Day 2 of my new life in the D'toid community, so far so good :D
The people here are actually really cool, i'm starting to visit here even more and more. Anyway onto today's topic, a Year back, a friend and I got into a discussion about the pros and cons of each console (sorry pc you weren't involved) and eventually we came to a point in the discussion where we asked each other what it'd be like if there was just one combined effort from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. It gave me inspiration to write a short piece about the possible pros and cons of one console on the market, I was rereading that blog a few days ago, and realised that it :
A) Didn't do the idea justice
B) Had some mistakes and incorrect facts (also known as lies)

So I thought I'd give the idea another stab, I'm a year older, hopefully a year's worth wiser, and more informed of the consoles. First off I'm going to be calling this console the PSWII60, because It's cool and well because I damn well want to. And apologies for the random blog title, i just usually name them after lines from a song, (kudos to anyone that can name the band and the song! and if you can't? Google Is Your Friend)

I don't know about you, but I can see the attraction of there only being one console on the market. It'd bring both benefits and disadvantages compared to having three seperate home consoles. (There would still be portable consoles, this blog will mainly concentrate on home consoles.) I've listed both the Pros and the Cons Below

[color=green]Pro - One Massive Online Community : The PSWII60 would mean there would only be one unified online. It is fairly common now to see online fade in some games rather quickly, making it a bitch if you want to get online achievements etc, or prove your prowess at a particular game. ( A good example of this would be sports games, as soon as the next game is released, The lobby's reduce dramatically - one culprit guilty of this would be NBA 2K8) It also means that there would be a huge growth in the number of people that you will be able to play online. Auto-matching would also be made a lot easier as well due to the larger amount of people participating online.

Pro - Games would only get better : With such a high demand for only the best games on the console, people would be rushing forward with their game proposals, trying to get contracts with the PSWII60, (no more offloading terrible games that wouldn't sell on any other console onto the Wii... and a lot less games based on movies hopefully...) Games that utilise innovation would also appear more, as developers would be trying to create games that would make them stand out from the quickly growing crowd. This would lead to games such as katamari and Little big planet appearing more frequently in order to avoid the generic stream of urine that has become commonplace adventure and First Person Shooter games.

Pro - No More exclusive games : No longer would we miss out on games such as Halo and Gears of War, Resistance 2, Metal Gear Solid, Killzone 2, Super Smash Bros and more. No more buying more than one console just to play a few exclusives. This would also benefit developers as they wouldn't have to release the games across multiple platforms, meaning they can work less on creating three identical games using different code, and concentrate on refining control,s, eliminating glitches and meaning they won't need to continually release patches as well

Pro - An end to the systems war: Although probably not the best point, (some may consider it a con.) It means an end to people shoving mindless drivel down our throats, stuff like 'PS3 YEAH' or '360 FOREVER' would be gone, FOREVER. Mind you I would be sad to lose it simply because we'd lose a hot topic of debate and some genuinely good arguments from both sides of the system wars. (although by this point most the arguments are the same recycled points.[/color]

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Con- One Console means that we are going to be short changed : No doubt about it, with one console dominating the market, there is no competition in prices; they can keep prices as high or as low as they want and we'd just have to accept it. That or move to PC gaming, which I love but the fact we need to upgrade hardware every 2 or three years just doesn't seem to add up for me, and although some may argue that we have to upgrade our consoles to the next model when they are released, they are far cheaper than a high end gaming pc is.

Con - With one console, it'll be aimed at the entire audience: Meaning that it loses its personality. Wii is known for being family orientated, 360 and ps3 being aimed at more mature, serious gamers, it also has games that kids can enjoy. If we have one console, it will never be able to develop an identity without upsetting everyone else; you'll find a lot of family orientated games being released, and heaps of mature games being released as well. Some of them being extremely generic as just to show that they have a wide range of games available, and not that they are looking for quality gaming as their overall aim. ( i realise this contradicts the 2nd pro, however it would sadly be another possibility)

Con - One online means that there will be lag and swearing a lot more, glitching, everything that you don't want in an online will be found more frequently. Simply because the online will be too large to moderate effectively and also servers will be too large to produce lag free gaming. SONTENSOFT would have to create either a bunch of small servers, which is high maintenance as they have to constantly monitor them and make sure everything is going swimmingly, but if they have a few large servers, lag will be a constant factor in every online game. One game that is a good example is Metal Gear Online, although usually ok, the lag can be so bad that MGO is unplayable.

Con - The gaming peripherals may not suit everyone, which can be remedied by releasing different control schemes for games, but after having the WII, PS3, and XBOX 360 out, everyone will want different control schemes to suit what they were used to. Sony fans will want the classic ps2/3 controller (dual shock 2/3) 360 users will want their controller to emulate the 360's, and the Wii users will want a Wiimote or something similar that uses motion sensors to play games with. This can be sorted by releasing different peripherals for the consoles, but then developers have to release extra control schemes for the PSWII60 and users have to go out and buy their preferred peripheral.[/color]

So there you go, a list of main pros and cons that i could think of.
Leave a comment if you can think of any other Pros or Cons, and let me know what you thought of the blog overall.