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Yoichi Wada: Sony And Microsoft Ready For The Death Of Consoles
Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada has said that Sony and Microsoft are already prepared for the death of the console era.
“In ten years’ time a lot of what we call ‘console games’ won’t exist,” the executive told MCV.
“In the past the platform was hardware, but it has switched to the network… A time will come when the hardware isn’t even needed anymore,” he added, noting that Sony and Microsoft are ready for a new era dominated by server-based offerings, game streaming and digital distribution.
“Somewhere around 2005 the console manufacturers’ strategy shifted,” he said.
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Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court 30 Monmouth Street Bath, UK BA1 2BW
England and Wales company registration number 2008885
I'm sure Square would love to see the death of media...beats shipping 44 bluray disks per game for the 100th installment of the damn FF series!
cloud computing? games stored on external servers and streamed to us using high-speed internet? why would you want that 'FTW'? what is so good about that?
It means they can 'control' what you do with your bought copy; if they try to sell it as any but that they're lying.
I still see CD's and DVD's and Bluray's in the shops, it seems to me that physical media has been dying for nearly 10 years. With Isp's already capping bandwidth and throttling speeds the system just about supports the current usage patterns. This vision of a physical-less future where we all cloud compute is a pipe dream that's going to take decades to realise.
basically it's goodbye Gamestop. U wont be needed anymore
I think in about 3 years or so TV's will start dying off as well, (which is already happening), and consoles will be no more.
The cloud computing era is fast approaching, which should really start taking the industry by storm and Sony and Microsoft need to start preparing for that, (OnLive FTW!). PC games will hopefully still be around because a lot of people are still hardcore graphics obsessed gamers like me that don't want our precious games brought to us by a server running on medium requirements at a measly 35 fps.
But hopefully more kids like me will be interested in developing games soon because wonderful engines like Unity, and Unreal Engine 3 that have just recently gone free, and they're are millions of good tutorials which you can find online. Unity is awesome and easy BTW, and better to use than UE3 in my opinion.
I have just started messing around with Unity, its great, especially as it has alot of script templates built in so really unless your doing something radical you only have to know a bit of simple scripting language.
I couldn't get UE3 to work, i am using parallels so i think it has problems installing
Translation: Sony and Microsoft are ready to bend over and do whatever the third party 'games industry' tells them to do. The concerns of actual gamers are secondary.
I have to agree, consoles won't be around forever and they will be replaced by other forms of technology.
Consoles are only popular in North America and Western Europe, in Japan it's all about handhelds and the rest of the world i.e. Eastern Europe, South America and most of Asia it's mostly PC gaming, consoles haven't got a look-in within these regions.
The times are changing and it's not a case of if, but more a question of when consoles burnout and fade away...
I'd welcome the death of home consoles and would welcome a gaming service equivalent of cloud computing. Also, it'll get rid of all the fucking bickering console fanboys. The net is full of the scumbags.
It's inevitable the industry is going down the digital downloads path and i welcome it.
No, listen to the vast majority of gamers (and not to your business analysts, which is arguably the biggest thing wrong with the Japanese market) we want physical copies.--We want our consoles.
No fuck off and make something decent please, I'm getting bored of waiting.
Fcuk digital distribution! It took me 2 days to download an HD movie from PSN last weekend. I've got a 20mb line too. The infrastructure just isn't there at the moment. Long live the hard copy!!
This utopia is based upon the assumption of ubiquitous 'high' speed broadband.
Therefore consoles and especially handhelds and their portable storage media will be around for a long while yet.
If they push people who aren't ready onto digital distribution, then they stand to lose a ton of customers due to user dissatisfaction.
Just look at the PSP Go. It's managed a rare 'too much too soon' and 'too little too late' in one crack of the whip! Only on Sony!
On the other side of the coin comes the iPhone, and when the hardware, software, network and services are all up to scratch - this is what can happen. Apple are in their own lane, and this is why everybody is looking way too far forward.
Sony aren't even in Apple's 2002. The Media Go software is like a test/beta version of iTunes. 7/10.
Just look at the PSP Go. It's managed a rare 'too much too soon' and 'too little too late' in one crack of the whip! Only on Sony!
Nice.
The biggest problem with the PSP Go is that the plain and simple fact is that it is an up-grade that offers less than the original. So it is somewhat unfair to judge digital distribution by the PSP Go.
As you stated the iPhone has been extremely successful, and is therefore a much better example of the possibilities.
If digital distribution/ streaming does, ever become the primary way of consuming games i can't see it happening before the 'Playstation 4' generation or perhaps even later
he talks as if it is inevitable and unchangable.. and the only thing his company can do is align itself to these market forces. i guess business men have to predict the future.
it does seem to be all about 'content'; publishers love that word. it's true that you play for the experience and not the product, but i really don't like the idea of game streaming, or absolute digital downloads. i feel more and more as if i'm simply renting the right to 'use' the 'data'...
We have always been renting the right to 'use' the 'data'. Regardless of whether you bought the software on a physical medium (a floppy disc, CD, DVD, etc), or have downloaded it as a file, or have streamed it, the vast majority of software that people have ever bought, ever since software was available for sale, is under a license agreement. This isn't new. One of the reasons you may feel like this is happening more and more now, despite it actually always being the norm, is that it's being talked about more frequently, possibly because they don't understand it, and are afraid of what it may mean because they'd like to do what they see fit with the software they think they own.
That is an opinion you hear a lot lately, but it is plain wrong. What you buy, when you buy a piece of software, is not a "license", what you are buying is real honest to God data. Your "right to use it" stems from the fact that you forked over money, and now own the product. You can play with it, examine it, make backups of it, give it to a friend, play it on any machine you like, keep it as long as you please, and even sell it for money - irrespective of any enclosed license.
In the simplest possible terms, if you buy a game, you own that game. If you want a car analogy, if you buy a car, you own that car. "I own a Toyota", you could say, and the company cannot stop you from using their name in that fashion because of a EULA you had to click through the first time you tried to turn the car on.
So what's the deal with illegal copying then? Simple: these limitations come from copyright law. But just like traffic law does not change your ownership of a car into a license of that car, neither does copyright law change your ownership of the software into a mere license.
Companies desperately want you to believe that you merely own a license - something with no resale value, something with all the limitations that they can possibly think of added to it, to extract as much money as they possible can from you, the buyer and owner of their product. It is up to us to fight that evil vision of the future. Stand up for your rights! You own every game that you paid good money for, and don't let anyone tell you differently!
Of course they want that. They want to be able to kill off used game sales, hopefully piracy and charge whatever price they want for run of the mill sequels.
Hopefully more people will get interested in programming and development and we can see a re-birth of PC gaming...assuming PCs stay as an open platform which I'm sure MS would like to put an end to as well.
There is also the fact that consoles lose all manufacturers money when first put into market, this can continue for 5, 10 years and in some cases they make a loss after a console dies. A lack of consoles means no loss.
Without the 'big three' deciding what is released, what is exclusive, what the limitations are for a game then hopefully we will begin to see diversity in gaming similar to the pioneering, early days of home video games, combined with todays technology.
I am a massive fan of the concepts and potential future of streamed gaming, where the only limitation is bandwidth. At the moment bandwidth IS an issue, shit i live in the newest town in britain (Milton Keynes) and we have rubbish internet.
I'd say your first paragraph is overlooking a couple of key points.
Firstly, Nintendo has shown a model that doesn't have to mean console losses at any stage in the hardware cycle. Of course the initial entry into the market necessitates a risk for which you have to sell a certain number of units to overcome - but the principle point being that none of Nintendo's current consoles have ever been sold at a loss. As long as they sell reasonably quickly they recoup the cost of entering the consoles into market almost straight away - whereas Sony and Microsoft accept console losses over the entire cycle (they minimise this by manufacturing cheaply towards the end and sell at approximately break even or small profit prices) so that they can make money on licenses from software sales. Which explains why they encourage so many sequels and other easy sells. The fact that Nintendo doesn't require these license sales to break even explains why they are not as concerned by the quantity of titles released and individual game units sold - although, of course, it is still an important profit.
Secondly, there will be equivalent initial losses for any company moving to a network based service. The cost of the initial servers required to be able to process all those games running simultaneously will be huge, as is the risk is customer dissatisfaction if they do not provide a service that can consistently cope with demand. Costs will also be consistently required to continually upgrade the servers etc as games increase in sophistication and their user base grows. Now with a carefully chosen business model, e.g. subscription, profits on base units etc, these costs can be offset - but the costs and the risks remain so to say that "A lack of consoles means no loss" is not true.
I think these reasons, amongst others, mean that it will be some time before consoles become redundant - although I agree that they probably will in the long run.
I agree with you that obviously there will be initial setup costs and maintenance an upgrade costs however there is a vast amount of money that can be made/saved from digital distribution.
Firstly there is no middle man, without retailers being involved Sony, MS or whoever else is free to make larger profits. This also eliminates distribution and packaging costs.
Not having a physical console means there is little to no health and safety tests to do which any electronic product has to go through and a different for every country.
Also localisation becomes easier as there is no need to work through PAl, NTSC issues, only language translations. This will also cut down ever so slightly on piracy (i know it wont do much), as games are release at the same time world wide.
On the subject of piracy i would imagine the potential for streaming games would eliminate a lot of piracy.
But overall i do agree that it will take a long time to become the primary way of gaming, let alone the only way.
Well strictly there will still need to be a home console - just a much cheaper glorified router - which will still need to undergo H&S tests. Plus I doubt the people offering the services would agree to use a homogeneous unit so we will still require several boxes under the TV.
There probably won't be localisation issues in terms of PAL / NTSC, but only because most modern TVs support both - which means there wouldn't be for "standard" consoles either - well other than slightly different transformers. But there will still be the same need for content localisation.
I agree piracy would seem a much easier problem to deal with - but again the ability to block consoles online - with most people desiring online gaming - is already addressing this issue.
So what I am saying is that you're right, going purely online will be cheaper and simpler for those offering the services, however, I don't think the difference between online and standard will be anywhere near as large as you expect and that the retailers will not make anywhere near as vast savings as you hypothesise.
I think we also need to make a distinction between digital distribution (by this I mean simply downloading games online) and streamed gaming - the resources required for digital distribution are significantly lower than for streamed gaming. The difference in server power required to merely distribute games is orders of magnitude lower than that required to stream games, not to mention communication infrastructure - I think we need to appreciate just how much power (and bandwidth) would be required to realise how unlikely it is that this will happen anytime soon. As such I expect digital distribution to arrive much much sooner than streamed games.