A Little Birdie Told Me Intel Would Lose the War
So why are console games more popular than PC games? Lets see. You don’t need an expensive computer to run them… no technical knowledge required to buy them and set them up. You don’t have to update your video card drivers. Oh yeah, and you use a controller instead of a keyboard and mouse.
Could this be the biggest reason that consoles are breaking into living rooms more than PCs are breaking into the worldwide gaming market?
Over the last six or so months, Intel has started hyping their ViiV (64) platform. Much like the “Centrino” mobile platform (which requires a specific CPU, Chipset and Wireless card), for computers to sport the ViiV sticker they will be required to have very specific hardware. CPU, GPU, OMG WTFDRM. This whole situation has been (in my opinion) a response to the positioning of the new consoles (360 and ps3 specifically) as more than just game consoles. Sony and Microsoft don’t have to work to get their hardware into the living room, whereas Intel is already well situated in the office. Computers are not for fun, they’re for work. Joe Sixpack buys a computer so he can check email and find porn, not so he can play Oblivion – and he certainly doesn’t intend to upgrade his video card every 8-12 months. He ESPECIALLY will not pay more than 300 dollars for the aforementioned video card when the total cost of his computer was probably between 1.5 and 3 times that.
So what am I saying here? Well, Intel has a big problem. Lets look at the players here – Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Intel, and AMD. There’s someone missing there. Where are the similarities between the ps3, the 360 and the Revolution?
IBM.
All three of the new next-gen consoles sport processors developed and produced by IBM. You can bet that Intel isn’t happy watching IBM beat it to the living room and consoles eat into its high-end CPU sales, and it’s trying to do something about it. Stage right enter ViiV. A new platform for “Digital Media.” Intel is using (too late in my opinion) to break the stranglehold that Sony and Microsoft essentially already have on the American living room. So where does interface play a part in all of this?
Well, let’s see here. The Nintendo Entertainment System Launched in October of 1985. It could play games, and it single-handedly pulled the US video game market out of the doldrums. How did one interact with this particular system? Well, it had an A button and a B button and a d-pad and… well you get the idea. It was a controller. How did the system work? Plug it into the TV and turn it on. Cool. Easy. No technical knowledge required. Because there was no learning curve, people with no savvy computer skills bought consoles in droves. And they still do to this day.
Enter my generation. I personally didn’t have access to any consoles before the 64 because my parents didn’t like them, but I did have a computer. I played Empire, Stronghold, and Railroad Tycoon. Just to give an example of why most people didn’t play games on PCs back then, every time I wanted to play Stronghold I had to edit and reload the autoexec.bat files in DOS. Know what the means? Yeah, didn’t think so. It basically closed out PCs from being the gaming system of choice. People bought consoles. Now, we don’t have to deal with that any more but it was a big problem back then – DOS was not created in order to play games, it was (stolen and) developed so that Mr. Gates had something to show to IBM after they made a deal. Oh, there’s IBM again. Funny they keep coming up, now that they’re not a part of the PC market at all. I’m not saying that there’s some kind of rivalry between IBM and Intel, but… well, maybe I am. Intel wants a piece of that sweet living room CPU market, and its offerings right now simply are not designed for it – but IBM found an easier way in, in the form of console game systems that Americans now feel comfortable buying without coming off as computer nerds.
So basically, as my generation and the generations after me will have grown up with consoles, and the interface of a controller is now much more intuitive and understood in terms of gaming than a keyboard and mouse. It’s even becoming natural. Why is it becoming natural? Because consoles are cheaper, easier, and more prolific than gaming computers. As such, console games sell more and reach a much wider audience than pc games do. And it will continue that way, maybe forever, or maybe just until technical knowledge is about a million times more available than it is today. I can build a PC, but most people can’t and that’s where the problem begins. It ends at Microsoft, but they’re cleaning up their act the rest of the way with DirectX 10 and Vista. RIP OpenGL, I’ll cry a tear for you if no one else will.
Does this also explain why Guitar Hero, Keroke Revolution and DDR attract such wide audiences? I think so. Give a person a game that uses their body instead of a keyboard and they’ll be able to pick it up real quick. Why? They use their body constantly. They know how it works. They can learn how to manipulate it naturally because that’s how our bodies work. So let’s all sit back and watch consoles continue to destroy PCs in game sales year after year. Just wait until MMOs start coming out on consoles, there will be no more safe genres on the PC at all!
Could this be the biggest reason that consoles are breaking into living rooms more than PCs are breaking into the worldwide gaming market?
Over the last six or so months, Intel has started hyping their ViiV (64) platform. Much like the “Centrino” mobile platform (which requires a specific CPU, Chipset and Wireless card), for computers to sport the ViiV sticker they will be required to have very specific hardware. CPU, GPU, OMG WTFDRM. This whole situation has been (in my opinion) a response to the positioning of the new consoles (360 and ps3 specifically) as more than just game consoles. Sony and Microsoft don’t have to work to get their hardware into the living room, whereas Intel is already well situated in the office. Computers are not for fun, they’re for work. Joe Sixpack buys a computer so he can check email and find porn, not so he can play Oblivion – and he certainly doesn’t intend to upgrade his video card every 8-12 months. He ESPECIALLY will not pay more than 300 dollars for the aforementioned video card when the total cost of his computer was probably between 1.5 and 3 times that.
So what am I saying here? Well, Intel has a big problem. Lets look at the players here – Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Intel, and AMD. There’s someone missing there. Where are the similarities between the ps3, the 360 and the Revolution?
IBM.
All three of the new next-gen consoles sport processors developed and produced by IBM. You can bet that Intel isn’t happy watching IBM beat it to the living room and consoles eat into its high-end CPU sales, and it’s trying to do something about it. Stage right enter ViiV. A new platform for “Digital Media.” Intel is using (too late in my opinion) to break the stranglehold that Sony and Microsoft essentially already have on the American living room. So where does interface play a part in all of this?
Well, let’s see here. The Nintendo Entertainment System Launched in October of 1985. It could play games, and it single-handedly pulled the US video game market out of the doldrums. How did one interact with this particular system? Well, it had an A button and a B button and a d-pad and… well you get the idea. It was a controller. How did the system work? Plug it into the TV and turn it on. Cool. Easy. No technical knowledge required. Because there was no learning curve, people with no savvy computer skills bought consoles in droves. And they still do to this day.
Enter my generation. I personally didn’t have access to any consoles before the 64 because my parents didn’t like them, but I did have a computer. I played Empire, Stronghold, and Railroad Tycoon. Just to give an example of why most people didn’t play games on PCs back then, every time I wanted to play Stronghold I had to edit and reload the autoexec.bat files in DOS. Know what the means? Yeah, didn’t think so. It basically closed out PCs from being the gaming system of choice. People bought consoles. Now, we don’t have to deal with that any more but it was a big problem back then – DOS was not created in order to play games, it was (stolen and) developed so that Mr. Gates had something to show to IBM after they made a deal. Oh, there’s IBM again. Funny they keep coming up, now that they’re not a part of the PC market at all. I’m not saying that there’s some kind of rivalry between IBM and Intel, but… well, maybe I am. Intel wants a piece of that sweet living room CPU market, and its offerings right now simply are not designed for it – but IBM found an easier way in, in the form of console game systems that Americans now feel comfortable buying without coming off as computer nerds.
So basically, as my generation and the generations after me will have grown up with consoles, and the interface of a controller is now much more intuitive and understood in terms of gaming than a keyboard and mouse. It’s even becoming natural. Why is it becoming natural? Because consoles are cheaper, easier, and more prolific than gaming computers. As such, console games sell more and reach a much wider audience than pc games do. And it will continue that way, maybe forever, or maybe just until technical knowledge is about a million times more available than it is today. I can build a PC, but most people can’t and that’s where the problem begins. It ends at Microsoft, but they’re cleaning up their act the rest of the way with DirectX 10 and Vista. RIP OpenGL, I’ll cry a tear for you if no one else will.
Does this also explain why Guitar Hero, Keroke Revolution and DDR attract such wide audiences? I think so. Give a person a game that uses their body instead of a keyboard and they’ll be able to pick it up real quick. Why? They use their body constantly. They know how it works. They can learn how to manipulate it naturally because that’s how our bodies work. So let’s all sit back and watch consoles continue to destroy PCs in game sales year after year. Just wait until MMOs start coming out on consoles, there will be no more safe genres on the PC at all!
posted by Peter at 12:13 PM
2 Comments:
nice piece of writing peter!
i just thought i would mention one thing though... while i have been over here in china, i have not seen a single gaming console, but i have seen dozens upon dozens of internet cafes sporting relatively decent gaming PCs... well, decent enough to play WoW and war/starcraft, along with an equivalent of DDR and a mario-kart spinoff that girls seem to play all the time online with their friends. basically, my point is that the chinese market is still PC-centered, at least from what i have seen. japan is another story, and i have no clue about korea, but i think that their mmo-centric gaming community will continue to use PCs (albeit far from cutting edge) for a long time to come. just some thoughts :)
That's true, but in the US consoles sell games, not PCs.
Post a Comment
<< Home