Are console wars good for gaming?

I think the generation shift we are in now will be even worse than previous console wars, mainly due to the ease at which everyone seems to jump on any mistake, and the ease at which you can point and laugh on the internet.

I sincerely hope the PS3 struggles this generation, if only to force developers and publishers to release worthy content. If the 360 and PS3 are running about level (which would be PS3 struggling by most standards), then hopefully that should mean nothing but boom for consumers. If either take a massive lead, then it will bring back the laziness of the Playstation era, where telling the difference between each game became an increasingly difficult task.

R.I.P. Dreamcast. You did serve us well during your brief time with us.

: D

The end result of a system like this will always be a monopoly. That's just how math works.

of course it is. unless you would like to be playing twisted metal 12 on ps5 or halo cart racing on xbox 3 right now.

The "console war" is what has given us the great gaming experiences we have today. Console companies must constantly come out with new features in their consoles in order to keep their market share. If there was no "console war" there would be no incentive for companies to innovate nearly as fast as they do, which means we would not have the high tech stuff we have nearly as fast as we have it. If a company stops making consoles to make games full time (Sega), that only means that they feel they are better at that and will make more money that way. Things change and companies come and go, thats how markets work. Its economics, and it applies to everything, even video games.

Forget competition, it's all about the joy a fanboy feels when their company of choice is kicking the competition in the posterior. Ahh! DS FTW!101lolhehe

yeah, but what happens when somebody "wins" the console war?

>> 3:
I don't see why he lost stars, I think Halo Cart Racing would be a welcome change to the series ^.^

I don't know how good it is for the gaming industry, but its great for us consumers.

Just look at the Nintendo era in its early days...they were so market dominant they'd trot anything out there and we'd bite. It wasn't until a real contender, Sega, came along that we saw the super nintendo and Nintendo 64. Without that competition I am sure we'd still playing 64 bit games today.

Asinine. The death of the Dreamcast had less to do with the console war itself and more with Sega's inability to properly shift to new platforms.

Xbox has the jump on P3 this time around. I'm getting older now (26), and I've seen many battles in the console wars. The unit that hits the market first ALWAYS does better. Plusssss, the price difference? Come on! I've spoken to so many people about this and I've yet to meet one person who says they are going to buy a P3 simply because they can't afford it. I have a $5000 gaming PC so I don't care either way :) hehe

I don't know #7... yes the SNES had some of the greatest games ever made (thanks to healthy competition form Sega, as you said), but I think the NES had some classics all on its own before Sega was any real contender. Are you saying Burger Time was NOT a great game?!

Think about it this way : Would any of you really want to see what Microsoft or Sony would do if they were the "only game in town" so to speak? Just look what MS is doing with their consumable microtransactions they're planning. If that's any indication of what they're willing to allow on Live when there will be competition, just think what we'd get if there were none. Without the competition, we as gamers would be screwed. See : EA having the NFL exclusive rights.

Yes true but if there was no compitetion in development then that would eliminate the need to rush games out the door. Thus making games that are bigger and more creative.

#11... That's not exactly accurate, you'll still have companies rush games out so their's sells. That doesn't have much to do with a console war, as various publishers will still be competing to get their game out on the same console.

Its a war.There will be casualties.
But is it good for us gamers? Hell yea!

1 word...exclusives

"yeah, but what happens when somebody "wins" the console war?"
Well Sony won the last 2 console wars. So..either companys step up their game to take down the champion, wich will result in more competition(wich is good)ex: Xbox 360. Or companys just give up and go extinct.Ex: Like the Dreamcast. Why DID the Dreamcast go bye-bye excactly?

Competition is a good thing, if only for the fact that it keeps console companies developing products for its audience and not because they think it's good for the public. Without competition, we would not have CD/ DVD based media, new imput methods, new ways of gaming. We would not have any innovation because there would be no reason to innovate.

And for an example of this look at ET on the 2600. Atari thought it was a license to print money, and made the antihesis of what #11 wants... a poorly developed, poorly executed product.

I see your point. I need to wake up. Now back on console wars. I feel that console wars have both positive and negative effects on gaming. A positive side is that it brings new ideas to the table with controllers, games and hardware so that companies can counter their competition. A negative side is that when a company gains too much power or money they forget about the comsumer and just worry about making more money without putting alot of effort into their next installment.(MS & Sony).

The same reason why a sequel to a great movie or music album is not better than the original, because they lose the drive and it becomes all about the money.

The Dreamcast went goodbye because Sony successfully launched a fud campaign preventing DC from selling through enough units before PS2 launch to reach critical mass.

The lack of unit sales and associated money making games (which was another problem, the post launch scarcity of good games for nearly a year) only exacerbated SEGA's already Very Poor financial condition. They had already been rated as junk bonds, and they reached a point where they were unable to aquire new financing. Without any money to produce consoles and games...SEGA was forced to stop making products that lost money, i.e. consoles.

Many of the studios that had been spun off also ended up facing the harsh reality of games that didn't sell well. For example, United Game Artists was forced to merge with Sonic Team, Inc. after Space Channel 5, Space Channel 5: 2, and Rez failed to move enough units to keep them afloat.

And then, subsequently, Sonic Team, Inc. itself was merged back into SEGA. The merge back into SEGA and the demand to create immediately profitable games may have been the reason that Yuji Naka decided to leave SEGA (lack of creative freedom, although he would never say such a thing, he's a company man to the core...imagine if Miyamoto decided to leave Nintendo...this is the same thing).

How is competition anything BUT good for gaming? Yes, it stunk to lose Dreamcast and yes, it's terrible when beloved companies go the way of the dodo, but think of a world without competition. Think of what Nintendo would be like if they were not beaten over the head with the CD-ROMS of the PlayStation. We'd still be gaming on carts. Heck, I submit that we might still be playing with the Nintendo 64. Additionally, to blame Sega's demise on competition alone seriously overlooks the following multi-million dollar debacles:

1) the Sega CD
2) the Sega 32X
3) the Sega Saturn

Although I was a big enough sucker to invest in some of these items, Sega lost more than the GNP of a medium-sized second world country on this stuff- and if you *have* money, you can afford to lose a console battle and come back with another iteration of a console (see Microsoft, Nintendo et al). But if you're broke because you blew your cash on horrendously bad marketing decisions, you might end up in the corporate equivalent of living in a van down by the river and be marginalized as a peripheral player.

The bottom line is this: while I will acknowledge that there are true artists out there in the gaming industry who care deeply about their products and want to offer us the best possible gaming experience, the large majority of companies out there exist only to please their shareholders and make an assload of money. If they could do that by spending $400 on development costs and selling us dogcrap on a stick like the previously mentioned Atari 2600 ET, they would do it in a second. It is only competition that forces the drive to innovate, to spend millions of dollars in r&d to come up with new, fantastic things at which we just can't help but throw our hard earned money.

Even if we really should know better.

Damn you Sega CD!

Anway, on topic:

Console wars can be bad for gamers and developers because of the lack of a stable platform. Most consoles only really hit their full on creative bonanza with really great titles that look great, perform great, and have massive amounts of creativity on display in the last year before the next round of console launches.

Developers have the expense of transitioning to new platforms, the general lack of sales that having a smaller install base creates, and so forth.

However...I think that now that we are in the 3D era for good, we are probably in for at least one more round of the console war. PC games are a huge part of the equation now, and until the tech stabilizes (hasn't yet), then eventually new consoles will have to arrive or they will compare poorly to reasonably priced PCs with better performance.

IMHO, the 2D era reached it's ultimate stage in the fourth generation (Saturn and Playstation). Excepting the memory limitations of those machines, they were entirely capable of generating the level of graphical complexity that we enjoy now in 2D games. Really the only advancements since then have been related to larger memory capacity, not the ability of systems to push more sprites or anything of that sort.

The last generation was the 3D equivalent of the 8-bit era. We should be in the golden days of 3D right now. The race between the console makers is going to be tight, and one side will eke out a slight victory. I would not be surprised if we see a new contestant in the next cycle, as well as a potentially radical shift in gaming that won't be terribly well implemented yet, but will point to the future.

2D ERA

NES------8 bit
SNES-----16 bit in the prime
GEN------16 bit in the prime

3D era

PSX-----8 bit
N64-----8 bit
PS2-----16 bit prime
XBOX----16 bit prime
GCUBE---16 bit prime
Wii-----32 bit

HD 3D ERA

360-----8 bit
PS3-----8 bit

I'm not sure if this analogy is apt, but I'll throw it out there...

Look at the current state of PC gaming. The platform has been hurting for a number of years now. The low level of support for Mac and Linux gaming turned Windows into a practical monopoly for personal computer gaming... and look what's happened... The platform has weekend significantly, possibly helped by the fact that microsoft was able to hang onto Direct X 8/9 for so long due to zero competition from other OS developers. I'm not saying that there hasn't been innovation from game developers, but if Microsoft would have been forced to develop better tools (ie DirectX 10) sooner, maybe we would have seen even better results from game makers.

Competition is good.
But with certain boundaries.

Competition always has a dark side.
The desire to one-up another can lead to evil or deceptive practices if one company's ambition begins to exceed its ethics.

Steroids in sports exists BECAUSE of competition.
People make a big to-do about this kind of thing but they fail to realize that the pressure to best everyone else can make some people do whatever it takes by any means necessary to get ahead.
It's the prestige of the famed #1 position & all the perks that go with it that causes some to do desperate underhanded things to excel.

I'm a great Nintendo supporter which you may know if you have read any of my posts. I realize the good they've done for the industry over the decades.
But even *I* would say that for them to be unchallenged is a BAD thing.

When they saved the industry from the crash of the mid-80's they were predominant over the major territories USA & homebase Japan. That dominance had its purpose in maintain gaming as a pastime & furthering it as a cultural force.
But it had a bad side in that Nintendo became father-figure-like to its 3rd party developers & authoritarian in regards to competition.

The United States courts had to bust that attitude up & it was for the better that that happened.
Nintendo would have had us playing 8-bit probably well into the mid-90's if they had their way. Why fix what ain't broke, right?

When NEC's PC Engine/Turbo Grafx 16 & Sega's Mega Drive/Genesis came onto the scene by the late 80's, it increased the value of gaming for the gameplayers giving us an eventual era of the richest gaming we saw in the 16-bit era.
Their more powerful systems designed to uproot the overlordian Nintendo & their Famicom/NES forced Nintendo to innovate which resulted in the Super Famicom/SNES & all that followed in that golden era.

Nintendo's understandable but censorish policy on blood in the game Mortal Kombat gave Sega an edge & gave consumers a choice.
This move forced Nintendo to ease up a little on that "fathery" attitude that sought to censor game material. When Mortal Kombat II came out Nintendo opposed by the competition had to relent & release the game to its original artistic vision as they would do for future games.

And Nintendo's attitude toward 3rd party was tempered as well with competition from Sega & especially Sony. They suffered as a result of this in the past 2 generations & have learned from their old mistakes.

It is Competition what brought this about.
Console wars are good for gaming just as long as ethics remain in place.

Sony in order to get an edge over Nintendo & Sega used pointed—some would say—untruthful marketing to dilute the aforementioned fanbases & draw away their developers. Their products didn't stand the test of time because all of their focus was on conquering the game market as yet another extension of media/electronic authorship. Valuable concerns about product durability & reliability were put on the backburner in the heat of competition.

Now after success we see Sony filled with their own arrogance with jacked-up prices & absurd analogic statements about fine dining among countless other snafus. THEY must be countered now so that the integrity of the gaming industry is maintained.

There should NEVER be ANY company with 100% marketshare. Competition is life for this industry. But it should never be anarchic. Ethics has to temper the excesses of competition or it becomes cancerous.

As for console wars & the consoles' respective devoted groups? It has a plus & a minus. It can lead people to into unnecessary diviseness & thoughtless anger. A general loss of civility in the sports game of rooting for your favorite console.

Like in politics & the cliché misused/overused insults of "liberal", "neocon" and their various formations...
...we in the gameworld have to deal with the tragedy of the word "FANBOY" OVERused to the same dishearting depressing context.

It's like it's back to the preschool/kindergarten playground at the swingset/monkeybars & "DOO DOO HEAD/POO POO HEAD".
It has the same kind of delivery & essential meaning. Meaning its meaninglessness.

If there's ANYTHING that is bad from the existence of console wars it's the misapplied misaligned misguided FANBOY retort to any & everything said by those who are in disagreement on a discussion topic.

Console wars create a sportsteam atmosphere for the gaming public like soccer/football & American football where it's supposed all in fun to root for a certain team to "WIN". And console wars evolve the industry to advancement. But they also make people miss the point of the whole thing as well on both sides of the coin.

Games are all about fun.
ENJOY.

Gamemakers AND gameplayers would do well to keep this in mind. There's serious business involved of course but never let the competition aspect blind you to what this is all about.

Regardless of who you root for.
John Lucas

off topic? yes.
important? if you like poker, yes
texas hold 'em is now out, the site linked in my name has an article about it.

DannyOB

When I grow up I want to be like you John Lucas. Good comment.

Socialism doesnt work. If you dont like competition go play your N64. No one is trying to compete with that.

Everything's bound to have a dark side. It's the realities of life. Saying that the Video Game industry would be better off without any form of competition is not only a bad business model, it's also unconstitutional(I do recall Nintendo getting in trouble for monopolistic stunts in the late 1980s/early 1990s)

So, like it or not, people will have to get use to competition in the video game business.

Without Microsoft would sony have bothered with online? without Nintendo would Sony have bothered creating their own franchies to compete? Without the 360 would we have seen the PS3 this side of 2010? Without Sony would MS have bothered with supporting a cheap HDDVD drive for the Xbox?

And without Sony making the industry 10x larger would MS have bothred at all?

Its clear that although publishers and devlopers would probably love a single format the fact that there are 3 excellent machines this generation can only be good for the consumer imo.

Sometimes I wish there were one console, or every console was compatible with each game. We would be so much more peaceful then. But, of course, there are flaws to that...that would mean one console per generation....then the world might have been deprived of some of the greatest consoles ever. (The N64, for example.) Hmm.

it goes both ways i guess, in the example of the dreamcast, after Sega's console division folded, they became a 3rd party and put out quite a few really good games for all platforms since they didn't have to compete with the hardware anymore. and i think Sega's name has earned them back some of that respect they once had because of it.

When there is no competition there will be stagnation and monopoly.

Only one word i can think for a reason why we need competition in gaming and that word is..................................................................................."Madden".

While I acknowledge that competition is a big factor in the development of new ways of gaming, I don't think it's the main reason for it. Companies innovate because customers get bored, but creating games is not all about the companies. Many developers create games because they have a vision, and the development of new technology or the use of it (which eventually happens, as we have seen with most things, ranging from shavers to portable TV's) is a way to achieve
what they want for they game. The advance in the console market not only answers to competition, but also to the context where both gamers and developers/creators flock around.
Sony has dominated the market since the PS1, and Microsoft leaping into the race isn't that big of a deal, mainly because their sales aren't that
high and because the Xbox clung to what the PS2 wasn't capable of. Now I'm not saying the Xbox is a bad console or anything, but the only original thing about it was the creation of certain games that could have been creatd only for the PC (such as Halo 1 and 2) and the use of more powerful technology, something that, in the end, isn't as important as some of us think it is (being the NDS a great example).

I agree that having a monopoly sucks, but luckily
for us companies want to make a buck or two with what is already selling, and it's very unlikely that any company will actually dominate the market. Even though Nintendo lost its predominancy on the console market always had the edge on the portable console world, so we can see a little example at how Nintendo manages a market without competition. The GBA was a great handheld, but one can see the fatherly figure the guy who wrote the article talks about. I mean, DooM with green blood? When the PSP came out, it was the first time a real option surfaced (unless you think the NGage and the Game Gear were opponents for the mighty GB), and it has divided gamers as much as it happened when the N64 and the PS1 were part of the market.

With Nintendo shifting to a wider audience, it is hard to foresee the future of the industry, but some things will remain, things like competition. Is it good? Just as long as gamers get what they want
and not just what companies try to sell.

Just my 2 cents :D

John Lucas your comment kicked ass... They should just post that up as a topic from the gamers point of view and not some random analyst that doesn't know much about the industry.

Well, I personally have come to the conclusion that as long as there is some impetus to strive hard for the customer's dollar, a video game company will do well.

For the most part, the console wars do that today. The various console manufacturers know that people have lots of choices, so they've got to stand out in order to really catch attention. They're forced to make quality products and innovate to keep from being destroyed in the marketplace, which is why the marketplace is supporting three consoles at the moment (well, I suppose four technically, but the Xbox is on its last legs in part due to its successor).

As for the NES, Nintendo was forced to produce quality product because they had to rebuild their own industry in the United States. It was actually lower than any previous point in history - as there was an active distrust of video game consoles in the United States as the NES launched. They were technically competing then, too. It's just that they weren't competing against Sega as much as they were competing against the failures of Intellivision, Atari, et al.

John Lucas is right in that competition, like anything else, has its dark side. The competition problems he cites did have a hand in 1983. We sadly live in an imperfect world. However, I believe the indolence that would set in because of an uncompetitive environment would be worse.

Yes, console wars are good for gaming. It's called capitalism. Che Guevara may not like it, but it works.

Why are we arguing this?

TRUTH, great analogy.

3D technology has a long way to go: real-time ray-tracing and realistic characters that look like real human actors. There's still room for 2 more generations of HD gaming consoles.

J.Goodwin said:
“PC games are a huge part of the equation now, and until the tech stabilizes (hasn't yet), then eventually new consoles will have to arrive or they will compare poorly to reasonably priced PCs with better performance.”

The technology has never been a problem for PC gaming, it’s the lack of no 1st party availably (because no complete standard) and the fact the Nintendo,Microsoft Games and Sony can afford to take a loss on the system is because of licensing deals and first party sales always make up the cost. You have too many PC manufactures (Dell/alienware, HP, XG, Gateway, IBM etc) that make no money in PC gaming software therefore can’t really chance at taking losses on top what they already take on some of there PC’s. One could argue that you save money just build your on PC to save money, but many Americans actually have the skills let alone the will to do that. PC gaming will never be as big as console gaming unless they can over come the cost it takes to even “fight” in a console war……

TRUTH:

There were video games before the NES. You may not be aware of them, but they exist.

I think that competition is needed. In a sports competition you will 'always' achieve better results as when you would be sporting alone.
Without competition in the games market, or in any market whatsoever, there would be a monopoly. And nowadays everyone tries to open up a free market, as it gives certain benefits to the costumer. For example, cheaper price tags, better quality and most important, a choice.

Some of you may argue, bringing up that it would be best if the whole industry worked together. Cooperation instead of competetion. However, this is an utopia. I doubt it will happen within the games industry.

Just my opinion, feel free to comment

I know they exist I just shortened it up a bit.

I happen to disagree about the quality of SEGA's games post hardware.

There have been a couple exceptions (Otogi), but the vast majority of SEGA's output has been really shitty rehashes and sequels. Their best games recently only have SEGA as a publisher (Condemned, and Chromehounds, whatever your view is on those).

That company is less than a shell of it's former self. Which is sad.

1st Generation

atari 2600
commadore
coleco

2nd Generation -2D 8 bit

nes
sega master system
atari 7800

3rd Generation -2D 16 bit

snes
sega gen
sega cd

4th Generation -3D 32 bit

psx
3do

5th Generation -3d 64 bit

64
atari jaguar
sega saturn

6th Generation -3D 64 to 256 bit era

dreamcast
ps2
gamecube
xbox
wii

7th -HD 3D era

360
ps3

I think the competition is great for gaming but when a company proactively tries to undermine another in an attempt to drive it out of business it can have a negative effect: it may put one of the companies out of business and decrease the amount of competition. Competition is what drives progress and evolution. When you cut one producer out of the equation, innovation can suffer. Let's say (just for example, I'm not insinuating anything here) that the gamecube ruined nintendo (and they didn't have an excellent portable game franchise to make up for it); the console war would be between the PS3 and X360. That would be pretty boring wouldn't it? PS3 probably wouldn't even have the "motion sensor" and there would just be two very similar machines dukeing it out over superior graphics.

Console wars might be good for people who like to spend a lot on their hobby, but people like me get screwed in the butt. I'm not going to buy more than one console in a generation, so that means I lose out on a ton of exclusives. I'm all for competition, I just think there's one to many big consoles out there right now. Somebody's got to bail, only all three players have so much money there's no chance of it happening anytime soon.

Whatta drag.

Competition is good, yes, but it requires that the players in the war be fairly well matched. It is easily considered that the PSX and PS2 generations were functionally non-competetive due to a disproportionate sales favor toward the Sony systems. This is easily evident when noting the lack of game-centered advancement between the PSX and PS2. The types of games we saw on the PS2 were perfectly functional on the PSX, albeit not as pretty and spanning more disks. The addition of a DVD drive didn't change the gameplay experience, just allowed developers to produce titles on a single disk. The same can be said from PS2 to PS3. When you remove the non-game functions like BluRay, Internet browsing, and all the other multimedia functions, the PS3 is little more than a supercharged PS2. Graphical jumps are in no way a new generation. If that were the case, every single console ever made would be given its own genreation because inevitably one was better looking than another. The PS2 would be an older generation than the Gamecube which in turn would be an older generation than the Xbox.

Strong competition is what drove the NES to SNES evolution. SEGA drove the need for Nintendo to add more buttons and shoulder cannons, offering gamers new ways to play games with more options. Nintendo also further put an analog stick and analog functionalities to the controler in the N64 to try and keep up with a competetive drive. This was beat out by the more prudent use of the CD medium to keep costs down. The general public was fairly adament on saving $20 per title than having an analog stick. Unfortunately, this allowed Sony to have a massive market share which in turn told executives what they have is perfectly fine and wouldn't need anything more than a turbo added to the hardware for the next system. Thus, competition failed.

So, yes, competition is good for gaming. But, we haven't had any competition for 10 years, and if any console this generation repeats the PS2's success in the last, then gaming will suffer on a whole.

As Apple has proven time and time again in the operating systems market, simply being there isn't competing. Because of Microsoft's dominance in that market, the only time we see any significant advances is when Microsoft starts seeing sales of the previous OS declining, then makes an overhaul. In that kind of environment, major advances only arrive when they are convenient to the leader's pocketbook. The advances of the others are simply ignored and later assimilated into the leader's product. Much like the DualShock (both original and 2) as well as the PS3's hard drive and Xbox Live alternative.

Thankfully, this round of console battles is going to be a bit more difficult for anyone to outright win. When a console wins the war, the consumer loses. When no console wins, then the consumer is the winner. When the big winner, in this case Sony, starts assimilating technology BEFORE the start of the battle, then they are acknowleding this is going to be a tough battle. Sony may have a lot of bluster about them, but they know the next 5-6 years won't be a walk in the park they're used to having.

Competition is good, and this time, competition will allow the gaming industry out of the rut it has been in for some time. Amazing new titles shouldn't come out at sporadic times but all the time.

Oh wait, I forgot my main point. I think a lot of you forget that game companies aren't only competing against each other, but also against all the other forms of entertainment people spend their money on. When consoles battle it out against one another, they're basically fighting over the same fanbase, which seems to be dwindling as people grow out of games and less kids are getting into them (this is fact backed up by numbers, by the way.)

In this system, innovations come in the way of better graphics, more complex control schemes, and a whole bunch of other small, incremental improvements. This benefits the hardcore gamer who cares about stuff like that, but further alienates the remainder of consumers who are happier to spend their money on movies, tv show dvds, and golf.

As long as the industry continues to move towards focusing on this increasingly splintering niche of hardcore gamers, it will result in a less-than-ideal situation for the rest of us.

How come nobody acknowledged Sega's #1 Problem with the Dreamcast: Rampant Piracy.

Quoting #9:

"The unit that hits the market first ALWAYS does better."

Tell that to Saturn and Dreamcast, both of which got their heads kicked in by Sony hardware that was released afterwards.

Or maybe tell it to the 3DO and Jaguar, which were the first cosoles of their respective power on the market, both of which had their arse handed to them by 'inferior' older technology from a previous generation.

I don't disagree that the 360 will give the PS3 a kicking though, but I completely disagree with your reasoning.