Why is there no Unified Games Platform?

steviec

A random thought occurred to me, when I was reading some article about Blu Ray/HD-DVD...

People are talking about waiting to see which one wins out and it'd be unthinkable that you might end up having to have both a Blu Ray player and a HDDVD player under your tv, so you can watch Movie A on one and Movie B on the other. Yet, this is exactly the situation we've always had in the games industry.

If your 3 favourite games happen to be Halo, Shadow of the Colossus and Zelda, then you've got to buy three different machines if you want to play them all. Imagine if you had to buy an iPod to listen to one band you liked and a Walkman to listen to another.

Now, I'm aware there's obvious technical reasons between more and less powerful consoles, but it's not something that can't be overcome. There are incredible PC games out there that will run equally well on an Athlon processor with an ATI video card as they run on a Pentium processor with an nVidia video card.

So I think it's technically feasable for the different console manufacturers to come together and agree on a common spec(as happens with other forms of media), and it would be better for consumers. Would it be in the console manufacturer's best interests? I'm not sure, Sega have certainly been producing some great games that have sold well on all three platforms over the past few years with no massive losses on failed consoles and no issues with great games like NiGHTS that never reach a viable market because they're attached to one unsuccessful platform.

Just a random thought, I'm probably missing something blatantly obvious but there you go!

projectmayhem

steviec wrote:

Just a random thought, I'm probably missing something blatantly obvious but there you go!

yup... it's a business. that's why. if there was 1 singal unified games platform, we wouldn't be pushing graphics like the next gen consoles are simply because there'd be no need. same as nintendo's "new gen", no way would all the manufactorers agree to make the wii.

Stephen

It was tried before, and failed utterly. Google for '3DO'.

tman

$$$

steviec

projectmayhem wrote:

yup... it's a business. that's why. if there was 1 singal unified games platform, we wouldn't be pushing graphics like the next gen consoles are simply because there'd be no need. same as nintendo's "new gen", no way would all the manufactorers agree to make the wii.

So is the movie industry. Different manufacturers could come up with better codecs and push the quality of their DVDs but they don't, they stick with an agreed standard so all DVDs will play in all DVD players.

I do get what you're saying though obviously, it was just a random idea.

stevenmu

As usuall, when it comes to taking a varied and diverse industry and homogenising it under one monopoly, Microsoft are way ahead of you with XNA. It'll initially just start out on windows pcs and the 360, but if it ends up being a fairly open standard like .Net, people could end up creating implementations for macs, linux and maybe even the PS3. Essentially developers just create games for XNA virtual machines, then any device that has an implementation of the XNA platform can run them. Presumably there'll be different levels to it, full blown XNA for PCs, 360 etc, XNA lite for mobiles and PDAs and so on. Not all that different to Java today, but more specifically game orientated.

Kristok

The reason it dosnt happen is because sony, microsoft and nintendo wouldnt get all the license fees. If say sony outsells microsoft etc then they will make a fortune in fees to produce games for the ps3. If everyone agreed to one platform then they would have to split the fees so no one company would benefit. Also who decides who gets the fees. Say gizmondo want a cut should they get money from fees when they wouldnt get it normally, they are a console manufacturer after all. And whats to stop any company requesting fees you cant just say one company gets it and others dont without a platform to justify their cut. Why should sony even get anything from a fee. Just because they are big now it dosnt mean anything, if we had unified platform sega and commadore would still be riding high.

I see your point but even if you compare it to the home vdeo market there has really only been one generation of home video that had one platform before dvd vhs and betamax had to fight it out just as blue ray and hd-dvd will now. Not that I think either will take over from dvd seeing as a good dvd player with hd output is suppose to be very good quality and not too different from hd-dvd and bluray.

Blub2k4

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX

This was an interesting precursor to the PC which tried something similar.
It was as the article says also the precursor to the console.

Pity they never really took off over here, they were wareztastic.

CiDeRmAn

Yup, 3DO was an attempt at a unified game platform and died a death.
But to a certain extent we already have a single console out there, given that if all you play is Fifa, Need For Speed and GTA it doesn't matter which console you purchase as they are all available with minimal differences in launch dates and looks that what console you own is irrelevant, Xbox/PS2, 360/PS3, only console exclusive titles will make a difference and as development costs increase they will happen less and less often as publishers spread the risk around,.
Therefore it doesn't matter to the average punter what machine they buy, they play the same games regardless, they don't care about Shadow of the Colossus or Katamari and wouldn't/haven't bought them anyway.

Given the Sonys' Playstation series has, so far, allowed flawless compatibility with its previous consoles I guess one could regard it as a overarching single format, requiring merely a 5 yearly update to keep the user up to speed with the latest hardware and software.

steviec

CiDeRmAn wrote:

Given the Sonys' Playstation series has, so far, allowed flawless compatibility with its previous consoles I guess one could regard it as a overarching single format, requiring merely a 5 yearly update to keep the user up to speed with the latest hardware and software.

True to an extent... still I'd love to be able to throw Knights of the Old Republic or Mario Party into my PS2

the_syco

Unified platform... Think DVD, lad. DVD is what won. And now everyone uses it. It'll be the same with blue-ray, etc. One format will win, the others will lose.

flogen

Aye, as people say, it's money.
On the issue of the new formats, this has been the same, but as the_syco has said rather than each format continue to compete, one dies after a few years; BETAMAX vs VHS, DVD vs Laser Disc, 8Track vs Cassette etc., they (BR & HDDVD) did try and come to a common ground to avoid a format war a year or so ago, but failed (not sure if they actually cared), so by the time HDTV's and HD broadcasts are common in Ireland a single HD video format will have come to the fore (although I still find it hard to believe that people will warm to a new format for a very long time yet)

CiDeRmAn

I guess the consoles will settle on a united media platform in time, I mean the de facto games media in the current gen has been DVD and those that used alternate disk formats paid a price, GC for example, not suggesting that that was its only problem, same with the previous gen where the CD based machines were cheap to produce for while the N64 remained expensive due to its reliance on carts.

Kristok

I dont think the game cube using small discs made any difference it just couldnt compete with sonys momentum coming off the ps1 success. Also I dont think a unified media really makes any difference if the discs cant wonk on anything other than the machine it was mde for.

Cunning Alias

I think is kinda a good thing that there isnt a unified platform.With the 3 main consoles you get a market war where the companies have to keep the prices of the consoles fairly low. Last generation microsoft were loosing money on every Xbox that was sold and the PS3 is gonna loose sony a massive amount of money(they make their money back on the games).
Also I think the games would suffer. For every good game released on the PS2 there were 50 rubbish ones. I could see the market going like this if there was one platform.
Finally you wouldnt get any innovation. E.G the Nintendo Wii would never have happened.

gamer

The xbox 360 is really a custom built pc,it will be easy to port games from the pc,to 360 or vice versa, when most people get dual cpu pcs ,if one company had a monopoly they would keep prices high,every company has patents on its own designs /chipsets even down to the design of the controllers.IN 2 years time there will be loads of games for the ps3 or 360, so choose the system that has the most games you like ,i think the 360 is a better bet cos it has the xbox live system, if you have broadband and like to play online games.Theres no way to get time to play all the games that are released anyway.

steviec

gamer wrote:

The xbox 360 is really a custom built pc,it will be easy to port games from the pc,to 360 or vice versa, when most people get dual cpu pcs ,if one company had a monopoly they would keep prices high,every company has patents on its own designs /chipsets even down to the design of the controllers.IN 2 years time there will be loads of games for the ps3 or 360, so choose the system that has the most games you like ,i think the 360 is a better bet cos it has the xbox live system, if you have broadband and like to play online games.Theres no way to get time to play all the games that are released anyway.

Almost always though, the best games are the single platform ones. Obviously nobody is going to play every game on every console, but I certainly expect to end up with all three so I get to play the specific games I want.

If all three consoles shared a common architecture, it would be good for us because we'd only have to buy one machine, there'd still be plenty of competition and much more of a price war because Sony couldn't charge twice as much as anyone else and count on having better games to lure customers. It would be better for developers who would have a much bigger market for every game they produce without having to worry about porting(allowing them in turn to take more chances on innovative games). It'd be less confusing for parents who don't need to know what platform their kid owns. Sony and Microsoft wouldn't have to break the bank trying to outdo eachother technologically, while Nintendo would find a much much larger market for their software, which should take precedence over hardware anyway.

I suppose we can just wait till Microsoft inevitably take over the market over the next couple of generations... And maybe they won't feel the need to build their own hardware, after all running their software on the systems of many many different hardware manufacturers is the philosophy Microsoft was built on in the PC industry.

conzy

If there was a standard for console games like DirectX or OGL it would be a lot better....

Sony and Microsoft could battle it out to build the fastest systems, while Nintendo could decide to sell bang for buck systems.......

HALO could have "plays best on Xbox360" or MGS4 could have "PS3 the way its meant to be played" written on the box...

Sony, MS and Nintendo would still make a lot of money, But Console prices would go up as they would need to make less of a loss or even a profit on the machines...............

Why doesnt everyone just buy PCs?????:D

steviec

conzymaher wrote:

If there was a standard for console games like DirectX or OGL it would be a lot better....

Sony and Microsoft could battle it out to build the fastest systems, while Nintendo could decide to sell bang for buck systems.......

HALO could have "plays best on Xbox360" or MGS4 could have "PS3 the way its meant to be played" written on the box...

Sony, MS and Nintendo would still make a lot of money, But Console prices would go up as they would need to make less of a loss or even a profit on the machines...............

Why doesnt everyone just buy PCs?????:D

Yea that's the sort of thing I'm thinking of.

And I know PCs are pretty much there now - but a box specifically for games under the tv that i can play using a joypad from the couch, and one on which I don't need to worry about installations and all the crap associated with PC gaming.

BLITZ_Molloy

The industry needs competition. When Nintendo were #1 in the late 80's they absolutely fleeced the consumer. The EU fined them a huge amount of money 3 or 4 years ago for price fixing during the NES and SNES eras. The third party developers got stuck with all kinds of unfavourable (and illegal) contracts too.

flogen

steviec wrote:

Yea that's the sort of thing I'm thinking of.

And I know PCs are pretty much there now - but a box specifically for games under the tv that i can play using a joypad from the couch, and one on which I don't need to worry about installations and all the crap associated with PC gaming.

The Phantom?

steviec

flogen wrote:

The Phantom?

Well, if it actually existed it might be alright!

CiDeRmAn

To tell the truth if we had one games format we would all lose big time, the only thing pushing the various genres forward is the need to produce the best single format title possible in its niche to help sell its native hardware.
This means that while Sony push Gran Turismo as the greatest of all, Microsoft push Project Gotham and so on, demanding more and more from their development teams to create more alluring and attractive titles to make you or I rush out and buy that format.
Similarly see the release of Mario64 and then Sony rushing tocatch up throughout the PS1s lifespan with Crash and Spyro, with only one format we would see bland retreads of a couple of IPs in each genre.
This is evident in the areas of gaming where one IP already has a defacto monopoly on a given gametype. FIFA is a case and point, a cynical cash-in releasing and re-releasing the same game with minimal alterations while the common public buy it thinking "this is great!", not thinking "here I go again, buying the same game for the third time this year!", imagine this writ large over every genre, no FPS titles bar Killzone?, no RPGs bar FinalFantasy?, no racing games bar Outrun?, not to mention the legions of cheap cash-in that would attempt to emulate the games that are the market leaders in such a nightmare scenario, remember the days of the Snes and Megadrive, all the crap platformers and fighters that were mere shadows of the games at the top of the charts.

No, competition drives creativity, drives prices down, and results in more innovation as people try for a bigger piece of the money in Joe Gamers pocket, otherwise we would spend the rest of our lives playing Virtua Fighter knockoffs and RidgeRacer, not a pretty thought!

steviec

Software should be competing with software though. Software is the the heart of the industry. To take your example, neither PGR 3 or GT4 were big improvements on their prequels. Maybe, just maybe, if they were both on the same platform and had to compete with eachother(rather than me, as a playstation owner at the time, automatically buying GT4 because there was no other option without throwing a few hundred quid at a different console) then that would push them further.

In the case of FIFA, maybe the game would be better if they had one platform to work with rather than having to port it to a million different systems, which leaves less time to work on the important things. FIFA should be competing with PES, and the hardware shouldn't matter.

Again, if you look at Blu Ray and HD-DVD, it's not like Sony are making extra-great movies in order to push Blu Ray, movies compete with movies, the format they come on doesn't matter.

gamer

i think in 2 years time you,ll get pcs with hd dvd or blue ray installed anyway,its up to the user to choose ,they havent even designed graphics cards with hdcp drm yet ,if you get a new grahics card now it will not play hdvd movies anyway,whatever disk format they are on .

madrab

think IBM

they make all the processors for the next consoles

conzy

CiDeRmAn wrote:

To tell the truth if we had one games format we would all lose big time, the only thing pushing the various genres forward is the need to produce the best single format title possible in its niche to help sell its native hardware.
This means that while Sony push Gran Turismo as the greatest of all, Microsoft push Project Gotham and so on, demanding more and more from their development teams to create more alluring and attractive titles to make you or I rush out and buy that format.
Similarly see the release of Mario64 and then Sony rushing tocatch up throughout the PS1s lifespan with Crash and Spyro, with only one format we would see bland retreads of a couple of IPs in each genre.
This is evident in the areas of gaming where one IP already has a defacto monopoly on a given gametype. FIFA is a case and point, a cynical cash-in releasing and re-releasing the same game with minimal alterations while the common public buy it thinking "this is great!", not thinking "here I go again, buying the same game for the third time this year!", imagine this writ large over every genre, no FPS titles bar Killzone?, no RPGs bar FinalFantasy?, no racing games bar Outrun?, not to mention the legions of cheap cash-in that would attempt to emulate the games that are the market leaders in such a nightmare scenario, remember the days of the Snes and Megadrive, all the crap platformers and fighters that were mere shadows of the games at the top of the charts.

No, competition drives creativity, drives prices down, and results in more innovation as people try for a bigger piece of the money in Joe Gamers pocket, otherwise we would spend the rest of our lives playing Virtua Fighter knockoffs and RidgeRacer, not a pretty thought!

PC games all play on the one platform, and look how much innovation and competition there has been in the last few years.........

@madrab, Although IBM make all the next gen console's CPUs, they are all very different in design...

The PS3 uses a Cell proccesser (which doesnt work yet BTW)
The Xbox 360 uses a tri core Processer with each core capable of running two harware threads each
The Wii's CPU is unconfirmed, but is rumoured to be a 700mhz dual core part.....

Now a game written to take advantage of the Cell or the Xbox 360's CPU could not be easily ported to the Wii....

madrab

yeah but what are the odds on a game actually utilising the 360/cell processor to its full extend within the next 2 years?

projectmayhem

madrab wrote:

yeah but what are the odds on a game actually utilising the 360/cell processor to its full extend within the next 2 years?

gears of war is a likely contender IMO

wayne040576

gamer wrote:

i think in 2 years time you,ll get pcs with hd dvd or blue ray installed anyway,its up to the user to choose ,they havent even designed graphics cards with hdcp drm yet ,if you get a new grahics card now it will not play hdvd movies anyway,whatever disk format they are on .

Alienware have already started selling high end pcs with blu-ray drives. Although
from what i heard, it will add an extra $999 to the cost.

madrab

projectmayhem wrote:

gears of war is a likely contender IMO

is that just speculation?