The Console Wars
Originally published at Myths & Revelations. You can comment here or there.
With the X-Box 360 already out and the PS3 and the Wii on the horizon, most gamers are probably trying to figure out where to put their new purchases, even if this time around the price tags on the systems seem rather extravagant.
A lot of people have been complaining about the price tag and while I think $500 is a little much for a console system (I won’t be buying one, personally) I know that PS3s will still be sold out the day they hit stores. The obsession with video games is a strong one and if you don’t understand how the gamer mind functions then you’re probably not much of a gamer yourself. Personally, my reasoning for not buying a console system is that the games have been awful lately. There haven’t been any great RPGs that really suck you in and hold your attention for long, epic stories are mainly the rehashes of stories that have been repeated over the last 20 years of gaming and well… if I want to play the games I grew up on, I’ll play them in their original 8-bit graphics.
Anyway, back on the topic at hand. I was offered up the following URL, so I figured I’d pass it along and then give some opinions on it.
“Analyst: Sony, PS3 To Edge Out Competition In Next-Gen” from Gamasutra
It’s easy to assume that eventually the Playstation 3 will once again be the dominant force in the market. With it’s BluRay disk reading technology and the eventual lack of load times (a plague upon the world of gaming) will put the PS3 in the lead. Anyone who’s been a long term gamer has watched games develop more and more load times. Why? Because there’s more information in our games now, most specifically… MORE GRAPHICS. The X-Box 360 has already shown that it can have extensive load times between scenes and scenarios, the worst of which is pauses between game play and running in game movie scenes. So far, this hasn’t been so bad in the current list of 360 games, but really what does the future hold?
However, I think the key in this article is the fact that the analyst says that “by 2011″ and that it’ll only be 4% higher with 3 million more units sold. The key to this is that the BluRay technology takes off. If BluRay becomes a super popular medium, the price for parts will drop exponentially and the PS3 will become super cheap to make, thus causing a huge price drop which I’ll guess right now will happen late in 2009, early 2010.
Either way though, the big thing that this analyst is missing is that, while yes, Sony and the PS3 will lead once again in 2011, the lifecycle of the average console is only 5 years. Which means that by 2011 Microsoft will have started releasing information on the next X-Box. Making Sony’s lead pointless because they’ll still be almost a year behind on the release of their next system, meaning they’ll have to develop yet another “revolutionary” new way for the next Playstation to run it’s games.
I’m a little afraid for Sony in the long term (mainly because I’d hate to think of Microsoft dominating two game markets), they tend to think a little too far outside the box. Developing new technologies that are high risk. Now if we think about this in terms of a war, it’s often a good idea in a war to think outside the box. To come up with new strategies and new tactics on the field, but if Sony was the commander, the troop losses would be phenominal, even if the tactic was successful. Sony is a big corporation, spending millions of dollars on a new technology is not beneath them, however, successive failures could erode away at the pillars Sony stands upon and while the company will never completely crumble, some areas of the company may cease to be an asset.