When Dennis Dyack laid out his vision for the One-Console Future, he theorized that the extinction of multiple videogame consoles wasn’t just a utopian possibility “where games would become better in quality, cheaper, and more widely available.” He said it was inevitable. I’ve never agreed with Mr. Dyack, but I don’t necessarily think he’s too far off. As Wedbush Morgan’s resident maverick Michael Pachter says in the latest episode of GameTrailers’ Bonus Round, the console war is already on the road to being less about technological difference’s as it is about a war of branding. Not who has the better games, graphics, and controllers, but whose name is cooler. I think that’s true. But it’s only one possibility.
The overall subject of Bonus Round this week is the future of videogames. What will we be playing in seven or eight years, during what would traditionally be the next generation of consoles, and what will we be playing those games on? Geoff Keighly sat down with Pachter, former editor in chief of EGM Dan Hsu, and Xbox co-creator Seamus Blackley to discuss the subject and their dialogue got me thinking about Dyack’s land-of-milk-honey-and-no-proprietary-technology predictions. Both Blackley and Pachter agree that eventually, as social infrastructure continues to grow as the driving factor behind all entertainment and artistic expression, videogame consoles will naturally consolidate along with every consumer device in an effort to provide unified access to a user’s personal experience. Your games, your friends list, your profile, photos, family trees, etc. all linked in with everything you use, including your game console. The games themselves, from Pachter’s point of view, have solidified as content; much like television programs between the ‘60s and today, the format has reached its final form, the only evolution left being delivery and a polishing of presentation. Dan Hsu, however, proposes that the console market has been indelibly changed by the Wii. Going forward, Sony, Microsoft, and whomever else’s consoles will diversify into different experiences defined by inputs like the Wii’s motion controller or balance board.
That’s the true shape gaming’s future. Blackley and Pachter aren’t wrong that functionality between every consumer device will continue to converge to satisfy our new communal needs, but this doesn’t ensure a Dyackian console. No, videogames are too young and are changing too quickly. They are in their adolescence as a form of expression. But the format, how we touch these stories, diversions, and competitions, is just being born.
Related links:
Too Much Crap: The Gamer’s Lament
The Madden IQ and The Future of Competitive Gaming
Counterpoint: Too Many Games?
Serious Business: Dennis Dyack Blames the Internet