Recently Dennis Dyack had an article in the Official Xbox Magazine on the subject of a unified console. Dyack is one of those that seems to think that not only with there be a unified video game system, but that it is inevitable. I could not agree with him less.

Dyack says, "Imagine a unified platform -- one console for all gamers -- that would bring a massive paradigm shift to the games industry, where games would become better in quality, cheaper, and more widely available. Sound good? It can happen. Better yet, it's inevitable. It will happen"

Oh boy, can you guys imagine that? I can't wait to have a unified platform. I can't wait until we are given one option, and have to take that option. Imagine when there is no competition between companies to make hardware any better. It is just impossible. If we were given just one option, that would really suck. Nintendo would have no reason to try to innovate games with things like motion controls and Sony would have never spent billions of dollars in R&D to come out with the Cell Processor. With a single unified system, we there would be no competition. Video games would die.


He also says, "The market is also split in an unhealthy way between the major manufacturers. Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony all may have equal marketshare this generation, making it extremely difficult for third-party publishers to choose what platform to focus on.

"Not that it's easy for first-party manufacturers, either. Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo have put tremendous resources into trying to make the best hardware, including spending significant amounts of money trying to get exclusive mega-titles like Grand Theft Auto on their system first."

Umm, please let me know when the three companies have an equal market share. Because that isn't happening anytime soon. The DS has sold WAY more than the PSP. The PS2 destroyed the xbox and gamecube. And right now the 360 and Wii are just about neck and neck where the PS3 is lagging behind significantly. If a developer or publisher is really debating between making a game for 360, PS3, or both, the decision shouldn't be too difficult. Big publishers like EA are mostly going to be pushing multiplatform. For others, it makes more sense to go with the 360; both on the finance and development side of things.

As for choosing between the PS3/360 or the Wii, what choice is there? It is completely dependent on the game they want to make. If they want an online multiplayer shooter, they would never want to make that on the Wii. If they want to make a game that can take advantage of the Wii capabilities, then they would use the Wii. You see, they don't just choose a system based on market penetration, they choose it based on the abilities of that hardware as well.

Dyack attempts to compare the state of TVs today to what a unified gaming system will be in the future. Saying that there will be the specified components and format, but different manufacturers can sell their version of the system. This really makes no sense at all. The reason different companies can make TVs and sell them is because of the differences between the TVs. The resolution, pixel ration, the size of the TV, the brightness, inputs/outputs, all of those things. Those are the features that matter when you buy a TV. Sure, there is a standard of what resolutions are normal, otherwise you wouldn't be able to plug in your cable or a DVD player and have it work, that is where the standardization is, not in the TV itself.

Different manufacturers wouldn't be able to sell different versions of the same hardware with slightly different features like a larger hard driver or brightness settings, it just won't work. The selling point in consoles are its capabilities over the other systems. And unless Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo would sit down together and make one system with everything together, a unified platform won't emerge. And those companies would never work together on a system, it just won't happen.

In conclusion, Dennis Dyack doesn't know what he is talking about. Sure, it might be good for a developer to only have to make a game for one system, but that isn't the reality, and it never will be. Maybe he should focus more on trying to get Too Human working and stop complaining about how they can't figure out the Unreal Engine 3.