| SeriousWB said: *Sniff* Waves Union Jack around. God save... our.. Queen... *Cries* |
@JohnLucas,
Hardware & Software
I think it's interesting to see if it is hardware or software that has a greater effect on gaming trends, what nintendo did with the Wii was to try and make software (games) easier to use by giving the user a natural interface to work with, this is highly interesting as Software developers must now try to adapt and create games that use it in a interesting or at least simple way.
Sony and Microsoft have made HD standard and this also makes Software developers adapt and increase texture sizes and add other graphical improvements
Here are cases of Hardware controlling/ influencing software.
And yet the heart of the game market are the games, the developers write the games, the successful games get copied and therefore they change the industry, even now you see Japanese companies making more and more Western style games as Japanese are no longer buying the same kind of games as they used to.
The Japanese developers/publishers are going far more international as they see the profits that can be made from these kind of games in the US and Europe and so the Japanese market is less important.
The Question of Europe
You claim that Europe suffers from Game delays and yet many games from European and US developers are released far later in Japan then even in Europe.
I do agree that VAT plays a role in the extra costs and this effects sales, but the "language complexity" you speak of is due either to see how well the game sells in one region before selling in another or simply bad company management as you can do translations in parallel to game development , why is it that some games have World wide releases and others do not?
Why are all PC games created in the US released here almost without delay? As Europe becomes a larger market we will see games being released in Europe and the US concurrently
At the moment there is no room in the business for a European gaming console and until eastern Europe user base is of a decent size there won't be, but in the future as gaming grows, as it will do, and if the economic situation keeps on improving (which hope!), there is still a possiblity that it might happen, but I think it would be an international venture as the costs are sky high, but so are the gains.
Per Person the UK buys more consoles
The combined Total of all Next Gen consoles (Wii, PS3 and Xbox360):
Japan: 5.6 Million, population is 127 Million - 0.044 consoles per person
UK : 3.4 Million, population is 61 Million - 0.05 consoles per person.
Now take into account that the PS3 was released 4 months later in the UK and that for a long time it had less shipments of the Wii then japan did.
The China syndrome
I agree that China will have a massive effect on gaming, but instead of it being driven by Japan, I can imagine in 10, maybe 20 years time China would of created it's own gaming console, they will have the money and an untapped market that is asking for games that cater to it's tastes.
I think it might even be supported by the Chinese Goverment because they don't want Japan having so much power in a single market, think about the fact that the chinese don't use windows. They want home grown games and a home grown console that they can control also add in the fact they can produce it cheaper then in Japan. The only question is, will they go international.
The Blue Ocean
What you have said makes a lot of sense but I think your too focused on the past, Nintendo can loose it's control as quickly as sony has, it only takes a blue ocean idea (and loads of cash) and that might just come from Europe or china in a future you haven't imagined.
"..just keep on trying 'till you run out of cake"
