The Console War

This rant is more for me than anyone else (plus ca change) as I have been surfing the interblag for most of my lunch time and have come across more than what I consider to be my fair share of supposedly enlightened commentary on the current console war.

I realise I am now adding to the sheer volume of this but at least I’m having the good grace to rant on his blog where members of the public are hugely unlikely to see it.

A traditional place to start when talking about the console war is to go on a lengthy rant talking about which console is best. This is pointless for two reasons. Firstly, it’s all a matter of taste and your opinion is going to be coloured by whatever console you happen to own. Secondly, and most importantly, each of the three current generation consoles is deeply, deeply flawed so the question can’t have a definitive answer.

To briefly summarise the flaws: the PS3 is too expensive and is a bitch to programme for, despite having worse graphics than the 360, so it takes ages to port anything to it. The 360 hardware has a bad case of the gremlins and the Wii doesn’t have any fucking games out.

Each system has individual problems. They all share one huge one: Exclusivity.

So I happen to own two of the consoles: The 360 and the Wii, and these both have exclusive titles. The wii has the Mario games of course, as well as Metroid and Zelda and blah blah blah. The 360 has Gears of War, the PS3 has metal gear solid.

Now. I want to ask one very, very simple question.

Why are these games exclusive to these consoles?

If you’re going to tell me that people will buy the consoles to buy the games for it, I will agree that it’s a logical argument but it’s also totally wrong. If you’ve read this far, you will know as well as I do that neither Sony nor Microsoft make and fucking money from the consoles – it all comes from the games. Also, if Nintendo allowed – for example – Super Smash Brothers Brawl to be released on other systems, they would make infinitely more money than they’d make otherwise from the pitiful profit they make on the consoles they sell.

So console exclusives don’t make any sense. Why do they do it then? Well the only reason I can think of is because it creates a sense of belonging to a CLUB. Humans love to divide themselves into THEM and US situations and it seems to work.

Look at Gears of War. It’s a 360 exclusive and has an attach rate of about 80% (an attach rate, to be slightly patronising, is the number of people who buy a game vs the number of consoles that have been sold). Why is this? Well it’s not because it’s a good game. It’s okay. It’s not bad but compared to something like Call of Duty 4, it’s pathetic.

That doesn’t matter to people, though. People bought it because NO OTHER SYSTEM COULD PLAY IT. Apart from the pc. But no-one cares about them because they’re not proper games. How could they be? They play games on the same machine you use to make SPREAD SHEETS.

So loads of people bought it for the 360. Probably more than would have bought it if it was released for all three consoles because if it hadn’t had that air of exclusivity people would have seen it for what it is – a reasonable game that isn’t as good as a lot of other stuff that’s available.

This is also true of Metal Gear Solid 4 with its half hour cutscenes, Metroid Prime: Corruption with its rinse and repeat gunfights, Halo, Zelda, Heavenly Sword etc. etc. etc.

What’s the problem, then? If these games aren’t anything to write home about, why complain about it?

Well, it hurts us, the consumers.

If people buy titles which aren’t as good as non exclusive titles and then go on and on and on about how great these exclusive titles are – the reviews and sales figures suggest that what people want is not more games like Call of Duty 4 – we want another bloody Halo game.

So what’s the solution? Well, the console makers could try making games only for their console – no multi format releases at all. This would lead to genuine console specialisation. Nintendo have proved that this doesn’t really work though. You could buy all the current generation consoles, which is frankly moronic as the PS3 and 360 are essentially the same system with a very slightly different game library.

Other than those options, there’s not much the consumer can do. Other than wait.

Wait for what?

Well, I don’t know about you, but games consoles are really beginning to resemble PC’s… they have online marketplaces, instant messaging and you can surf the net on some of them. People love these features. So how long will it be before they start bundling a keyboard and mouse with the systems so you can type and surf the net properly?

So once that happens, you’re essentially buying a proper computer, just with a vastly simplified operating system. By that time, because of all the extra stuff that gets put on these systems, you’ll be playing on something that resembles OSX more than PSL and you’ll just be playing games on a home computer that happens to be on your telly.

Current trends (especially with stuff like the Iphone) are towards miniaturisation and homogenisation. Making things smaller and collecting them together. As I don’t know anyone who ones a games console that doesn’t also own a computer, I think that those two devices are going to merge in a few generations time.

Of course, I’m probably wrong. Sorry, you may have wasted your time.