Should the Gaming Industry Standardize Gaming Hardware?

Like VHS/DVD/Blu-Ray are the Standard for Movies...

I agree; makes sense.
 
Except I was hoping that this thread would have a poll.

Yes they should.
 
But until Microsoft, or Sony go under, it will never happen. Sony makes money, Microsoft makes money, until it becomes more profitable for them to merge and work together instead of being rivals, it won't happen.
 
Its entirely possible they could release their "own version" of the same console with better features but fundamentally plays the same games, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.

" This is never going to happen, each company will be all for standardizing the hardware... so long as it's their hardware. If it would happen I think it would put a serious dent in tech innovation, if anything different companies should try to differentiate their consoles even further. And I don't mean that in the sense of motion sensing controllers or a different boxcolor  but in the sense of real meaningfull differences in the consoles! "

What about different control schemes and such, like the Wii or PC or crap like that? Speaking of PC, won't they all eventually become consolidated through emulation, in a weird way?

" @Seppli:  Big games are already part of our popular culture. We already have a model similar to what you are suggesting, and it is called the PC. The PC is a great platform for developers, but from the hardware manufacturer perspective, it is less than ideal. Consoles are able to maintain mini monopolies, sort of like Apple. Creating an open development environment that standard hardware setups would really destroy the whole point of the console business, because they could not charge developers to release products for their system. "

" its not quite as simple as a data storage format. The 3 major consoles all provide different experiences. I know ps3 and xbox are similar but this competition drives innovation  and drives prices down. If there was just one dominant force in the market, what can you do when you are unhappy with the service or product? complain all you want and nothing will happen because the big firms will have no fear of losing market share.  "

Sony and Microsoft lose on hardware but make it up on software.  No way does this work without someone taking a loss on hardware to begin with but no one is going to do that on an open hardware platform. 

Yes, remove competition. That'll work out great for the end user. Oh wait, we have laws for that.

" Sony and Microsoft lose on hardware but make it up on software.  No way does this work without someone taking a loss on hardware to begin with but no one is going to do that on an open hardware platform.  "

This is a silly idea simply because of the fact that if there is no competition, there's no advancement.

There is a reason, why 2007's Crysis still is the benchmark title on PC. "

" This is a silly idea simply because of the fact that if there is no competition, there's no advancement. "

Its not that's there no market, but there's not enough install base to sell games which means no games get made.  That $3k headset listens to a $15 CD just like a $20 headset does.  But for video games everyone needs to buy a $1000 consoles to play.    Consoles released at the beginning of a cycle will be $1000+ meaning a PC will be much cheaper to buy.  The Neo-Geo is what happens when you sell advanced hardware at a no-loss price.

If you have no competition, there's no reason for improvement. Competition is great for industries like this, or shit gets stagnant fast. It also keeps the prices low, or they'd charge fuck-whatever for a console. 
 
Standardized hardware would basically mean there'd be one box every 10+ years and there wouldn't be any incentive to lower the prices after launch. After all, they're the only ones in the market, who are you trying to beat out?

" @Seppli said:

There is a reason, why 2007's Crysis still is the benchmark title on PC. "

2009's Cryostasis and Batman beg to differ.   Regardless, your logic is unreasonable. Having a standards creates more markets but not for the better. A Playstation 3 is a Playstation 3 for everyone. A Sony Bravia and Vizio HDTV are two different television experiences though they fit the set standard by the FCC of what a television does. The Bravia and Vizio have different black ratios and resolutions that aren't accounted for in other products. So my Bluray would look and sound different on your television regardless of how negligible it is. So now expand that to console, my Panasonic gamebox will look and be different then your Toshiba gamebox. We've all experienced headphones which are crappy and headphones that are great. They all have a standard set by the FCC on their production.    Your logic has holes in it because you don't take into consideration actual hardware standards how they work in the past. "

The big difference between games compared to movies and music, that hasn’t been mentioned yet, is internet connectivity. Who gets paid what for DLC? Who’s going to run the servers? Will we have a single username and friends list for the machine, or will we need separate ones for every game like the Wii?
Game platforms are a lot more than just hardware.    

 

@Seppli said: 

 
 You can't possibly be serious about Cryostasis and Batman. First of all, Batman is a multiplatform game and thus is disqualified. Second, Cryostatis is more or less an indipendently developed title with a production quality nowhere near a triple A game. 
 
About shoddy hardware. Do you seriously believe hardware can get any more shoddy than the first generation of 360's with a failure rate around 50%? Really? Come on! Since you will have a choice, what hardware you'll buy, you can easily opt for higher production quality hardware. You don't seriously believe B&O would put out shoddy hardware - do you?  

" @Bellum said:

" @Seppli:  Big games are already part of our popular culture. We already have a model similar to what you are suggesting, and it is called the PC. The PC is a great platform for developers, but from the hardware manufacturer perspective, it is less than ideal. Consoles are able to maintain mini monopolies, sort of like Apple. Creating an open development environment that standard hardware setups would really destroy the whole point of the console business, because they could not charge developers to release products for their system. "

 Popular culture such as books, music and movies? With an audience in the billions? You must be joking. At the very most the audience for our kind of games counts like a 100 million households. That's not much more than 1% of the earth's population. We are quite the exclusive club.  As for the PC being great for developers - not really. Since the hardware standards are extremely flexible, it's nigh impossible to develop a triple A game economically (except for Blizzard).  As a matter of fact, there are very few triple A games exclusive to the PC. Most of them are MMOs and RTS games, which just don't work on consoles (yet). There is a reason, why 2007's Crysis still is the benchmark title on PC. "

You do realize that Apple didn't invent the mp3 player and only entered after Diamond MM went through huge lawsuits and won but still ended up close bankrupt.  Apple entered a market that already had people in it.  

" Yes, remove competition. That'll work out great for the end user. Oh wait, we have laws for that. "

tl;dr
 
Monopoly is a goddamn boardgame, keep that away from my perfectly fine oligopoly. Do not fucking want.
 
(not to mention Microsoft would abuse the hell out of OP's idea)

No because without the hardware, Sony has nothing.

No.  It will never happen.  Look at technology, it constantly diverges, always has and always will.  The gaming industry isn't some all powerful force.  Nor was the video rental and retail industry and look at how many different types of VCRs existed at its peak.  Look at how many different DVD players do now and how many different BluRay players do.  The idea is facile at best and dangerously stupid at worst.  You want the industry deciding what you should buy?

No that's too convenient for us, the consumers...

Yeah! Let's make another 3DO!

" @Vade said:

" Yes, remove competition. That'll work out great for the end user. Oh wait, we have laws for that. "

I was waiting for someone to say this. Don't blindly think that monopolies are bad for the end-user. Your electricity company is a monopoly and without it being so, your electricity costs would be hundreds of dollars an hour. Monopolies reduce cost, as well as providing a quality product to the end-user. Also, choice is always an option for consumers especially in the consumer goods market such as video games. In a single-console world if the console in question didn't deliver acceptable performance and good games, then you could just not buy it. Microsoft has a monopoly in the business sector; how many businesses upgraded to Vista when it was released? Very few.   To even have a monopoly in the first place you need to have a patent over the thing you're selling; by law, these expire over a period of time in which the company must re-issue a patent outlining significantly improved functions over the old patent in order to renew it, and maintain its monopoly. This in turn improves products for the end user. Pharmaceutical companies have several different monopolies on various different types of drugs, yet they also conduct far more research than they would in a competitive environment, also partly because the money that they save marketing can go into R&D. Whether or not video games will benefit from a monopolized structure is unclear (every situation is different and you need to look at the numbers to decide), but don't just go out saying that it would be a bad idea without understanding the economic principles behind it.  "

That's one step closer to a one console future, so no.

" @Geno: Then please explain your example of the supposed monopolies of utilities providers who drive down prices without competition. "

Not to mention that all this hardware is primarily designed by the major hardware development companies who also produce PC components. 
 
And Progress is the mainstay word with all of them. standardising hardware would just push the consoles further behind the PC performance margin. 
 
Not to say it wouldn't simplify matters, it would, but i don't see it happening.

" @SeriouslyNow: Utility companies can exist as monopolies and do so in many regions. Whether or not monopolies are good depends on the product, the market, how the company conducts itself, and even the government. It's not black and white like the vast majority of the mainstream think, people can't just say "lulz monopoly" without substantiating it.  "

" No.  It will never happen.  Look at technology, it constantly diverges, always has and always will.  The gaming industry isn't some all powerful force.  Nor was the video rental and retail industry and look at how many different types of VCRs existed at its peak.  Look at how many different DVD players do now and how many different BluRay players do.  The idea is facile at best and dangerously stupid at worst.  You want the industry deciding what you should buy? "

yes, but will never happen.

What you are suggesting would in theory cause more companies to produce consoles, which would  increase choice for consumers.  
 
However, a standard set of hardware could be unrealistic for a hardware company. If Sony had gotten together with Sega 10 years ago and told them that they should both make consoles with the same specs as the PS2, do you think they could've afforded it? Of course not. Now, that may seem like a moot point right now because all three companies are making plenty of money, but that's not always the case. Hardware manufacturers need to be able to make systems they can afford.  
 
If we ended up in a society where game consoles are sold like iPods or DVD players, how is the average consumer going to know which one they want to get? We will know, but will the average lady going to Wal Mart to buy a games system for their kid know? They might come home with a last gen system by accident, because all it says on the box is "Plays video games".  
 
This is not a problem in DVD players, because having a sticker that says  "Plays Movies!" suffices, but when you are talking about something as hardware intensive as video games, it needs to be obvious. Hell,  I remember seeing people at Target get confused between the games for GBA and the GBA SP.  
  
Also, would they be requiring all companies to use the same hardware, or just have the same specs? If it's the latter, then it would be even harder on developers when it comes to optimizing games (this happens a lot on PC), because the hardware is different. They would also have to test it for all those systems, instead of just the ones they are releasing on (360, PS3, Wii etc). If it's the former, then it's a monopoly, and that's a territory I don't want anything to do with.  

" @SeriouslyNow said:

" No.  It will never happen.  Look at technology, it constantly diverges, always has and always will.  The gaming industry isn't some all powerful force.  Nor was the video rental and retail industry and look at how many different types of VCRs existed at its peak.  Look at how many different DVD players do now and how many different BluRay players do.  The idea is facile at best and dangerously stupid at worst.  You want the industry deciding what you should buy? "

 
Since DVD, Bluray and VHS are the perfect examples of a technology standard set by a consortium of many hardware companies in order to cosolidate the consumerbase and increase the market volume while decreasing the risk for all participating industries - yes, I'd like the gaming industry to show such unity and make my life as a consumer easier. I'd not have to buy multiple consoles doing essentially the same thing. I'd just have to buy one. 
 
The gaming industry is suffering under the multi-format environment. Developing multiple SKUs of every software product is expensive. Developement of triple A games gets increasingly expensive as it is. While production costs skyrocket, the consumerbase for such games is stagnant. So either games get more expensive with every new generation of hardware or the gaming industry has to find a way to decrease developement costs and increasing market volume. It could be cloud computing (or hybrid services), which would more or less free the customers from dedicated gaming hardware entirely or it could be setting a gaming hardware standard and opening the hardware market to worthy licencees. 
 
While there isn't an obvious solution to the given problem, the problem itself is quite clear and won't go away, but rather get worse. Stagnant market volume meets increasingly expensive game developement. The easy fix is increasing prices. Personally, I want to see the prices going down, not up. I want more people buying games - which won't happen if the prices for software keep increasing. It's a catch-22 scenario and the gaming industry has to break this viscious cycle somehow.  "

" @Seppli said:

" @SeriouslyNow said:

" No.  It will never happen.  Look at technology, it constantly diverges, always has and always will.  The gaming industry isn't some all powerful force.  Nor was the video rental and retail industry and look at how many different types of VCRs existed at its peak.  Look at how many different DVD players do now and how many different BluRay players do.  The idea is facile at best and dangerously stupid at worst.  You want the industry deciding what you should buy? "

 
Since DVD, Bluray and VHS are the perfect examples of a technology standard set by a consortium of many hardware companies in order to cosolidate the consumerbase and increase the market volume while decreasing the risk for all participating industries - yes, I'd like the gaming industry to show such unity and make my life as a consumer easier. I'd not have to buy multiple consoles doing essentially the same thing. I'd just have to buy one. 
 
The gaming industry is suffering under the multi-format environment. Developing multiple SKUs of every software product is expensive. Developement of triple A games gets increasingly expensive as it is. While production costs skyrocket, the consumerbase for such games is stagnant. So either games get more expensive with every new generation of hardware or the gaming industry has to find a way to decrease developement costs and increasing market volume. It could be cloud computing (or hybrid services), which would more or less free the customers from dedicated gaming hardware entirely or it could be setting a gaming hardware standard and opening the hardware market to worthy licencees. 
 
While there isn't an obvious solution to the given problem, the problem itself is quite clear and won't go away, but rather get worse. Stagnant market volume meets increasingly expensive game developement. The easy fix is increasing prices. Personally, I want to see the prices going down, not up. I want more people buying games - which won't happen if the prices for software keep increasing. It's a catch-22 scenario and the gaming industry has to break this viscious cycle somehow.  "

There are already standards in place.  DirectX, OpenGL, licenseable middleware solutions.  You also realise I hope that there are whole swathes of consumer technology like DVD, Bluray and VCRs which do not conform to the consortium requirements.  These units are often cheaper and not region locked / lack macrovision.  Then there's the discussion of regioning for DVD which has been a dismal failure with many top tier IHVs (like Pioneer and so on) offering codes to make their DVD players and recorders region free.  If DVD Regioning and CSS along with other DRM solutions has been so successful why are the consortium partners chasing gray marketers and pirates through the courts and spending substantial budget expenditure on anti-piracy advertising campaigns for over a decade.  Further to this Bluray's exceedingly slow pick up rate, especially when compared to DVD or even Laserdisc has proven so far that the market is no longer interested in what are essentially mafia tactics to control and differentiate the channels of delivery over the world.  The modern consumer has a lot more information at their disposal than those who purchased VCR and DVD technologies when they were new and so the same consortium driven market breakups and illusory regional barriers will not work this time around.  The same holds true for gaming technologies.  Sony has been so desperate to make up their late delivery to market that they have made their PS3 games region free since day one.   Consortiums only work when the general buying public is uninformed.  The Internet has pretty much killed much of the consortium driven controls. What you're talking about in terms of price increases leading to stagnant market is just not what's happening in the games market.  You do know that it's one of the few industries that showed recorded marked upturn against the recent world economic downturn right?  You do realise that the console which has so far won this three way race sells the cheapest games and peripherals? You're basically speaking shit and using it as some platform to further your idea that consoles should unify to one product.  Further to this gaming has so many different aspects and console gaming is but one of them.  What about cell phones?  Browsers?  Set top boxes?  Portable gaming?  In Flight gaming? and so on.  I'm finding myself getting increasingly tired of the myopia around here of late.  America is not the whole world and what holds true in America does not reflect the world experience.  In Europe, for example, there are more PC and PS3 gamers than XBOX 360.  In Japan there are more cell phone and portable gamers than there are PS3 and XBOX 360 combined.  In the world, the most successful console is the Nintendo Wii and it's not suffering from market stagnation because its games and peripherals are priced according to what the market will bear and not according to how much R&D expenditure it has to recapture or how much it needs to appease a consortium of hardware manufacturers, movie studios and audio licensors as in the case of both HD consoles.  Unfiying a console will only lead to more expensive product over the longer term and it will take a lot of the control away from the consumers who will not be able to vote with their wallets because no market variety will exist. "

You can't apply "real world" logic to the games industry. I said a similar thing in the recent GameStop thread; shit happens in the game industry that wouldn't happen anywhere else. It's just a fact of life. The idea does sound good on paper, but it will never happen in a million years. You can't compare the market to DVD sales; that's a much larger market in terms of volume of sales and hardware, it's much cheaper to make DVDs and players, and much less specialist. As long as different consoles use different hardware, they will use different media as well. They've all become too entrenched in this competitive atmosphere to ever allow media that's compatible across systems. Besides, the video game industry as a whole would suffer because the so-called "core" market of people who buy all the systems and all the top games all of a sudden will only ever need one system. That, or the cost of systems will increase significantly, which means the barrier for entry is much higher, which harms the industry even more.
 
And what's all this about stagnation in top titles? Did you see the sales figures for Assassin's Creed II, or Mass Effect 2? Last I checked video games are selling just fine, and the slump in company performances is more due to the recession than anything else - turns out the entertainment industry isn't recession proof. The rise in development costs are a natural sign that video games are becoming much bigger business, which means the so called AAA titles that get the big advertising budgets do gangbusters. I'd assume that if anything, those hardest hit by the rising standards of technology are the smaller companies struggling to keep up, not the big money machines blazing the trail.

" @SeriouslyNow said:

" @Seppli said:

" @SeriouslyNow said:

" No.  It will never happen.  Look at technology, it constantly diverges, always has and always will.  The gaming industry isn't some all powerful force.  Nor was the video rental and retail industry and look at how many different types of VCRs existed at its peak.  Look at how many different DVD players do now and how many different BluRay players do.  The idea is facile at best and dangerously stupid at worst.  You want the industry deciding what you should buy? "

 
Since DVD, Bluray and VHS are the perfect examples of a technology standard set by a consortium of many hardware companies in order to cosolidate the consumerbase and increase the market volume while decreasing the risk for all participating industries - yes, I'd like the gaming industry to show such unity and make my life as a consumer easier. I'd not have to buy multiple consoles doing essentially the same thing. I'd just have to buy one. 
 
The gaming industry is suffering under the multi-format environment. Developing multiple SKUs of every software product is expensive. Developement of triple A games gets increasingly expensive as it is. While production costs skyrocket, the consumerbase for such games is stagnant. So either games get more expensive with every new generation of hardware or the gaming industry has to find a way to decrease developement costs and increasing market volume. It could be cloud computing (or hybrid services), which would more or less free the customers from dedicated gaming hardware entirely or it could be setting a gaming hardware standard and opening the hardware market to worthy licencees. 
 
While there isn't an obvious solution to the given problem, the problem itself is quite clear and won't go away, but rather get worse. Stagnant market volume meets increasingly expensive game developement. The easy fix is increasing prices. Personally, I want to see the prices going down, not up. I want more people buying games - which won't happen if the prices for software keep increasing. It's a catch-22 scenario and the gaming industry has to break this viscious cycle somehow.  "

There are already standards in place.  DirectX, OpenGL, licenseable middleware solutions.  You also realise I hope that there are whole swathes of consumer technology like DVD, Bluray and VCRs which do not conform to the consortium requirements.  These units are often cheaper and not region locked / lack macrovision.  Then there's the discussion of regioning for DVD which has been a dismal failure with many top tier IHVs (like Pioneer and so on) offering codes to make their DVD players and recorders region free.  If DVD Regioning and CSS along with other DRM solutions has been so successful why are the consortium partners chasing gray marketers and pirates through the courts and spending substantial budget expenditure on anti-piracy advertising campaigns for over a decade.  Further to this Bluray's exceedingly slow pick up rate, especially when compared to DVD or even Laserdisc has proven so far that the market is no longer interested in what are essentially mafia tactics to control and differentiate the channels of delivery over the world.  The modern consumer has a lot more information at their disposal than those who purchased VCR and DVD technologies when they were new and so the same consortium driven market breakups and illusory regional barriers will not work this time around.  The same holds true for gaming technologies.  Sony has been so desperate to make up their late delivery to market that they have made their PS3 games region free since day one.   Consortiums only work when the general buying public is uninformed.  The Internet has pretty much killed much of the consortium driven controls. What you're talking about in terms of price increases leading to stagnant market is just not what's happening in the games market.  You do know that it's one of the few industries that showed recorded marked upturn against the recent world economic downturn right?  You do realise that the console which has so far won this three way race sells the cheapest games and peripherals? You're basically speaking shit and using it as some platform to further your idea that consoles should unify to one product.  Further to this gaming has so many different aspects and console gaming is but one of them.  What about cell phones?  Browsers?  Set top boxes?  Portable gaming?  In Flight gaming? and so on.  I'm finding myself getting increasingly tired of the myopia around here of late.  America is not the whole world and what holds true in America does not reflect the world experience.  In Europe, for example, there are more PC and PS3 gamers than XBOX 360.  In Japan there are more cell phone and portable gamers than there are PS3 and XBOX 360 combined.  In the world, the most successful console is the Nintendo Wii and it's not suffering from market stagnation because its games and peripherals are priced according to what the market will bear and not according to how much R&D expenditure it has to recapture or how much it needs to appease a consortium of hardware manufacturers, movie studios and audio licensors as in the case of both HD consoles.  Unfiying a console will only lead to more expensive product over the longer term and it will take a lot of the control away from the consumers who will not be able to vote with their wallets because no market variety will exist. "

Since neither Wii games, Browser games or all types of portable games can be counted as Triple A games in terms of production quality and cost, it is very true that the triple A games market is stagnant since the PS2 generation. For such games to further innovate and progress, yet remain an economically viable business, either game prices or the market volume have to increase.  Either way - triple A gaming hardware of the next generation will have to sport similar specs anyways. Hence, there is no need for two console platforms in the triple A market segment. A unified console platform would make much more sense for both the entertainment software producing industry, as well as the consumer. It's just Sony and Microsoft fighting over this market segment who would have to find a common ground that's acceptable for both companies. Developing a gaming hardware standard together and licensing it out to other hardware companies could increase market volume, by bringing consumers in the fold who otherwise wouldn't have console gaming hardware, such as casual Mac and PC users. Since both companies make most of their money with licensing fees from software and they'd most likely share profits 50/50, in a scenario in which software sales increase, they'd both be likely to earn more on the bottom line. Not to speak of the licensing fees they'd get from hardware companies for integrating their standard in their own hardware.   Standardizing triple A gaming hardware could be a viable attempt to break the vicious cycle of skyrocketing developement costs being met by a stagnant market volume. A problem, which has to be solved for triple A gaming to further progress and innovate. "

"Speaking of PC, won't they all eventually become consolidated through emulation, in a weird way? "

Never gonna happen.  Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft all like money too much.