Before I start this, I want you to know what my basis for this vision of mine is. I love videogames, videogames are my great passion, I want to work with them and I want to make my living from that work. I also love usability, which means that I like to see when an effort is being made for ease of use. Cluttered menus, unnecessarily complicated controls and what have you, are all things that really grind my gears.

The part of my vision that I want to tell you about here is about one of two problems in the industry that really bugs me. This one is basically this:

"It's too hard for consumers to buy the games they want and play them with who they want."

I think there are too many consoles out there basically, but I don't think we should have less competition or fewer companies building hardware. What we need for consoles, is for all these companies to build their consoles to one specification, so no matter if you buy your gaming console from Microsoft, Nintendo, Samsung, Panasonic, SEGA, Sony, Google, Apple or whoever might want to build consoles, it will be able to play any console game on that console.

Online systems should be opened up, so no matter what console you buy and no matter where you choose to have your online account (if these companies choose to maintain their own online networks like now with Xbox Live, PSN, etc.), you can still play with all your friends who may all have accounts in different networks.

Each company could still release their console with their own controllers, it would simply be up to developers to support the different controllers. So not only can you play on the console you like, with the people you like, but also use more different controllers to find the one that fits best for you for that game.

All of this means a few things are changing of course.

For gamers:

- Many more games to choose from / You don't have to limit yourself to one console and its games if you can't afford another one.

- You can play online with your friends, no matter what console you own.

- More freedom to find your style of gaming and play the games you like.

For developers (and publishers too):

- A much larger userbase without the need to develop games for several platforms (or port games) / More sales.

- Less risk when creating new IPs.

- More controllers that need to be supported.

For hardware sellers:

- More competition in the hardware sector.

- More competition in the online sector.

- More customers for their online services and games (potentially).

So the only ones who really take a hit on this are the hardware manufacturers, but they do so with the potential of higher sales in other areas. Microsoft would undoubtedly score a few more customers if they had the chance to sell Xbox Live to anyone who bought a console.

Gamers and developers score greatly on this, more games for the gamers and more gamers for the developers.

This part of my vision also touches on the other big problem in the industry which is this:

"It's too hard for developers to create games and get them out to the gamers."

With only one home console to build your game for, it will be much easier to reach a much larger audience at a smaller cost, which quite frankly, is a huge benefit for everyone who like gaming.

This whole view does conflict somewhat with all the gamers who want exclusives though, but it is a view I don't quite understand. I can understand making a game exclusive based on artistic merits. A game like Flower would never work on the 360 or the Wii, so it makes total sense that it is a PS3 exclusive. A game like Metal Gear Solid 4 has no artistic merit for being exclusive. It's just exclusive because the developers wanted to focus on one system, which means you needlessly sacrifice gamers (and thus sales) in the process. But if there only ever was one system to build for, they could achieve the positive effects of being an exclusive without the drawbacks.

I don't know if this will ever come to pass, and I don't care what the odds are of it happening. That's not what I want to discuss here. I want to know what people think of this idea, and hopefully get some good discussion going.

Thanks for your time if you made it this far.

If we had universal consoles we wouldn't have motion control or blu-ray or optic media and no one would attempt to make any great innovations in the hardware space. Not that those examples, besides optic media, are particularly great new things but they are examples of what happens when hardware companies compete. Take that away and they have no incentive to do anything new, or to make first party games. 

Also MGS4 sold in line with the rest of the series, so userbase clearly did not affect it. So going multi would not have been a game changer for MGS4. It would have sold similar amounts but with a larger cost to the devs. 

It's a nice idea, but I don't think it is going to work

What differences could there be in the boxes? Would it just be that the Sony console has blu-ray and the M$ doesn't? And then they can have completely different controllers? So would you have motion games and then controller games...

Surely the different control methods would lead to quite a lot of fragmentation and extra costs for the consumers

I think the main problem is getting the 3 hardware manufacturers to agree on a common piece of hardware. I know M$ and Sony might be able to come to some kind of agreement, but I don't think Nintendo would play along.

I do like the idea of the common online community, but the issue is the cost of Live if all the online services worked on the boxes together, then why would people pay for live for online gaming

The other problem comes in handhelds, where you will never get Apple playing along with Android, and the issues with android being fragmentation and of course the physical controls

Also most importantly, you said less hardware manufactures when of course you meant fewer

See, I don't think we would see great innovations in the hardware anyway. Optic media would definitely have come along anyway, and if, for example, this generation had been as I described with Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo playing with the same hardware, nothing is to stop Nintendo from releasing their console with the Wiimote and Wii Sports and steal all the spotlight. There would still be enough competition in the gaming space, although more so in the software and online services than anything else.

Except for the fact that since the consoles are universal you could easily play wiisports on sony or MS platform. There would be no exclusives, no benefit in creating anything. Not even including the fact that the wiimote probably wouldn't have come to pass since sony and MS would have shot it down. 

The only difference out of the box is what the companies choose to provide. If Microsoft wants their box to have five games, two controllers and six months of Live included, then that's one offer. But yes, the main differentiator between the consoles (hardware wise anyway) would be the controllers. And no one is to say that a game can't support both Nintendo's motion controls and Microsoft's dual analogue controller at the same time. It's a little extra work for developers, but it's work that is oh so very worth it I think.

And people would pay for Live, because it is the better service. This merger-of-consoles would make the competition in the online arena much more fierce, so Sony and Nintendo would have to step their game up or lose customers to Microsoft. Not everyone will go over to a service where you pay, but some certainly would.

And I guess I wasn't clear, but I meant for this to be on home consoles only, handhelds are a different beast right now.

It makes a lot of sense from the perspective of improving the overall market however in the current console climate it is implausible. However there is one hope. If any two console manufacturers were to unify their online system ala PSN on Wii and PS3 or Live on Xbox 360 and Wii etc or their next generation equivalents they would achieve a massive competitive advantage. So whilst it makes sense from a logical perspective in may not happen in reality.

The most likely unification scenarios are probably:

Xbox Live and Wii

Steam and Wii

PSN and Wii

Though I don't favour any particular one as being more likely over any other. I suspect that Steam has the advantage due to not already having a conflict of interest against the current console space.

I would say steam and PS3 are most likely since steam cloud and whatnot are coming with portal 2

The console is universal, the controller is not. The hardware manufacturers can create whatever controller they like, and it becomes the job of the developers to support these. The three main controllers might be mandatory to support in a game.

So with Wii Sports, it would sell buttloads with Nintendo's hardware and controllers, but if you didn't buy a Nintendo console, you can just buy a Wiimote and Wii Sports and you're still good to go on your Sony console.

But you don't subtract the hardware unless you look at it from the developers perspective. If games were to run on DVDs, Sony could still have a blu-ray drive in their console for movies. Hell, it might even be usable for games as long as they were built for both DVD and blu-ray, although in the current age, most HD games are anyway.