The 1 console future. The paper that will declare just exactly what a "console" has to include to be manufactured and sold legally. It will be owned by some industry led organization and presumably have its HQ in the US. Have I got it right so far? No? Enlighten me.
One of the main arguments put forth is that the technical advancements made in the industry are going to halt at some point, provided that the production costs will get too high and development cycles reach ridiculous amount of years. That argument to me sounds pretty ridiculous in it self. Imagine if that mindset had such a huge impact in the 90's? Everybody just went "No, I'm gonna settle with this amount of pixels, that many polygons, and this many hours of gameplay. Screw technological advancements, THIS is what games are gonna be like from now on." Am I being a douche, or does this argument sound absurd to anyone else but me?
Garnett Lee was the man who got me pretty upset about it, during a 1Up Yours podcast not too long ago. "5.1 surround sound, high-definition graphics, online play" was his bullet points he laid out that technology has come to a halt, or should see a halt in the near future. Because hey, consoles now have "high-definition". Welcome to the PC, eons ago.
Yep, I'm gonna settle with the startlingly realistic human faces of Mass Effect, the OMFG glow on every object in UT3 and GoW, the real-world environments the Source engine brings me, the .jpeg-like surprised and chocked looking Philippine faces and the over-all ridiculously "gorgeous" graphics of Crysis. This is it for me. I don't need any more advancements in technology to transcend my mind into another world of joy, awe and wonder. /sarcasm
I don't know, costs and development cycles have all but decreased and that leads many to believe this has got to stop at some point. Maybe it will, or maybe it will get more efficient (has history taught us anything at all?), but we're a long way from seeing that 1 console future.
|
xper's blog
Follow
RSS
Contact
Technology will never stop...unless we live in a world like idiocracy relatively soon. There also will be another company willing to make new games if these three want to come together and make one i am thinking maybe activision might try their hand next time
Arguments Against :
IF you make a one console to rule them all no one will have passion / identity that they want. Someone will hack the bejesus outta the thing. The network you log onto will cost a bazillion dollars per month. When they experience problems there would be massive uproar. Monopolies pushing crap like Nintendo down our throat. No fanboyism. No FUN!
( Gaming will not be fun anymore. Issn't that the point. It would be all corporate BS...(SONY) Corporate Greed (MS) & CRAP games..... (NInytendo)
no fanboyism = no fun... interesting...
Although people should realize now with powerful systems comes failures and that just because you don't own a PC now doesn't mean you won't get hit by hardware problems.
It all comes down to the fact that people like to make money, and there is a lot of money to gain in video games. It makes more money that the movie business and is approaching the music business, nobody is just going to decide that they are going to stop making consoles.
Never going to happen, the likes of Patcher and Jaffe are just optimists... either that or they pull shit out of thin air.
microsoft, nintendo, sony and some day apple (oops!) would still go at it, but on a different level, somehow. i dunno. they wouldn't make "the same console", but rather different strokes of the same principle. and the "free market" actually pushes towards co-modification of the platforms and artifacts being produced.