A one console world

[Egann]

There are several MAJOR reason I'll disagree.

1. This is called a monopoly. Or actually a cartel, but it would be the same thing.

So yeah, that one console is going to now launch at $600 or $700 purely because it can. Companies do not naturally offer products at loss unless there's substantial competition in the market, so the modern "sell the console at a minor loss and make it back later via software" approach would go right out the window. And, see #2: the higher price would probably not be completely unjustified.

The higher cost would then drive gamers to PC gaming because you can get a middle-end PC gaming rig for $700-$800, and Steam is notably cheaper and more convenient than the console used game market.


The second reason is that it will have smaller consoles built into it. If the big three colluded to make a console, you can bet that each company would put about $100 of hardware which would probably never see use beyond their own first party material. Individually for each company this makes perfect sense; they're carving a niche out of the hardware. It just doesn't help the consumer because they're now buying $100-200 of hardware they may never use.

3. Small developers will have a much harder time getting attention. It's just one of those things, but competition goes down as the market size decreases, so a small developer (like Atlus or Mistwalker) can actually take shelter on only one console, and still get attention because they aren't trying to expose their products to the whole ocean. In a one-console world, they HAVE to promote everywhere.


There isn't an ideal solution to the console wars. As a consumer, of course I want to buy one device and have it play EVERYTHING, but I can also see that causing problems on the business side.