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[JinjoUnchained]

I went back and re-read the piece just now. I still agree with the fundamental arguments -- now more than ever!

What's up, Chris? Always enjoy your work on Wired and I think your article "Videogames Can't Afford to Cost This Much" should be required reading for all anti-consumer apologists in the gaming industry.

I have to side with you on this one too and against the OP. 2 years ago, when this article was released, you had the peak of the "gaming consoles are turning into entertainment hubs" movement. Since then, MS followed that stale trend right off the cliff when designing the XBox One, an underpowered and overpriced box that charged a premium for being the best all-in-one media center. Consequently, it's getting pantsed by the PS4 as the all-in-one media features are migrating over to cheaper streaming solutions like Smart TVs and Roku. Although XBox One has some high quality exclusive content, many consumers have decided that they can get by just fine with PC/iOS/Android gaming and don't need a $500 console as a gateway to quality gaming content.

So was Sony right then for stepping away from the all-in-one media craze and designing an optimized gaming box? Does that prove that the home console is not dead or dying? I'm not so sure that launch disproves your thesis, as OP contends. It certainly sold through at record numbers to gaming afficianados at launch. But I think we'll have to see a few more NPDs to see if that market is big enough to sustain the level of profits that Sony or MS would need to continue home console investment. The January NPD wasn't promising. Neither are the rumblings from disaffected investors. Looking ahead, we don't see a particularly robust release schedule for PS4/XOne, suggesting that many content providers are moving to other platforms. Part of their business success or failure is forecasting if that market is big enough to consistently support. So if they're not making much AAA exclusive content for home consoles, what does that tell you about the size of the market?

Point is, it's too early to tell, but the trends are moving away from console gaming as we know it. And successful console launches do not negate the original thesis of your article, as OP suggests.

 

[Freshmaker]

The sales of GTA V, and now the PS4, have wiped this argument off the face of the earth. Sony is doing almost exactly what the article is warning about – treading the same path, just more power and still high-priced relative to mobile – and it's a huge success.

How do we account for this?

It's rather simple. The mobile gaming is the future that will kill everything else narrative is wrong and it has always been wrong.

 

[char0n]

"Consoles are dead" is the new "PC Gaming is dead". And just as true as that was.

It's bizarre this measure of exponential growth we hold as the base standard for things, where if you aren't beating records at every go, it's the end of the world... Which leads us to the common comparison: Wii, while a good product with great games and ideas, was a fad item amongst non-gamers. It was the "it" thing to have, in the same realm as beanie babies and tickle-me-elmo, and was held up more by a completely different market than the traditional gaming market. That market moving on is not a sign that "well, that about wraps it up for this part of the industry" it's just a social-spotlight bubble bursting and market adjusting to a more correct level for being semi-enthusiast driven. It's the same for "mobile gaming", people talk about tablet/phone gaming like it's the exact same market as traditional console gaming, but it's not. There is overlap, but it's like saying the sports car is dead and citing sales comparisons to cheap sedans.

I'm starting to think there's a lot of people who don't like the direction that console gaming is going and actually want it to fail. Whether it's the weird unsustainable direction AAA is going, or the market leader isn't their team, or they personally prefer the types of games that can now be found commonly on phones/tablets, there's a lot of opinions being thrown around that sound more like they see console gaming's death as a good thing with silly thoughts like "Sure both new consoles are doing better than expected, but even PS4 isn't doing Wii/PS2 numbers" or "Where are the games? Consoles don't usually launch with a drought of titles to start with, right?" to try to back it up.

Console gaming isn't on top of everything else in the world right now, but it's doing fine.

 

[Natureboy99]

Yeah consoles seem fine, at least the true next gen ones.

 

[AstroNut325]

Until the day comes that the experience of mobile gaming can match or surpass that of console/PC gaming I see the nothing but BS when it comes to console doom and gloom. The 30+ million people who bought GTA5, 10+ million who bought GT5/6, 10+ million who bought Halo, ect just packed up and said... hey Candy Crush and Clash of Clans is "good enough"?

 

[Oppo]

Yes, the amount has absolutely shrunk, and the writing has been on the wall for years. It's not a secret. EA publicly announced this in 2011.

75 titles a year down to 22 in 2011. And they aren't alone. It's not just the total number of publishers shrinking, it's the amount of titles each can afford to release in a year. As the risk and budgets rise, the numbers will continue to drop.

Ok so this is an interesting point. I dug a bit further; 2013 report was 14 retail games. I don't know how many social/mobile games (probably at least that number).
EA's defence of this is that back when they were releasing dozens of games a year, their profit was mere cents per "franchise" and is now north of $1 per. I don't care about that. But in this sense, considering EA's size, they might be considered to play by Big Publisher rules, of which there really are only 4 or 5 altogether.

Futher, game budgets as we know were much cheaper then (simpler platform requirements) and therefore I do think there is a somewhat natural flow of those lower-budget titles over to mobile and social. For better or worse.

I think the selection these days dwarfs what we used to have, as consumers, overall.

I don't know why you brought up the Linux catalog. He was talking about Big Picture, which is available on anything that can run Steam.

Well I didn't want to derail the conversation too much. People aren't really plugging in their computers en masse yet. Due to the usual factors we know about; form factor being bad/laptops being portable but having crappy GPUs, control interface issues with gamepad vs keyboard/mouse, the usuals. The "pure" Linux Steam Machine is the closest thing to an actual console that Valve puts out.

Console sales may be doing fine but I'm way more interested in seeing how software does espacially those that are current gen only.

Like if Infamous bombs is that going to spell the end for Sucker Punch? Should be interesting to watch.

Not a great example as a) it's not gonna bomb and b) Sony would prop up one of their crown jewels, for sure. Like I don't think Motorstorm Apocalypse did all that well but Evolution just went ahead and ate Studio Liverpool and made Driveclub anyways.

 

[Just_myles]

This para... jeebus. I just couldn't disagree more. Consoles have never done anything best other than ease-of-use and immediacy, and even then not always. And I don't think anyone actually prefers Angry Birds to Mario who's over 6 years old. I think they prefer Minecraft to both, actually.

Using my son as an example. Anything that is new tbh.

 

[RyanPierre]

And if you take AAAs out of the marketplace completely... you're left with indies. Which are great. I'd be fine with that. But they don't sell hardware. The only indie I've played on PS4 that particularly looks like it needs the power of PS4 is Resogun, and that's largely in the form of unnecessary background eyecandy. Without AAAs, why purchase a PS4?

I really hate when people put down Resogun's use of the PS4 horsepower as unnecessary eyecandy. You could make the same argument for most any game that looks better but could also technically be made on a previous gen console. But Resogun in particular would not be the same game without all that voxel action; the atmosphere would not be the same.

 

[RoninChaos]

Why do people always cite video game companies closing as a sign that consoles and their AAA models are dead and console gaming can't sustain itself?

Didn't we have tons of video game companies close everytime we moved from one generation to the other? I look at some of my NES and Genesis games and see companies that don't exist now. Isn't this just part of this field? Are we thinking it's worse then it is only because we have more info out there and the media outlets love to harp on it? Kind of reminds me of how the media makes it seem like teen pregnancy is an epidemic even though it has remained pretty consistent since the 50s or 60s.

Not on the scale we saw last generation. The stakes have become so incredibly high that one failure can destroy a company. That has never happened to this degree as long as I can remember when it comes to the gaming space.

 

[Kobun Heat]

Also, seeing as the iPhone was introduced in 2007, your argument is largely moot. Yes it can take time for old business models to die, but, by your own argument six or seven years should be sufficient time to see these changes take hold.

When the iPhone was launched in 2007 (or more accurately, when the App Store was launched in 2008) certain people said that this was going to totally dismantle the market for dedicated portable game platforms, and there were many, many rebuttals to that explaining all of the reasons why it wouldn't happen -- and then it did.

The entrants into the market that will truly upset consoles aren't even here yet. iPhone and iPad themselves have done a number on consoles, but the devices that are threatening the consoles' hold on your TV are still rolling out.

Sorry I can't write much more; playing South Park and it's too good.

 

[Oppo]

When the iPhone was launched in 2007 (or more accurately, when the App Store was launched in 2008) certain people said that this was going to totally dismantle the market for dedicated portable game platforms, and there were many, many rebuttals to that explaining all of the reasons why it wouldn't happen -- and then it did.

The entrants into the market that will truly upset consoles aren't even here yet. iPhone and iPad themselves have done a number on consoles, but the devices that are threatening the consoles' hold on your TV are still rolling out.

Sorry I can't write much more; playing South Park and it's too good.

What are you playing on?

 

[Taurus]

It's too early to tell if he's ultimately wrong. At this point, the PS4 and Xbox One are selling to enthusiastic console gamers that wanted new hardware a year or two ago.

Will be interesting to have this discussion 2-3 years from now when we actually have some trends in the new generation. Three months of data is not enough.

I agree with you.

But I also agree with Chris Kohler; the market trends don't look too positive for console gaming.

 

[Freshmaker]

When the iPhone was launched in 2007 (or more accurately, when the App Store was launched in 2008) certain people said that this was going to totally dismantle the market for dedicated portable game platforms, and there were many, many rebuttals to that explaining all of the reasons why it wouldn't happen -- and then it did.

3DS truly went nowhere. Crash n burn.

 

[mclem]

I really hate when people put down Resogun's use of the PS4 horsepower as unnecessary eyecandy. You could make the same argument for most any game that looks better but could also technically be made on a previous gen console.

And I frequently do!

The point is: Is that *really* what you purchased a PS4 for? Those gorgeous explosions?

It's not why I bought one, it's just a nice bonus on top of the reasons I purchased one.

 

[la_briola]

What are you playing on?

PC.

 

[MercuryLS]

What are you playing on?

Oh his phone of course.

 

[Kobun Heat]

Steam.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

3DS truly went nowhere. Crash n burn.

To be fair, the 3DS is a massive financial disappointment compared to the DS outside of Japan and the Vita doesn't exist outside of Japan.

 

[tehrik-e-insaaf]

The living-in-denial over mobile reminds me of arcade fanboys who were in denial about consoles in the mid 80s and late 80s. "But consoles will never be able to give me that bleeding edge technical experience, I'll always keep comin back to play with my friends in an arcade and a proper joystick not that silly d-pad input!"

More importantly, it reminds me of all the console fanboys in the late 80s and early 90s who said that the PC would never be a great platform. Boston-area BBS debates were fierce at the time. Make NeoGAF console warriors look like children fighting over candy.

People used to make fun of shareware and episodic games, slow BBS distribution, etc. John Romero had a famous quote: "Gamers on PC are lazy and will avoid paying for games whenever they can." PC developers used to believe nothing could challenge Nintendo - Romero personally thought Nintendo would eclipse Toyota.

Then he found John Carmack, Adrian Carmack, and Tom Hall, and combined with Scott Miller at Apogee and changed PC games forever. They introduced side scrolling, awesome animations, embraced shareware and BBS distribution (aka F2P of the time) and the rest is history.

The day I downloaded Wolf3D, my mind was blown away. Here was a F2P game that I could play and enjoy the first episode of, without paying a penny for an expensive NES cartridge. I paid $15 bucks for a full copy of Wolf3D, far less than $50 and $60 console games.

The mark they left was industry-changing. Tons of people who would have otherwise bought a Nintendo console or a Sega console instead were content to just game on their PCs. They also opened a brand new market to people who otherwise did not game on their PCs.

The NES and Sega Master System together sold around 75 million units. Together the SNES and Genesis sold only 75 million units through the launch of the N64. If it weren't for Majesco's Genesis 3, that gen would have ended up selling less consoles than the gen preceding it. The only reason the SNES and Genesis were able to keep those level of sales is because Japan was slow to adopt PCs and there were a bunch of developers that kept making great games on the consoles that sold in the West as well. Sega in particular had to kill off its arcade market in the 90s to channel more resources into their console, so all-in-all we saw a lot of industry contraction in key areas with a marginal uptick in consoles, and revenue boost driven by higher prices on a per SKU basis.

Today the situation is bad for consoles. Not only do we have the critical mass behind mobile in Japan, a variety of F2P models, tons of venture cash in the mobile space, but there is no lag to adapt mobile as there were PCs and the reach of mobile is greater than PCs in the 90s. Online distribution is far superior to the days of PC shareware. In another year or so we will have X360-levels of graphics on tablet screens, streaming to televisions, etc. In another 3 years we will have X1-levels of graphical fidelity possible on tablets and phones.

The dedicated console targeting the 14-34 white male will survive, but even Sony sees the writing on the wall and is embracing the all-mobile future. Frankly, I think they will be happy to get out of making hardware and focusing on what they are good at - building a development platform and making their customers happy.

 

[BurnOutBrighter]

You doubters keep us waiting for this moment when PS4 starts to tank so you can go "see we told you! ha! console am dead!" on us but it's still not happening.

It's like a reverse "x will save the Wii U" chalkboard.