KDR_11k, wrote:
"Problem with a standardized console would be that console hardware has to be fixed and you'll have a hard time getting a bunch of manufacturers agree on a specific hardware leayout. Unlike movie players there's no point where a console is good enough, you can always use more power. Then you'd have to agree on a standard controller (Wiimote? dualshock? GC? 360?) and common menu controls (X confirms, /\ or O cancels, depending on the game?). And then you'd have to hope that thing actually works well enough that e.g. Nintendo won't just make their own thing and beat the "standard" console."
OK, I have read enough about EA´s dangerous idea.
I think that there will never be any one standardized console. It all sort of reminds me of the scene in the first Lord of the Rings movie - the meeting headed by Lord Elrond where the leaders of the various races of people met at Imladros to discuss the fate of the One Ring. And what did we get? A huge fight, instead of an accord. All because of the question of who would bring the Ring to destruction. None of most of the delegates trusted any of the others, and accused them of what they were themselves: hungry for the power they thought the Ring would give them. As we learn from watching the extra-material included in the trilogy, Tolkien himself based his inspiration for the creation of the LotR story partly on the experiences he had undergone as a soldier in WW1 where the true nature of human beings for good and for bad was revealed to him. He incorporated that into the struggle between good and evil in a tale inclusive of his own languages about a dark lord and a Ring of Power this despot had created to gain final dominion of all life.
So that story is usefull here, to describe what I think will happen if they ever try to get the multiple gamemakers to agree on a standardized console: war, that leads to nothing. The delegates in the LotR story were fortunate to have Frodo, for without him there would have never been a carrier of it. And it would most certainly have fallen into Saurons hands somehow.
If EA ever has their way, despite my prediction, I believe it will soon be toppled by some sort of coalition of gamemakers who will fight it for the reason that they can see its massively destructive implications on the market long-term. And after they manage to topple the seeming "coup-attempt" by EA, the market will suffer from chaos as gamers will fight among themselves for- and against the one console system. This will directly hurt profits from console makers, as they now have to fight 1)the ocean of crap games flooding onto the one console that made it to it prior to the undoing of it, and 2) a divided gaming world hurting profits enourmously, and 3)their own inability to convince the gaming public that good games will "soon" be back on new consoles. The damage will be done, and it will take years of PR repair before people will again trust games. In the time that follows such a scenario, more and more gaming companies will go under in the profitless time, and this will have even more impact to the negative for creativity which formerly enriched the videogame market appealing as it did to every taste in games. The result will be a 2. collapse of the videogame market which will teach people that multiple consoles is the only way or no way.
This whole "one machine to control all games", reminds me of communism. At first the founders of communism was agreeing to be fair and square in their handling of absolute power over the lands they had under them - which they didn´t keep. Instead they began to fight among themselves over petty power, and winded up becoming awefully corrupt, and soon strayed from every promise they ever made. This is vividly demonstrated in the cartoon "Animal Farm", which is an allegory referring in its simplicity directly to the complicated, but fatefull events that took place in the Russian communist party and which lead to total collapse of any democratic future for that country. I use that example because I don´t ever believe in anything such as one power, or console, controlling all.
If the people that run the game industry have learned anything from history, they will ignore the EA idea as fantasy and move on.
If anything, there will at the very end instead be only one or two consolemakers, and the name Nintendo will definitely be the one or one of them. Now I will go back to my Wii, and play away.
Topic: One console to rule them all. (Read 13614 times)
