Consoles, Handhelds, and General History, Present, and Futur : Othor Games

» Sun Mar 24, 2013 9:03 am

So I got to thinking and this might be a nice topic for discussion. The next gen consoles are coming, whether you like it or not, are a fan or not, but their presence has been a part of the gaming community for almost 40 years, longer than I've been alive. Of course, their prominence didn't really come about until the mid-80's with the 3rd generation, but they've been around since the mid-70's with the early "pong style".

So with that in mind, there is a lot to talk about. For now I want to get the ball rolling with just some general history and who has done what. Sources are various, but for general naming and such just going to use wikipedia because it's easy and I'm going to quote myself from another thread real quick.

Yeh, Nintendo won the 7th generation. Sony and Microsoft both came out about the same. Sony has had 2 out of 3 generations of complete dominance that it has made a console for.
1st (Pong Style) - Atari
2nd (early 8-bit era) - Atari 2600 & 5200

3rd (prime 8-bit era) - Nintendo (NES)

4th (16-bit & Add-On era) - Nintendo (SNES)

5th (32/64 bit era) - Sony (PlayStation)

6th (128 bit era) - Sony (PS2), by far the most dominating performance of the console market to date (approximately 75% of the market from that generation, not including handhelds, which Nintendo still owns to this very day)

7th (Modern? Online Dominance?) - Nintendo (Wii)

8th (???) - We Shall See.

Hmmmmm. I just looked at the numbers for handheld devices and you would have thought that mobile phone games would have killed their market, but Nintendo is showing that their DS sold as strong as the PS2 did, but not quite as dominating as it did over the competition (153mil over 24 million compared to 153mil over 74mil). Plus the market is also saturated with various devices right now from the 7th generation, which is likely to continue into the next gen, but how will that relate to the growing popularity of mobile games? I don't foresee much change. Ehh, this is a topic for another thread.

So some talking points:

PS2's dominance was really interesting to see because it extended the 6th generation of gaming to a length no other generation has seen: approximately 12.75 years. How is that so? PS2's have been produced, sold, and supported up until the end of 2012. That is an incredibly long time for any piece of technology in the general public consumer market. Games were still being developed for it until about Oct of 2012, which I believe was Fifa Soccer. Now obviously that title also came out on mainly the 7th gen, but the fact it had a working version on the 6th is still quite amazing that it was deemed financially worthy to make!
Handheld gaming has taken it's lumps over the years, but it still chugs along and improvements keep making it an attractive thing to have that as of the 7th generation, between Nintendo and Sony, over 225million units have been sold in a market that has also been saturated with manufacturers of handhelds for different purposes to go along with the rise in mobile games. In the future, how will mobile games affect handhelds? Honestly, I can see only two possible outcomes and which one is unknown. 1. Mobile gaming makes a dent but handhelds keep going because the quality on handhelds is always better 2. Because of the relative cheaper games, if not free, coupled with that people buy phones already for many reasons while you only buy a handheld for a few will significantly reduce the market if it doesn't kill it for handheld devices.
We have yet to see what Microsoft is going to pump out, and it is rumored to be almost the same thing as PS4. Hard to think it won't be otherwise because they've been developing it just as long as Sony and the parts haven't changed that much to really increase any specs on it except maybe a beefier video card which with what the RAM specs for the PS4 and assumed for the "Next"Box would just make the MS's console that much better. The two were so similar in the 7th gen with advantages and disadvantages to both (BluRay, free online vs. initially easier to develop for unified RAM for Xbox to go along with an earlier launch date) that their total market share was practically identical but behind Nintendo Wii. We've seen what the WiiU has produced and honestly, it has not impressed the consumers so far because most people are so satisfied with what the Wii does now as an "All Family" device that buying a new WiiU doesn't make sense for that audience, something I think Nintendo didn't really think too much. The Japanese makers have been really good over the years in planned obsoletism but Nintendo made the Wii too good for the target audience that it isn't obsolete enough for them to go out and get a WiiU.
Lastly, there is one piece of the future puzzle not really figured out yet. The "Steam Box". Personally as a console and PC gamer, I'm intrigued. This thing reportedly might cost upwards of $1,000 if not more. Though when it comes to specs and gaming, it should blow away the PS4 and NextBox in sheer power and capability. However, will people buy it? PC gamers might? Console gamers will be more hesitant when you already have cheaper alternatives that are very powerful in their own right at half the cost. Still, Valve's Steam is a great product to have because simply of the access to games you can get and that Steam has a HUGE share on the DDM market. My question is: Who will buy this? If PC gamers already have their beefy and upgradable rigs, and console gamers are content with a stable platform that will last for several years at the low-cost initial investment, who is targeted for this new console?

So there's a few talking points. Please no PLATFORM bashing or wars here. The war is over, so everyone needs to get over it.

The future of gaming is still bright in my opinion.