Rainbird said:
In that case, Sony becomes the dominant console maker and no one else can sell any consoles for an entire generation. What will Nintendo do? Microsoft? What are the odds any new competitors will be able to get into the business? (I only realized now that you were talking practicallity for the user, not the hardware companies. |
)Well now, who said anything about Sony being the one to dominate? I was vague on purpose.
Your proposal has problems for hardware manufacturers, too.
The only reason to get in on this "coalition" would be operating under the assumption that doing so woudl mean that their royalties over time would be greater than if they were making their own hardware - which is to say, they would firstly need to negotiate excellent cuts of the royalties and they would need to assume that this cut of total royalties would be higher than the royalties they get for software on their own independent systems.
Now in order for that assumption to make sense, one of two conditions have to be true:
1. The manufacturer in question assumes that their own hardware would sell considerably less than their competitors, which is not (to the best of my knowledge) the assumption that any hardware producer makes. Worse, it's not enough for one manufacturer to think this: all of them woudl have to assume a losing position, because the two last-place competitors, if they assume this, would still need to accept that they would come in last, otherwise they'd be better off fighting for second place. If this condition isn't true, then the hardware producer has to fall back on the second condition:
2. They have to assume that a united hardware infrastructure would result in an increased installbase in proportion to or greater than the loss of royalties from having a proprietary hardware platform on which software is published.
The secondp oint here is the reall damning one (which is saying hte lot, because the first point is enough reason to say that your idea is totally and completely unrealistic). THere's nothign to suggest that a split hardware base is what keeps consumers from buying, no more than having multiple car manufacturers keeps people from buying cars. You're operating off the assumption that a split in game availability would be reason for a person to not invest, but that's not the case: a person who seeks entertainment will seek out the entertainment that appeals to them most. It's not a zero-sum scenario.
The only way to expand the market is through software, not hardware or hardware unification. Nintendo recognized this, and it's why they've conquered the Hell otu of this generation in terms of software, hardware, and royalties from both. Iwata still hodls that software is the ultimate solution to the problem of buyer stagnancy, and software (or lack thereof) would be what's holding the gaming industry back. It's not a matter of people having ot choose what they want, it's people not being able to choose what they want in any way. It's why this hardware cycle is so much bigger than the last one: more people are seeing games they want, so they buy the games systems that have the games they want.
You have yet to provide a cogent argument which would sustain the viability of the second condition.
