backing DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray - it really doesn't make any sense."

    So Sony haven't released blu-ray then?

  • kangarootoo #80 5 years ago

    @Schiraman

    "You don't see Toshiba or LG selling their own non-compatible TVs that won't work with PAL or NTSC"

    But that there is another example of a non-unified applicance! PAL or NTSC, most TVs now support both, but thats not unification, that is simply a versatile product.


    "But actually that's a really bad example, and pretty obviously so: any device you buy in the UK will use the same, standard kind of socket."

    I think its a fine example, but you have chosen to use international borders as some kind of leveller. That is your choice, but its a subjective choice. Currently games consoles are unified across the whole world within the confines of a platform (region locking is a choice, not a technical limitation) so already games consoles are more unified in some ways than the electrical supply that feeds them!


    I think what we can see here (and I think we are in general agreement) is that unification is not some binary state. Some aspects of a product can be unified with other products in its class, and others simply aren't. Games consoles are already unified to some degree in this way; they all plug into the mains supply, they all plug into the same TVs, and to one degree or another they are all designed to be controlled by humans with two hands and ten fingers.

  • Schiraman #81 5 years ago

    @IAmBatman

    The reason that less PC games are sold than console games is simply because there are more console gamers.

    I really think you're on dodgy ground if you're trying to suggest that people choose to buy the console version of a game like Bioshock because it's £10 more expensive and that makes them think it's better quality ;)

    Since the console standard would be aiming at the exact same market as the current consoles, but would have a much higher effective market share than any current console, you'd expect that games released for it would sell more not less. If they were cheaper *as well* then you'd expect them to sell even more.

  • kangarootoo #82 5 years ago

    @Rodney

    "the PS3/360 model really does not benefit the consumer."

    Except in that it creates competition, which always benefits the consumer.

    "If they were unified you could enjoy all PS3/360 games for the price of a core 360 SKU. £179. How does this not benefit the consumer?"

    Utter supposition AND not true. Of course things look rosy if you just pull some artificial example out of the air. You show me a gaming PC that can compete with either a 360 or a PS3 that costs £179 and I'll show you a weasel piloting a hit air balloon.

    As has already been stated, much of the revenue that Sony, MS, et al make from games is the licensing generated from their closed platform system. That licensing is what allows them to make consoles as cheaply as they do (they are cheap, because they cost more to make than we buy them for, fact). Without that licensing income, consoles if anything would get more expensive as we would have to actually pay for the cost of what we take home from the shops (PCs being a great example, where a decent PC costs over £1k).


    People keep going on about "think of the benefits". This is a total smoke screen. If the structure that Denis talks about cannot work, and cannot be put into practice, the associated benefits simply DON'T EXIST.

    I can talk all day about the benefits of a perpetual motion machine, but its nothing more than hollow talk and shouldn't stop people turning around and saying "but thats not possible".

    Don't get me wrong, discussion is good, which is exactly what is happening here :D

  • Sebo #83 5 years ago

    @kangarootoo

    Superb post

  • Schiraman #84 5 years ago

    @kangarootoo

    You're right, I do agree that unification isn't a binary state - and I wouldn't expect to see a console standard be the only standard that was ever developed and never have anything compete with it.

    But I do think it's perfectly reasonable to imagine that you might have a world-wide console standard that many manufacturers and developers worked with. And I do think that would be a much better situation for both developers and gamers than the current system.

    My point regarding PAL/NTSC or electrical sockets is simply that those aren't competing standards - it's not as if you choose to buy one kind of socket or one kind of TV based on your preferences, you buy whichever works with the infrastructure in your country.

    So the fact that those things are not yet standardised internationally doesn't really say anything about whether a console standard is likely or not - the situations aren't directly comparable. If the 360 could only be bought in the US, because it simply wouldn't work in Europe, then you'd have a point - as it is though it's apples and oranges.

    If you want to argue that a console standard would never be quite uniform across national borders because it would need to have a different type of socket in different countries then I'm right with you though... ;)

  • Fitzmogwai #85 5 years ago

    @ Schiraman

    The only reason I'm against it is that it is unrealistic and not going to happen. People can talk about how great it would be and how much better things would be for the consumer etc etc, but it's just hot air.

    As I said yesterday, the Sony and MS games divisions are subsidised by the other parts of their businesses. The rewards of their strategies outweigh the risks, so they have no incentive to change, and they can last a very long time in this war of attrition that they are fighting.

    As for the possibility of a new company outcompeting the unified console, it doesn't matter if the consortium have huge amounts of money - all the competitor needs is enough of his own to bring the product to market and advertise it effectively. It's not cheap, certainly, but it's not impossible. If your machine will significantly outperform the competition, (which is easy enough if the unified console is using anything other than cutting-edge tech - but if it is, see my earlier comments about it being extremely expensive) and you have a killer launch title (Halo, anyone?) then it will sell. Once that happens, your short-lived consortium is dead and it's back to the bad old days.

  • miiiguel #86 5 years ago

    The unified system is a developer wet-dream, it's wishfull thinking. It won't happen, IMO.
    But I also agree with the dude where he says the software/service is what matters, what do I care about "th3 aw3som3 c3ll?" if it doesn't have games ?

  • Daymare #87 5 years ago

    Unitied We Shall Stand, Divided We Shall Fall!

    Or somesuch:)

  • Schiraman #88 5 years ago

    @kangarootoo... again, sorry, just read your next post ;)

    You say that the current 360/PS3 model creates competition and so benefits the consumer, which is a fair point - but what you're missing is that currently you only have two companies competing for that market, whereas with a console standard you could have dozens or even hundreds. More competition = more benefit for consumers.

    You're also right to say that software sales currently subsidise hardware prices, but there are two points to counter that: firstly that model could continue with a console standard with the standards consortium collecting fees and distributing those fees to its members based in their stake in the R&D costs. Or alternatively perhaps the shared costs of the venture, combined with mass manufacturing, more competition, etc. might drive the real hardware costs down to the point where they don't need subsidising.

    As an additional point to this, a gaming PC does tend to be much more expensive than a console, that's true - but it's not as simple as that. That PC will likely be many times more powerful than any console, and also it's not well optimised for gaming. Every 360 is (more or less) identical, and has been designed from the ground up with games in mind - this makes it easier for developers to make impressive-looking games on it, despite the hardware being less than cutting edge.

    If you were designing a console standard you would design it with playing games in mind, and you'd gain those same efficiencies enjoyed by other consoles but which the PC, with it's old-fashioned architecture and countless non-standard versions, will never be able to take advantage of. So it's not likely that the non-subsidised costs would be anything like those of a gaming PC.

  • Sebo #89 5 years ago

    @schirman

    "You say that the current 360/PS3 model creates competition and so benefits the consumer, which is a fair point - but what you're missing is that currently you only have two companies competing for that market, whereas with a console standard you could have dozens or even hundreds. More competition = more benefit for consumers."

    More competition = less money for sony, microsoft and nintendo.

    Look Schirman, this is a lovely idea in concept.

    But it has been tried before and it didn't work. A consortium coming in and trying to set a standard, even if it does involve sony, microsoft or even both, is still likely to face competition because, quite frankly, there is money to be made in producing your own console.


  • Schiraman #90 5 years ago

    @Fitzmogwai

    I think it's debatable whether Sony and Microsoft will continue to pour money into console gaming forever. Ultimately they're looking to make that money back sooner or later, and if the risk gets too high they will back down - when and if that will happen is very hard to say, but saying it could happen next generation (or the next, or whenever) is not an unreasonable suggestion to make.

    It's unlikely a single competitor would be able to out-compete a consortium because, although they could come up with a more powerful console, there's nothing to stop the consortium doing that too. Except that the consortium has more money for R&D and advertising and already has all the developers on-board. Also the consortium's manufacturing costs would be lower, etc. etc.

    That one company would have a huge uphill battle convincing anyone to make games for it or convincing anyone to buy its console. It's not like it's going to be able to out-bid the consortium to get exclusives. Not to mention the fact that developers would be against the idea anyway, because it certainly wouldn't be good for them to move back to the current model.

    Again I suggest this would be like a single company trying to produce a new alternative to DVD - why would any studio be interested in this upstart? Why would consumers buy the new player when there would be no films for it? It really wouldn't matter if it had picture quality five times better than anything else, it just wouldn't survive when faced by the whole industry united against it.

    In fact the only way it could work is to get partners on board and try and make it a new standard...

  • Schiraman #91 5 years ago

    @Sebo

    There's no guarantee that the current model will continue to be a good investment for Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo forever. If is ceases to make economic sense for them, then they might well embrace a standard as an alternative.

    Also you need to think outside the box a bit - there's no guarantee that the Big Three will continue to be big names in gaming past this generation. Any of them could fail, it happened to Sega and it can happen to them too.

    And of course a new competitor, be it a consortium or a single company, could potentially bully their way into the industry - we've just seen Microsoft do exactly that over the last few years.

    Saying that it's been tried before and didn't work doesn't prove anything except that people have previously thought it was a good idea and were prepared to give it a go. Just because those ventures failed doesn't mean that nobody will ever try again and it doesn't mean it can never succeed.

    Following your logic things like the aeroplane would never have been invented at all - people tried to make flying machines and they just didn't work - so that's it, it can't be done! ;)

  • Sebo #92 5 years ago

    @schirman

    "It's unlikely a single competitor would be able to out-compete a consortium because, although they could come up with a more powerful console, there's nothing to stop the consortium doing that too."

    Where does that leave the original purchaser of the unified console/basic standard if the consortium has now ditched them to create the more powerful basic standard to outshine the competition and reafirm itself as the new basic standard??????

    And the Wii. From the least wealthy company comes the biggest hit of this console generation.

    Even if Microsoft and Sony had got together in this current generation, there would still be a Wii and it would still be a huge success.

    Would Sony and Microsoft have offered Nintendo the chance to be part of this consortium, and where would there machines be now if Nintendo's Wii could play Bioshock, Metal Gear 4 etc?

    This one console vision is so unworkable it's unbelievable

  • Sebo #93 5 years ago

    @schirman

    "Following your logic things like the aeroplane would never have been invented at all - people tried to make flying machines and they just didn't work - so that's it, it can't be done! ;)"

    that's not even close to following my logic and you know it. Financial market places and technological developments are total chalk and cheese.

    What you are suggesting is that there should be only one type of plane and it should only carry one type of passenger.....

  • Daymare #94 5 years ago

    "What you are suggesting is that there should be only one type of plane and it should only carry one type of passenger....."

    Wouldn't the analogy be: there should be only one type of plane, which means everyone would be flying with that one?

  • afghan_jones #95 5 years ago

    Lets not forget also that a lot of devs are more or less owned by the big 3 arent they. if MS want an exclusive they dont have to be able to outbid the consortium they just tell bungie to get right on it.

    If Ninty decided they wanted to come up with a hardware innovation and break away, plenty of devs would make games for them cause they would get the opportunity to work with new and interesting hardware.

    There just wouldnt be enough incentive for any of the hardware manufacturers to stick to the supposed standard.


    Edit: the plane thing is kind of more like there are loads of different planes but they only travel to a few standard places.
    Edited by 1 at 22/08/07 @ 12:42

  • Dr.Gash #96 5 years ago

    This guy is actually starting to win me round on the subject of a unified console. I'm amazed.

  • Schiraman #97 5 years ago

    @Sebo

    An improved console standard being released would leave those who'd bought consoles based on the old standard in exactly the same place as a PS2 or Xbox owner was when the PS3 and 360 were released.

    Except that while MS was able to just completely abandon the Xbox (thus hurting Xbox consumers considerably) because it had complete control over the platform, it's very unlikely that all of the many companies making versions of a standard console would abandon it overnight.

    As for the Wii - it hardly fits the example that Fitzmogwai and I were discussing: it's not the product of a new, upstart company, it's not a console that is much more powerful than the competition, it's not competing with a consortium or standard product of any kind and, finally, it's not going after the same market anyway. So I'm not sure what your point was there.

    Oh, and as for my point about the invention of the aeroplane, I think you've misunderstood. I'm not comparing planes to consoles or talking about standards or whatnot. I was just taking issue with your line of logic, which appeared to be "it's been tried before and didn't work, so it won't ever work".

    My point being that when people first tried to make flying machines they didn't work. Often people died. People kept trying though and eventually they did work and now they're commonplace. Therefore, although a console standard has been tried in the past and met with only limited success, this doesn't mean that it'll never work.
    Edited by 1 at 22/08/07 @ 12:51

  • Sebo #98 5 years ago

    Nah, I think the analogy is right

    one type of plane is the basic standard/unified console, one type of passenger is the disk/medium it comes on.

    Although let's be honest, the whole plane thing was daft from the off.

  • Rodney #99 5 years ago

    @ kangarootoo

    excellent post.

    I did not really think of the licensing revenue the Sony/Microsoft use to subsidise consoles at launch. Obviously, if a unified standard was open for anyone to manufacture, there would be no fair way of distrubuting licensing revenue.

    Im not sure if my £179 360 core example is pure supposition however since there is a 360 selling for a £179 which is hypothetically capable of playing PS3 games. How much of a loss or profit microsft iis making on this core £179, I do not know. Either way, it probably took massive lossses to reach this point.

    But, I do think the competition between manufacturers and massive demand on component suppliers would eventually drive prices down enough for the mass market adoption. Costs to early adopters of a unified platform would be paying a lot of money though just like early adopters of Blu-ray/HD-DVD did. (although I admit the console market is unique in selling hardware at an initial loss).

    This would definately be a huge disadvantage of a unified market model which is something I did not consider at first.

    Still, I think you'd agree software and peripherals would be cheaper.

  • Fitzmogwai #100 5 years ago

    Sorry, Schiraman, but I disagree with you.

    Quite simply, while there's more money to be made through competition than there would be through cooperation, the big players will not get together. And while the games market is growing, and there's more money available, the rewards are too great for the companies to ignore.

  • Sebo #101 5 years ago

    "An improved console standard being released would leave those who'd bought consoles based on the old standard in exactly the same place as a PS2 or Xbox owner was when the PS3 and 360 were released.

    Except that while MS was able to just completely abandon the Xbox (thus hurting Xbox consumers considerably) because it had complete control over the platform, it's very unlikely that all of the many companies making versions of a standard console would abandon it overnight.

    As for the Wii - it hardly fits the example that Fitzmogwai and I were discussing: it's not the product of a new, upstart company, it's not a console that is much more powerful than the competition, it's not competing with a consortium or standard product of any kind and, finally, it's not going after the same market anyway. So I'm not sure what your point was there."

    What on earth are you on about?? You are talking about a basic standard/unified console. You can't just write the wii out of that.

    All you are really suggesting is that there could be another console and it could have more backers. That's not the point

  • Daymare #102 5 years ago

    But that standard/unified console would/could read ALL the disks - that would be its raison d' etre..

  • Fitzmogwai #103 5 years ago

    @ Rodney


    The mobile phone market (at least here in the UK) sells hardware at a loss. Operators give away handsets that cost up to £500 to buy to entice customers, in the hope that they make the money back on call revenues.

    Equally, Gillette makes a loss on its razor handles, but profits on the blades. Every printer that HP sells costs it money - the profit is in the ink. Plenty of business models are built on giving away stuff at a loss and making the money back over time.

    Equally, you can already buy cheap peripherals. I can walk into my local GAME and buy a controller for a 360, made by a third party, that's cheaper than MS's official version... the competition's already there.
    Edited by 1 at 22/08/07 @ 13:00

  • Schiraman #104 5 years ago

    @Sebo

    You mentioned the Wii in response to me saying that a single competitor would be unlikely to emerge into a market dominated by a console standard and somehow out-compete the consortium. I don't see how the Wii is relevant to that discussion, for the reasons I've outlined.

    To reiterate: the Wii is not a good example of a single company out-competing an existing standards consortium, because there is no existing standards consortium. The Wii isn't even directly competing with the 360 and PS3.

    So, what's your point?

    "All you are really suggesting is that there could be another console and it could have more backers."

    No, you've misunderstood the idea. We're not talking about a single console, we're talking about a standard for consoles that many different individual consoles could meet - in just the same way as many different companies make different models of DVD player, but all of those players meet a single DVD standard. That's what Dyack is suggesting, and I agree with him.

  • Rodney #105 5 years ago

    yeah but mobiles are not truly free or sold at a loss are they. You pay for your phone through your price plan/tarrif.

    Without licensing software, what other revenue streams would be available to enable hardware manufacters to subsidise hardware losses?

    I suppose online services and downloadable content exclusive to that particular platform holder could subsidise the hardware. So you pay for your console through your xbox live subscription and downloaded movies etc.

    Advertisment could also be another source of revenue.....





  • Rodney #106 5 years ago

    by the way, Im not advocating these alternatives, but I think these would be consequences of a unified console

  • kangarootoo #107 5 years ago

    @Schiraman

    "firstly that model could continue with a console standard with the standards consortium collecting fees and distributing those fees to its members based in their stake in the R&D costs."

    I take your point, but I'm not sure if that model would be profitable enough for any of the companies involved. It could very possibly be of course, I have no firm figures.

    I just wonder what the result would be in a couple of generations' time. Would there be enough incentive for any given company to really push the technology? Would putting your R&D cash into the same basket yield the best results?

    I suppose what we are talking about is simply a partnership of companies on a given project. Apple, IBM and Motorola did it in the past. MS, Sony, Nvidia and ATi are always making deals of one sort or another. I'm not sure if what we are talking about is actually something new.

    Lets say Sony and MS decide to work together and create a "unified" games platform. There is nothing to stop Nintendo or IBM or Argos just coming along and saying "yeah, nice one, but I'm going to do my own thing and compete directly with you".

    Now it may be that together Sony and MS are too powerful and Argos' console dies on its arse, that there is just normal market forces. A unified platform can only survive if its is profitable for everyone involved AND its not profitable for anyone else to break off and create their own platform.

    Thus far this has never happened, so I'm not sure why it would happen in the future. There will always be money to be made by a splinter group that goes its own way and undercuts the larger consortium.

    What Denis is describing I think is a "nice idea that would benefit devs and consumers". And you know I'm not sure that he is wrong about that (there would definitely be some benefits for consumers and a shit load of benefits for devs)... BUT that isn't really the point being made by the objectors on this thread.

    "Our" point is that what he is talking about, however nice it might be for us as gamers and us as devs, simply isn't feasible. People keep talking about other electronic goods being unified, but I think on closer examination we can see that whilst SOME degree of unification exists in varying degrees in some product areas (as it currently does to some degree with games consoles) there is not ONE product area anywhere that is absolutely unified from start to finish (now there is a bold statement ripe for debunking).

  • kangarootoo #108 5 years ago

    @Rodney

    You guys are being very complimentary today :) This is a nice thread. Everyone being polite and lots of interesting points being made.

    "Still, I think you'd agree software and peripherals would be cheaper."

    Absolutely, and that is something that drives me bonkers. Denis makes the same point, though he seems to forget that the PS3 is using open standards all over the place when it comes to peripherals.

    Standard memory card storage, standard HDD format, standard wireless connnectivity (in the form the bluetooth), standard communications peripherals (any old standard bluetooth headset will do), media browsing without any proprietory software. The list goes on. Sony are taking a hit on the profits normally associated with proprietary peripherals (I'm looking at you and you 20GB for £60 HDD MS).

    Not sure what point I am making here. I suppose what I am saying is that some aspects of what he talks about are already in place. As I mentioend earlier regards NTSC and PAL, its not so much unification (there is no single memory card format for example), its just about a versatile product (the PS3 supports a bunch of competing memroy card types).

    Maybe that could be the first step? Console makers could start using standard components wherever possible. They aren't necessarily going to all use the GPU, but at least we can get cheaper controllers and storage, which is certianly a benefit for the the gaming public :)

  • Schiraman #109 5 years ago

    @kangarootoo

    I think you're right, that the economics of the situation are unclear and a lot would depend on the specifics. A standard might be wildly successful, or it might not - but I do think it's at least feasible, and because it's good for developers and consumers I think that ultimately there will be economic pressure to move in that direction. It may take a long time to come together of course...

    I also agree that a standard is a relative thing - I wouldn't expect every console produced under that standard to be identical, just to agree on certain key areas. As you say, current consoles already do agree on certain things and multiple companies do cooperate to make them feasible - so all we're really talking about is extending the areas of agreement to make games compatible across all console platforms and enabling new companies to start competing to produce the best hardware.

    It's not a huge leap when you look at it that way and it does work in various other markets. Whether that means it's inevitable for consoles is certainly debatable, but at the very least it's a feasible scenario and something that we, as consumers, should push for.

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #110 5 years ago

    @kangarootoo

    Argos? Would their console come suspended in the middle of a 9ct gold chain?

  • afghan_jones #111 5 years ago

    Still not convinced.

    i see the benefit for Devs, but:

    1. I dont see the economic benefit for the existing 'big 3'

    2. I dont see how you prevent anyone from breaking off and developing a non-standard console

    3. I dont see how people will agree on what the standard should be, especially as that standard evolves.

    4. I dont see the benefit for consumers. Games could potentially be a bit cheaper but hardware becomes more expensive due to no subsidies.

    5. What happens to the great first party games? How would they work?

    6. How do you prevent people buying/making 'exclusives'?




  • Schiraman #112 5 years ago

    @afghan_jones

    1) It could benefit the existing Big Three if they're beginning to struggle with the ever-increasing R&D costs - which seems pretty likely TBH. They would lose their dominance of the market, but they (at least Sony and MS) seem to be struggling to turn a profit currently anyway, so perhaps that's no big loss...

    2) It would be difficult to break away and create a non-standard console for two main reasons - firstly because you'd suddenly be incompatible with most games and you'd have no existing dev support, and secondly because the consortium backing the console standard would always be able to out-spend you on both R&D and marketing - putting you in a very difficult situation.

    3) Companies would agree on the standard, and evolutions of it, in the same as they do for existing standards for things like PC memory or USB devices or motherboard sockets or whatever. I.e. they'd get together, hammer out a compromise that worked ok for everyone involved and then, a few years later when tech had moved on, they'd do the same again to create an evolved standard.

    4) Not only would games be cheaper, but you'd have access to all the console games produced whilst only having to buy one console. Even if the hardware was more expensive, which I don't necessarily agree on, then that one expensive console would probably be cheaper than buying both the PS3 and 360, for example.

    Also you could chose the console that made most sense to you - if you want media playback as well you could pay a bit more and get that, if it's worth extra money for a smaller or quieter console then likewise - or you could just go for the cheapest console there is that just plays games.

    Finally, bear in mind that currently we're still paying the full price for the subsidised hardware sooner or later - we're just paying some of that money through increased game prices. Overall you'd expect to save money and have more choice with a standards-led marketplace.

    5) There'd be nothing to stop the existing Big Three signing up with the new console standard and releasing their current first-party franchises on it. In fact that would just mean that more people than ever could play those games, without any stupid bickering about which company was best.

    For an example of this kind of thing, just look at Sega - since bowing out of the hardware race, they've had a lot of success selling their software on every available platform.

    6) You prevent people from buying or making exclusives simply because it won't make economic sense. With many different companies making their own brands of standard console, each console will have too small a share of the market to make exclusivity a tempting arrangement. As it is exclusives are becoming rarer and rarer - a more competitive marketplace with more hardware firms involved would only increase this trend.
    Edited by 1 at 22/08/07 @ 14:11

  • kangarootoo #113 5 years ago

    @Mentalist(air)

    The chain would likely be plated rather than 9ct, but essentially... yes.

  • CatWeazle #114 5 years ago

    Meh. This guy seems to be contradicting himself in his eagerness to sound important. Why the 3-page article? So, mobile phones are an example of "commoditisation" (nice word, btw) - but we don't see any real decent single platform there do we, discounting virtual machines of course.
    360 & PS3 are totally different architectures, and companies like to keep their own identities and USPs. All throughout video-gaming history there's been people evangalising this sort of thing (MSX, 3DO) and where are they now?
    Some things will become standard, and sure - there may be some kind of generic API & platform for developers and consumers in time (XNA?), but the big players will never abandon their own console development in favour of some homogenous lowest-common-denominator as they will lose their most important foot in the door with the consumers.
    And talking of consumers, we actually LIKE that different platforms are different. This is typical of the talk which happens during the difficult transitional periods between generations, when people believe that the poor uptake rate of the new hardware is going to kill game development. In 3 years time everyone and their dog will have at least one next-gen console, the prices will be low, and the development and publishing scene will be buoyant again - and maybe this guy's game will be released. (/bitchy)


  • Tiny_Tim #115 5 years ago

    If he's saying that at one point consoles will just be receivers and the games will be processed by servers elsewhere, that's a very different thing. Maybe that will happen one day, but you'd have an incredibly bespoke setup at the server end - quite as un-unified as you could possibly imagine. You may well design a whole new configuration of machines that are perfect at being servers for that particular game, or build a super computer that can run thousands of instances of the game at once.

    There doesn't seem to be much consistency in what Dyack is saying, he's just throwing out almost random ideas. I think he's nearing the end of a very arduous development cycle and has slightly lost his mind. This is perfectly normal :)

  • L0cky #116 5 years ago

    'ut you'd have an incredibly bespoke setup at the server end - quite as un-unified as you could possibly imagine.'

    Which wouldn't matter to anyone at all because we play games on the clients, not the servers oO

    I said this in that other thread too... if anyone manages to unify a console it won't involve Microsoft. They have a very established platform with DirectX and the XNA tools both for X-Box and Windows and will neither ditch or share them.

    If people do get onboard such a project, MS will be their competitor.

    '(there would definitely be some benefits for consumers and a shit load of benefits for devs)'

    That there is the very thing that could make it work. As we know, long term sales are based on the software and consoles die through lack of dev support. If devs favoured the new platform over everything else then it would make a huge difference.

    But in this low risk enviroment, which devs would bet their chickens on an untested platform?

  • Tiny_Tim #117 5 years ago

    'Which wouldn't matter to anyone at all because we play games on the clients, not the servers oO'

    Absolutely, but cynical old me, I think Dyack's motivation is that he put all his faith in Unreal engine taking away his platform specialisation problems and he dreams of a situation where he wouldn't have had to make that decision.

    This set up would be great for consumers, but make development even more technical, and it seems a long way off. Though I already get broadband, tv, phone, etc from the same company, so if that convergence continues, maybe we'll end up playing games through these companies and the big 3 will be consigned to history. Like I say though, it seems very far away.

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #118 5 years ago

    consoles die through lack of dev support

    Publisher support rather than developer support. It was a very high-level political decision of EA not to support the Dreamcast. The Fifa factory in Canada would have popped out games for it merrily if they'd been told to, I expect.

    If Devs had their way, the PS2 wouldn't have been the leading console of last generation, early on, it was almost as much of a nightmare to develop for as PS3 is today. Moreso, if you believe what the likes of Insomniac are saying.

    Aside from a few high-profile independent studios with plenty of their own money (the likes of Id, Valve, Epic and Blizzard), the games get developed for whatever platform the publisher wants them on.

  • Sebo #119 5 years ago

    @schiraman

    "so all we're really talking about is extending the areas of agreement to make games compatible across all console platforms and enabling new companies to start competing to produce the best hardware."

    So the big three get together and say "you know what, what we really need to do is invite other companies into make some money out of this industry....we should all just be the same, there's no point differeniating what we do, that doesn't make us money.

    "Lets get other companies in to help us out. Then when those new companies have made some money off the groundwork we put in place, they will want to make more money and hey, that could very well put us out of business, but jings, at least those consumers wouldn't have to buy all three of our consoles to play our games."

    Schirman, you are thinking with theories, not money.

    And Russia has called, they want you to stop being poster boy for their communist console.

  • Martin #120 5 years ago

    @sebo: Well, if we're playing that game I would like to point out that you probably have out-typed me 10 to 1 and you're still harping on the same thing, over and over again.

    If you actually would've read what I wrote you might have picked up that I'm using the same argument as - for instance - rodney does; after a while the hardware becomes uninteresting, it's the services/software that's interesting.

    To hear you - and others - boldly claim that "it'll never work" when you have given no real proof of this other than speculation and more or less educated guesses about how Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo think is quite interesting.

    You claim that the big three sinks to much into R&D to ever be able to not put out their own console when one of the biggest benefits of a unified console is lower costs for R&D as they do not need to invent the wheel over and over again all by themselves.

    Lack of licensing money has been brought up as a reason for not going the unified console platform route but if this was the case then there would be no games on the PC as there's absolutely no licensing going on there.

    While on the subject of PCs - to reiterate what some might still not have grasped; comparing a unified console with a PC is wrong. The PC hasn't got the sort of standardisation we/I speak of.

    It has been brought up that all the console manufacturers lose money on the hardware, which is perfectly true for the current gen machines, and that they make money from the games and the accessories (also true).

    Keeping this in mind - why wouldn't they want to move to a platform that costs them less to research and produce? Perhaps they won't need to produce the hardware at all and just release the software - just like there are no (AFAIK) phone service providers that manufacture their own phone.

    You can bring up the "well there are VHS, DVD and HD-DVD so no standard, natch" argument all you want but you're just contradicting yourself as those three are standards. Just three different generations of standards.

    Arguing about how the standard should be formulated or what should be included is completely irrelevant now as I'm sure the indsutry will figure that out one way or another when it's needed.

    Finally; of course this will benefit the gamers! I fail to see how a unified console that every developer can target will bring less and/or more expensive games to the players.

    I'd love to be able to play Wii Sports, MGS4 and Bioshock on one machine but today I can't. Tell me how that kind of competition benefits me as a gamer, please.

    I'm still standing by my sentiment that this won't happen with the next gen, or even the one after that, but as the hardware gets so ludicrously competent that you don't need any higher resolution, more channels of sound, bigger hard drive, faster CPU or faster Internet connection then there is very little reason to compete with new hardware features.

    While on the subject of hardware - I'm sure there would be room for all kinds of newcomers to the market of a unified console plattform. You want gaming in your car? Look no further than product XYZ! You want to relive the golden days of the arcade? Buy the ABC Unified Console Plattform cabinet - complete with a 19" flat screen and two sturdy joysticks!

    I agree that discussion is all well and fine but it sould seem as we've reached a point where half (or more) of us sees no future whatsoever in the UCP idea and won't change their view no matter how many of the rest of us - that think this is a given - tell you otherwise.

    Just as I won't change my mind. :)

  • Sebo #121 5 years ago

    @martin

    Did you read anything?

    Your second super lengthy post needs just one argument against it - MONEY

  • Martin #122 5 years ago

    @sebo: First off, if you want us(me) to take you seriously you should probably avoid the name calling.

    Secondly - nobody makes any money what so ever off the hardware for current gen consoles. It's the biggest sinkhole in any of the threes budget. And who says that just anyone could profit from their work?

    IIRC you need to pay a licensing fee to the DVD consortium (or what it's called) in order to manufacture DVD-players. This would work the same. And just because you have a set of specifications (type of CPU, amount of memory, whatever) doesn't mean that Joe Sixpack can download these off the Internet and all of a sudden have a profitable console making business up and running.

    I'm pretty sure Sony Ericsson doesn't tell Nokia how they produce their phones and still I can buy any which one I want and use with any carrier I want. That's a standard.

    Just recently MS dedicated 1 billion US dollars to the overheating problem. I bet they'd be thrilled to be on a Unified Console Platform then so that it in a best case scenario wouldn't have been their problem to begin with but whomever made the console they produce games for.

  • Martin #123 5 years ago

    @sebo: Ok, you just proved to me that you have no idea what you're talking about. I mentioned more than once how to make money out of this. I will try and make an example that even you can understand.

    Sony manufactures (builds) the UCP hardware. They sell this for MONEY to whomever wants to buy it. It can be the end user (gamer) or to another company (Microsoft).

    Microsoft makes great software that work on Sonys - and others - UCP consoles. They can sell the software for 50£ (MONEY) directly to the end user (gamer) that bought his own console for MONEY.

    They can also sell a combination of Sonys hardware (that they bought for MONEY) and their software to the end user (Gamer) for 4.99£ (MONEY) a month with a minimum of 24 months subscribtion.

    Now, do I need to simplify this even further or did you actually manage to grasp what I - and others - are trying to say?

  • Sebo #124 5 years ago

    @martin

    Name calling? Where? I simply thought your post went on far too much without really making a point. It's a criticism, not name calling.

    Why do so many of you see consoles as this black hole of money for Sony and Microsoft? It couldn't be further from the truth in the big picture.

    Just because they lose money on the hardware does not mean it makes sense for them to have someone else share the cost. What Sony and Microsoft put into consoles is an "investment". They make the money elsewhere. If another company comes in, yes Sony and Microsoft will be investing less, but they will also be getting less of a return. Sony and Microsoft won't like that. Why? It's called greed and surprisingly all these big companies are at it.

  • Martin #125 5 years ago

    @sebo: I referred to you calling Schiraman "poster boy for their communist console".

    Of course there was a reason for MS to build the Xbox to begin with but I'm also sure that if they can make as much money as they do today on console software and accessories but without the added overhead/cost of manufacturing the console they'd jump on the idea.

    I fail to see how they'd make less money without having to worry about the hardware.

    This argument would make more sense if we're talking about the PS1 or even PS2 that - IIRC - actually isn't costing Sony any money but there has been no current-gen console that I know of that hasn't cost more to manufactre than it was sold for.

    You might argue that Gears of War and Bioshock has resulted in more Xbox 360's being sold and I'm the first one to agree but that's not a good thing unless A) these buyers keep coming back for more games - perferably Microsofts own and B) these buyers sign up for Xbox Live Gold.

    This is where Microsoft makes the profit - off of the games and the services. The hardware is just a means to an end, a necessary evil.

  • Sebo #126 5 years ago

    @Martin

    Posterboy is a compliment if you ask me.

    Which games do Microsoft make their money from Martin?



  • afghan_jones #127 5 years ago

    "Lack of licensing money has been brought up as a reason for not going the unified console platform route but if this was the case then there would be no games on the PC as there's absolutely no licensing going on there."

    This is a wrong argument because the licensing covers the cost of the hardware for consoles. It is therefore a key part of the business plan. Without it the hardware costs are prohibitive for many users.

    FYI, mobile phone companies do make their own phones, O2, Vodafone, Orange, Tmobile, they all do it.

    In fact the mobile phone industry is totally unstandardised. It in fact follows the gaming industry very closely. The mobile networks are the equivalent of the 'Big Three', the phones & contracts are the 'game' equivalents. Each provider offers different contracts & phones, some exclusive, some not. Same as the game industry.

    also, HDDVD is not a standard by any means. There are multiple competing standards in the hi-def movie market at present.

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #128 5 years ago

    @Martin

    there has been no current-gen console that I know of that hasn't cost more to manufactre than it was sold for

    Dear, oh, dear, somebody's arguments have a shaky foundation.

    Actually, Nintendo has always boasted that every Wii sold has made them a profit.

    Also, though it wasn't true at the start, even Xbox 360s are now not sold at a loss:

    [link url=http://www.mcvuk.com/news/2 4909/Research-shows-360-units-are-more-profitable-than-PS3
    ]    http://ww w.mcvuk.com/news/24909/Research...[/link]

  • Martin #129 5 years ago

    @sebo: Sure, if you say so.

    Hopefully all the games they publish, in reality probably only a majority of them. Why else would they publish them? To get users to buy a underpriced console that they make a loss on?

    @afghan_jones: A hardware cost that would most likely be significantly reduced if they didn't all develop their own hardware.

    Ok, the UK market must be very different from the Scandinavian market then because there is not one single phone operator here that has their own phone. (I did a quick check with Vodafone and the only phone they "make" is a rebranded Chinese phone: [link url=http://www.mobilegazette.com/vodafone-710-06x10x05.htm
    ]http://ww w.mobilegazette.com/vodafone-71...[/link] )

    I disagree that the phone market follows the current-gen console market (it would seem as if I need to point out that this is how it works here in Scandinavia at least) as I can buy any phone I want and use it with any operator I want.

    The only contracts we have are the ones where you get the phone almost "free" and instead end up paying for it over 24 months.

    As for the HD-DVD is not a standard jibe; I think you understood what I meant but thanks for the nitpicking - makes the discussion so much more enjoyable.
    Edited by 1 at 22/08/07 @ 16:01

  • Martin #130 5 years ago

    @mentalist(air): That the Wii actually made a profit was news to me but in hindsight it's quite reasonable as Nintendo didn't put all their effort into high-end components but instead focused on the experience.

    As for the X360 - I should've been better at pointing out that I meant at release - sorry for that. The X360 has been able to hit this mark remarkably fast though.

    Still, if that's your only rebuttal then I would say that there's still very good reasons for a Unified Console Platform.

  • Sebo #131 5 years ago

    @martin

    Seriously? Where is there good reason?

    In three basic points, tell me exactly where Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft are going to make more money in a unified console environment? Keep it short and keep it sweet. 1,2,3.

  • Calgon #132 5 years ago

    I think one thing people might be missing is that engineers from different companies may want to go in different directions, what happens then, a majority vote? Does that always mean that one idea was better than the other? No its never that simple, this could also cause a split.

    I dont think many people would be too chuffed with Sony in control of the hardware as I gather Martin was suggesting(for two generations running alot of devs have said Sonys design choices have been not only more difficult but also questionable), they maybe the the only true hardware manufacturing company but Id argue that MS has the better engineers as far as computing goes(Toshiba *who Sony owe alot to for their chip designs in PS2 and 3* and IBM *without which Sony wouldnt have a Cell chip... they simply couldnt have dont it* could just as easily work with them).

    Manufacturing(which shouldnt be confused) is something MS could and probably will move into properly(albeit just gaming and perhaps processor related, already roumers about that for next gen... their own in house chip fabrication ect) and Nintendo to some extent as far as gaming goes they are the only soley gaming focused company of the big three(like MS they are more of a Software company than a big hardware manufacturer).
    Edited by 1 at 22/08/07 @ 16:29

  • AOFanboi #133 5 years ago

    When multiple vendors supply implementations of a standard design, there is inevitably a need to change enough to provide a differentiation versus the competitors. Either in looks, in price or in "embrace and extend" features.

    Case in point: MSX, when it appeared Now, you could buy a bare-bones machine from Sanyo, or you could splash out on the more expensive offering from Sony with a MIDI port. What was that last part? A change Sony made. But if you wrote a program that used that MIDI port, your program would not work on a non-Sony MSX machine. So how standard is it then?

    Think SQL. It has a nice little ISO standard. And vendors then proceed to ingore lots of it, because they can, and want to "lock in" developers so that their PL/SQL programs on Oracle will not work in Transact-SQL-using Sybase or MS SQL Server - which have slightly different dialects of TransactSQL just to be on the safe side.

    ISO standards are also riddled with "left to the implementation" and "left for further study" - thus, incomplete. This is largely due to industry pressure where the vendors who will be implementing the standard also contribute to the stadard process/working groups. How do you ensure a console standard does not get the same problems as has plagued so many other standards?

    And forget 3DO. It was insanely expensive so that the few vendors who made implementations fought over a small market.

  • afghan_jones #134 5 years ago

    @Martin

    I guess it is different in scandinavia then. Here in the UK, a lot of mobile operators make their own handsets too with varying degree of success. There are also lots of 'network exclusives' same as console exclusives. These can be locked to a specific operator.

  • Schiraman #135 5 years ago

    @Sebo

    You say I'm thinking with theories not money. What do you mean by that? I've explained several times already how a console standard could make economic sense. What part of those explanations didn't you understand?

    And of course everything I'm putting forward is just a theory, but so are all of your rebuttals - none of us are in charge of a games company or privy to their plans and financial secrets - we're all just guessing.

    If you've got an actual argument to make, go ahead and make it. But to be honest, so far you just seem to be ignoring what anyone writes and repeating "it will never happen!" over and over again.

  • Chufty #136 5 years ago

    A commoditised technology isn't one where everything works with everything else. He's right to use examples like DVD players, TV and cars because they follow the same life cycle model that he has predicted for games consoles.

    Just because your downloaded DVD+RW movie doesnt work in your £15 DVD player from Tesco, doesn't mean the technology is 'only partially unified.' It has a set of specifications and standards to which each manufacturer adheres, to varying degrees.

    Sure, Blu-Ray and HDDVD has produced a completely unneccessary format war that is beneficial to precisely noone in the industry. Eventually the two will be consolidated, all players will play both just in time for the next generation (which will probably be Internet-delivered anyway).

    The Wii WOULD have happened in a commoditised console market. You can get a phone with sat-nav, even though the phone is otherwise the same as all the others. You can get a biodeisel car even though it's not a conventional fuel. You can get microwaves with browners, fridges with internet access, vacuum cleaners with no bags, treadmills that have heart rate sensors and make a bloody cup of tea. And yet, all these things are inter-compatable in a way that consoles have simply yet to achieve.

    We are already seeing a convergence of the games consoles. A good chunk the Wii titles are just crap PS2 ports. Companies pump millions into getting exclusives but it will turn out to be bad business, and in any case most top shelf titles come out on at least two of the three consoles.

    This doesn't mean Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are all going to get in bed with each other and work together on a unified console to end all consoles. It means a shift in the way consoles are developed and researched. It means money will be made through licensing, through games, through innovations like the Wiimote that you can sell to everyone, regardless of who's console they have.

    There's a box, people, and the walls of our industry's box are thicker than most, but that's no excuse not to think outside it.

  • Dinoli #137 5 years ago

    After thinking of this for a while, console unification would mean that hardware is about the same price it is now, or somewhat higher (prolly not higher than what PS3 is now, though), but games will be much cheaper. One organisation, kind of like ESRB, would just verify that games work and give permission for release, just taking a rather marginal piece of the cake.

    Developers would be ecstatic about such a change, but hardware manufacturers wouldn't be in for such a treat. They'd just get onetime payment for each console and that's why console prices wouldn't drop. But still, I consider it to be sooo much better option to buy one somewhat more expensive console and lots of games for good price, than having to buy one console, some expensive games from limited catalogue, or buying multiple consoles and expensive games for each of them.

    Now the question is how we could get people at Sony, MS and Nintendo to cease their armsrace. Much more manageable research&development costs might be a good start =)

  • kangarootoo #138 5 years ago

    @Dinoli

    "hardware is about the same price it is now, or somewhat higher (prolly not higher than what PS3 is now, though), but games will be much cheaper"

    Something to think about on the software pricing front. You say software WILL be cheaper, but all we can say with reasonable certainty is that software will be cheaper TO PRODUCE.

    Whether that translates into a reduced cost at the shop counter is something else. It could just mean higher profits for publishers. All products are priced, not on what they cost to make, but what people are prepared to pay for them.

    Not saying that a price drop would NOT occur, just that it is by no means a sure result of a unified platform.

  • Sebo #139 5 years ago

    @schirman

    That's just nonsense and the pair of you know it.

    Neither of you have come up with any valid economic plan for it. None of you have even set out a basic explaination of how any of the big three would make more money.

    I would love it if you could, as a consumer I would love a single machine that plays all the games I want it too.

    I've thoroughly read each and everyone of your posts and quite frankly the pair of you are just being ignorant now.

    I'm not saying no money could be made in your commoditisied market. I'm not saying your basic standard console wouldn't make money.

    What I am saying is that it doesn't make as much money as the companies are currently making.

    Guess we are going to have to agree to disagree on this one, but I 'm dissappointed the pair of you have ended a good debate on a sour note with your utter arrogance.

  • Sebo #140 5 years ago

    @chufty

    "This doesn't mean Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are all going to get in bed with each other and work together on a unified console to end all consoles. It means a shift in the way consoles are developed and researched. It means money will be made through licensing, through games, through innovations like the Wiimote that you can sell to everyone, regardless of who's console they have.

    There's a box, people, and the walls of our industry's box are thicker than most, but that's no excuse not to think outside it."

    Nintendo sold a whole console on the premise of the wiimote. If they had just sold the wiimote as a peripheral then they would be a hell of a lot less rich than they are now. This is fundamentally where the basic standard falls down.

    The basic standard is only something that a consortium of third-party developers can spearhead. If they put their money into that then they will be taking resources away from games and reducing their profits even further.

    So somebody please tell me - who makes the moves for this unified console?

    Not Microsoft, Nintendo or Sony - despite it costing them a lot to be the consoles out they eventually make their money back on software and software licensing big time, not to mention the reduction in component costs towards the end of the lifecycle.

    Not the developers because they don't have the resources to plough into R&D without costing themselves severely in their bread and butter department.

    A consortium of other electronic giants? Possible they could come up with a machine, ala 3DO, but they would get competition from Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft for sure, totally nullifying the consortiums claim to a basic standard.

  • VMerken #141 5 years ago

    I could see this happening if graphics have advanced to a point where processors can churn out vistas hardly distinguishable from reality and implement high, acceptable levels of game mechanics. At that point, all the consoles will have converged in their functionality, and a "gaming standard" could be put down.

    The probability of this happening next generation looks very low to me.

  • Freek #142 5 years ago

    The movie industry can't even agree on a single format, and that's a static playback system.
    There's no hope in hell the interactive media is going to get there soon.

  • Dinoli #143 5 years ago

    @kangarootoo

    The main reason why software would get cheaper is that there wouldn't be any roaylties paid to console manufacturers. Also, competition would be more fierce, as games like Resistance: Fall of Man and GoW would really start to compete with each other. Now console manufacturers can decide what gets released and when, avoidin any direct competition.

    The amount of price drop will depend mostly on what are the amounts of roaylties paid right now to console makers, but even if developers get more money paid for each copy, gamers need to pay less for the game.

  • Sebo #144 5 years ago

    @vMerken

    I think by that point of graphical prowess we will be at a point where downloadable games are more popular than disc based ones, so that might completely change the parameters.

    I can't see a unified/basic standard console, but perhaps a unified/basic standards games receiver isn't out of the question. Although I think someone else touched on the server problems it could have.

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #145 5 years ago

    The main reason why software would get cheaper is that there wouldn't be any roaylties paid to console manufacturers.

    If there were no licensing fees and certification standards, then the console market wouldn't be the console market at all. If everything is a free-for-all you end up with something as fractured and bug-ridden as the PC market. People would get pissed off with it and abandon it in droves (I've certainly abandoned PC gaming from time to time).

    Any unified console would need a unified certifiction body, for both hardware and software. This would need to be significantly larger than the DVD licensing people, since they'd need to certify every title that is released. Organising such a body (which would realistically require cannibalising Sony, MS and Nintendo's cert people) is yet another barrier to the feasibility of this idea.

  • Dinoli #146 5 years ago

    @mentalist(air)

    There would be a central organisation which would take care of the standardisation (I wrote of it an earlier post), developers would pay marginal roaylties to it and it'll make sure everything works as intended. It'd be free-for-all only in market, tech would be strictly controlled.

    (oops)
    Edited by 1 at 23/08/07 @ 09:55

  • Sebo #147 5 years ago

    @dinoli

    So in that set up, where is the money being made to create the hardware? Surely that would to be passed down the line to the consumer

  • Schiraman #148 5 years ago

    @Sebo

    To clarify my position: what you're missing again and again is that while the Big Three may dominate the market right now, that dominance isn't carved in stone.

    Microsoft is new to the market, and previous heavy-weight Sega has already bowed out. Things change. There are some signs that both MS and Sony might be struggling this generation, who knows if that will improve in time for the next generation or whether it will get even worse. If the latter, then its possible it might make economic sense for one or both of them to dump the current model and join with a standards consortium instead.

    As an example of the kind of thing I mean, let's imagine that the PS3 never really manages to take off - the software just never really materialises for it, and eventually even the fanboys give up and switch to 360. Sony's share of the market dwindles to Gamecube levels and they have to face the fact that they're just never going to recoup the massive R&D and marketing costs for the PS3. Things look bleak for their future in gaming.

    Rather than giving up however, they use their existing ties to companies like IBM and Toshiba to set up the Home Gaming Consortium and they begin talks with all sorts of hardware and software companies. Sony's reputation, although damaged by the PS3 debacle, still carries a lot of weight (especially in Japan, where nobody is keen to see Microsoft dominate) and both developers and the gaming press are willing to give the HGC a try. With backing from many manufacturers and increasing buz with developers who are keen to work with a unified platform, the standard takes off and the PS4, as well as several other new consoles, are based on the standard and compete strongly with the Xbox 720.

    Eventually MS finds that it just can't quite match the spending power of the consortium, and it's forced to admit that a standard is a good idea. It consolidates its games software and online service businesses, always the key to the success of Xbox anyway, and re-launches those on the next generation of the console standard when that comes out.

    Of course all of that is just wild speculation, but it's not a wholly unreasonable scenario. I'm not saying that it will happen, just that it's plausible that it (or something like it) could.

  • Sebo #149 5 years ago

    @schirman

    Money does not equal success, if it did Sony and Microsoft would have killed Nintendo by now. So we can't assume that because the consortium has wealth behind it that it would be able to bully everyone else out of the market.

    I fail to see where Sony or Microsoft can make more money working within a consortium. They instantly have reduced market share and increased competition in that set up. A lot less Sony Playstation 4s will be sold, when there's a Samsung Playstation 4+, a Toshiba Playstation 4 extra....and Microsoft's own Playstation 4 360.

    The original Xbox and Gamecube were hardly runaway successes, but having the consoles meant Microsoft and Nintendo made more money than they would have made if they'd taken the route of being software only and making their games on the Playstation 2. Would Sony have been happy to hand over a two-thirds share to those two in the last generation - no chance.

    Say Microsoft and Nintendo had been putting out Playstation 2s last generation instead of Xboxs and Gamecubes. How would Sony's market share have been there? Their R&D may have been reduced by two-third, but there profit would have assumbly also have shrunk two-thirds, and their licensing revenue has gone down two-thirds too in that time. Hmmm, fine for Nintendo and Microsoft, not so good for Sony.

    Gaming is always going to have a market for competition, that is a simple fact. Convergence among some manufacturers may be a very real possibility, but there will always be at least one company who sees they can make more money by selling a player with their own exclusive content.

    On that basis, Dyack's views of a every disc plays in every machine future is completely unworkable.

    A developer led chip set which manafucturers agree to incorporate as a means of reducing their on R&D, and which means developers no longer have to port things is more feasible. It will take an EA to spearhead it and I just wonder if they think it would be worth the investment when they are in truth only dealing with three consoles at the moment. Time will tell, but I think that if it has been workable business model for gaming, we'd have seen it by now, because we are several generations into this industry.



    Edited by 1 at 23/08/07 @ 11:43

  • Schiraman #150 5 years ago

    @Sebo

    Agreed, money does not guarantee success - but it does help. As I said, I'm not trying to suggest that my example scenario will definitely happen, I was just giving a possible way in which a standard console might come into being. I'm sure you'll agree that while in my example Microsoft might out-compete the consortium, it also might fail to do that and end up joining it. All I'm trying to demonstrate is that such a standard is plausible.

    You say you fail to understand how Microsoft or Sony could make more money as part of a standard. What I'm suggesting is that the current model may not always be profitable for them, and that if it ceases to be then a standard might be a better option. Is that clearer now?

    As for whether Microsoft and Nintendo would have made more or less money by releasing their games on the PS2 rather than the Xbox and Gamecube, I think I can answer that one pretty simply: I guess they'd have made a lot more money. No R&D costs, vastly reduced marketing costs, none of the loses associated with selling all that hardware and a hugely increased market for their software. The only reason that MS and Nintendo stayed in the hardware market after the beating they received from the PS2 is because they believed they could still turn things around in the next generation - luckily for them, they seem to have been right ;)

    And honestly I don't see how your example of Sony just giving the other two a third share of it's near hardware monopoly is relevant to the discussion. Of course that wouldn't have made sense, and thankfully nobody is suggesting anything of the kind. That's not what would be involved in establishing a console standard, it's not what Dyack suggested and it's not what I've said at any point.

    As for competition being a vital part of the gaming marketplace, I completely agree. Which is why I think that a console standard would be a great idea, because it would hugely increase competition. Rather than having only three companies involved, suddenly we could have dozens or even hundreds - all producing competing hardware - and yet be in a position where the games we bought would work on any of those competing platforms.

    I don't agree that a single competitor leaving the standard would be in a good position to out-compete an existing standards consortium and I've already given my reasons for that several times. Try to imagine a single company leaving the DVD Forum and releasing a directly competing standard on its own: do you suppose they would do well? What makes you think this would be a plausible threat to a gaming standard?

    Your idea of a developer-led standard chipset is actually very similar to the idea we've been discussing all this time. I think you're very wrong to suggest that such a standard would be more successful without the support of hardware manufacturers though, and I think you're going to have an extremely hard time backing that up.

  • Dinoli #151 5 years ago

    @sebo

    Consumers always pay for everything in the end. In an unified console market, money just moves in a different way. Hardware manufacturers will get money from consoles the same way as makers of DVD players get it today.

  • Sebo #152 5 years ago

    @schirman

    You are very selective with your facts and ignore pretty much all of the reality of the current games industry and the historical games industry.

    As a hypothesis, all your ideas are sound. But they don't in anyway reflect the reality of what is happening in gaming today.

    "And honestly I don't see how your example of Sony just giving the other two a third share of it's near hardware monopoly is relevant to the discussion. Of course that wouldn't have made sense, and thankfully nobody is suggesting anything of the kind. That's not what would be involved in establishing a console standard, it's not what Dyack suggested and it's not what I've said at any point."

    That right there is a total contradiction and a clear example of how you are trying to shape things to suit your theory. Yes that is what you are suggesting. You are suggesting that the market leader, who ever that may be, open the doors to a competitior to do the same thing as them.

    You say the market may not always be the same. Very true. R&D costs may not always be the same either. Then the money that the Sonys and Microsofts lose on each console they sell won't be the factor that it is now. If things have reached a point where nobody can realistically achieve any more in the horse power race, then the R&D comes down, hardware manufacturs are forced to focus on innovation. But now with this reduced cost of making a console, why throw the doors open for you competitor to have all the same stuff as you. Why not use this reduced R&D cost on actually inovating.

    There's a reason Microsoft pay millions for console exclusivity, with reduced R&D costs in the future it becomes even more lucrative.

    All your arguments fall on their a'rse Schirman because all you are looking at is the theory not the hard economics.








    Edited by 1 at 23/08/07 @ 14:12

  • kangarootoo #153 5 years ago

    @Dinoli

    "The main reason why software would get cheaper is that there wouldn't be any roaylties paid to console manufacturers."

    Again, what you are describing here is a reduction in the manufacturing cost. It is still a leap (a reasonable one I admit, but not a known fact) to assume those savings will be passed on to the customer.


    "Also, competition would be more fierce, as games like Resistance: Fall of Man and GoW would really start to compete with each other."

    I'm just not sure. Games on the same platform already compete with each other, and to some degree platforms themselves compete with each other. There might only be one platform, which suggests more competition, but there would also be a larger installed base, which suggests plenty of customers for everyone. I just don't know, but thats kind of my point.

  • Schiraman #154 5 years ago

    @Sebo

    You say I'm selective with my facts and ignore the reality of the games industry, please provide some examples to back up your accusations. Because frankly it seems to me that you're more selective about facts than anybody else here.

    You are wrong to say that Sony giving away it's PS2 market dominance last generation would have been directly equivalent to a new standards consortium becoming a big factor in the market. Basically this is the same tired statement you've been making all along, and you have no more backing for it now than you did when you began. If you really believe they're equivalent then please explain why, perhaps with reference to the numerous counter-points people have made which you have so far conveniently ignored.

    I suggest you go back and re-read the example I gave for how a consortium could come about next generation if the PS3 failed. You may notice that I at no point suggest that a market leader would give up it's dominance, in fact I suggest quite the opposite - that if Sony were to lose badly enough to Microsoft then they might then head up a consortium. Is that distinction lost on you?

    I do agree that the market might change in a way that favours the existing big games companies, effectively helping them out with their current difficulties, but that possibility in no way precludes a change in favour of a standards consortium instead. Your argument has no more basis in fact than mine, or anyone else's in this thread - it is pure speculation.

    In addition the point of reduced R&D costs has already been covered earlier, where it was suggested that if massive R&D is no longer required it would actually be far easier for new companies to begin competing with the current leaders in the market. So I would contend that even if R&D costs do fall, that in no way guarantees a continuation of the status quo.

    Finally, I've said all along that I'm just presenting possibilities to support the idea that a console standard could happen. I've also said several times that even if it does happen, it might well not happen for some time.

    Perhaps it's time you were similarly honest and accepted that your "it will never happen" stance is in fact the unsupportable one. If you want to say "I don't think it's likely" or "I think it's probably a long way off" then fair enough, but pretending you have some kind of hard proof that it's impossible by repeatedly insisting that nobody except you understands economics is clearly rubbish.
    Edited by 1 at 23/08/07 @ 17:38

  • Sebo #155 5 years ago

    No no, IT will never happen. Bill and Ted have told me.

    Re-read all the great reasons that I and many others put forward for this being a complete non-starter.

    The last few posts I've made have regurgitated a lot of what has been said against this before, but that's because you didn't take it on board first time round.

    Honestly, if you need any more convincing that it won't happen, phone up the big three and any other electronics manufacturer you want, I'm sure they will give you ample reasons why its not going to happen.

    Oh, but word of advice, they won't be amused if you constantly shift the goalposts while talking to them or don't listen to what they say.....

    Best of luck

  • Sebo #156 5 years ago

    @schirman

    "You are wrong to say that Sony giving away it's PS2 market dominance last generation would have been directly equivalent to a new standards consortium becoming a big factor in the market. Basically this is the same tired statement you've been making all along, and you have no more backing for it now than you did when you began. If you really believe they're equivalent then please explain why, perhaps with reference to the numerous counter-points people have made which you have so far conveniently ignored"

    Oh my god, you are telling me that I am wrong to say that if there had been one console last generation then there wouldn't have been a single standard???

    PS2 was the dominant console. Sony would have had to relinquish that stranglehold, either by choice or force for a basic standard/unified console to flourish.

    I AM truly done dealing with you now. You would have to be an idiot to not comprehend the point I was making there.

    Hope you don't hold your breath waiting for your unified console, or maybe I do....
    Edited by 1 at 23/08/07 @ 18:39