Update: Jade Raymond joins Google as Vice President | Rumor: Google's gaming console details leaked, possible controller design revealed via patent

[Mnementh]

The_Liquid_Laser said:

Mnementh said:

I am not agreeing. You leave out the first two gens, which were a pretty convoluted mess. You conviniently forget the 3DO, the Apple Pippin, the PC-FX, the NeoGeo or the Atari Jaguar. Well, N64, PS1, Saturn, Pippin, Jaguar, PC-FX and 3do in one generation would pretty much shatter your theory. But you could argue that less consoles were relevant. But this also means the Atari 7800 in third gen or the PCEngine (TurboGrafx) and Supergrafx in fourth gen wouldn't make the cut. The reality is more, that the market sustains only few relevant consoles, but others always try. Sometimes it works, like for MS and Sony. I would even argue Sony grew the market (with opening up the european market and expanding in more countries in the world) so that in the long run it could sustain three consoles. Maybe somethign similar happens. With China and India possibly becoming strong markets maybe a fourth competitor is sustainable.

My point is that the market has always sustained at most 3 relevant consoles.  (And yes NEC did have a relevant console.  The SNES was released because the PC-Engine was selling well in Japan.)  After that there is just not enough profit to go around.

Now you may have a point in that if enough new territories open up, then there may be enough customers to go around.  But in practice it tends not to happen this way.  In practice one console ends up being dominant worldwide.  The PS2 was successful everywhere, so was the Wii and so is the PS4.  That leaves the other two competitors fighting over the scraps.  I don't think there are enough scraps to sustain another competitor entering the market.

You are right, that even in a bigger market one competitor may sponge off all customers. But with a bigger base to begin with, it is easier to scrape off enough customers to sustain.

But there are two factors here:

1. Google probably don't expect big success in the first gen they are in. Like MS with the original XBox they are probably testing the market and looking for ways to manifest themself to be competitive a gen later. They have the cash to take the losses for one gen.

2. If the consoles are different enough, they can activate different parts of the customerbase. Nintendo already differentiates itself with the hybrid model. I think Google (if the rumours are true) might go after a service/streaming route. I also see MS doing that, even Sony, but as of now PS Now doesn't seem competitive in this field. Google though might be actually pretty good with a streaming/service console model. They know their cloud-shit.

OTBWY said:

BraLoD said:

That makes no sense.

Both analogs function together to allow movement of character and camera, using both at the same time at the same position is the most logical way to navegation.

Since we entered the 3D era that is the biggest aspect of gaming, 3D movimentation.

Offset analogs only exists because Sony was the first to do dual analog and made it right from the beginning and had it patented, which made other companies have to do something else.

Sorry but that is some janky logic. In the 3D era, our left stick is the primary control option for movement. You thumb should be on it most of the time. But because how it was placed on the PS controller, was due to keeping with the formfactor, not because they thought it was super clever. Many games on the PS1 still used the d-pad prominently cause you know, the PS! first came with a controller with no sticks. We however came to find out that offset works best because we developed upon already great left thumb stick up controllers. The camera movement in all this is secondary, as many games still have facebuttons as primary controls (meaning it should be level with your left stick). The only way you can make the argument that the left and both right stick are primary is if you are talking about fps games, which in all honesty is an inferior experience on console anyway, but the dualshock makes it all the more uncomfortable with the wide reach of your thumb and your index fingers on the triggers, hence crabclaw.

And that right there is the main reason for the symmetrical form factor in the first place. They had to cram in sticks into an existing controller-design fast. I mean, look at it, the sticks basically got added to the existing controller with new space at the controller base. There was basically no thought going into ergonomic considerations. And later they just lazily sticked with this design, instead of redesigning it more useful for the PS2.