State of play

I meant to write something about E3 back in May, but it came and went without comment from me. What's E3? Wait, you're not familiar with the yearly Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, when the great, the good (and often the dire) co-mingle and tout their wares for the year ahead? No, well, it's probably not everyone's cup of tea, though it's definitely something I pay attention to; this year more than most. The gaming world, or the console side of it at least, runs on a 5 or six year cycle, you see. With the now venerable PS2 launched in 2000, the current cycle is nearing it's end and already the major players are busy mapping out their plans for the years ahead. Most of their schemes were laid before the public for the first time at E3.

Let's quickly recap the state of play with the current generation of consoles first. The winner, by a considerable margin was Sony. A late entry to the console wars with the first PlayStation, Sony quickly came to dominate the gaming landscape. The anticipation for the PS2 put paid to Sega's ambitions with the Dreamcast, and proved a near insurmountable obstacle for Microsoft and Nintendo.

Microsoft, with their Xbox, confounded my expectations slightly, getting far more right than I'd expected them too. Perhaps the biggest surprise has been the absence of Microsoft's usual arrogance, replaced with an unusual willingness to listen - the original controllers, for example, were widely mocked by gamers around the world, and Microsoft to their credit went back to the drawing board and came up with a design that's lauded as much as the originals were despised. They've also gone a long way to providing a cohesive environment for developers and by all accounts they've done a sterling job pioneering online gaming with Xbox Live, and though they've been unable to catch up with Sony, they've carved themselves a respectable niche. That said, they completely failed to make a dent in Japan, largely due to their library of western focused games; Halo, the crown in Microsoft's IP crown belongs in a genre which has little popularity in Japan.

Then there's Nintendo. I find it entirely fitting that Nintendo's recently opened retail outlet in New York is named Nintendo World. Nintendo do seem to operate in their own unique corner of the world where, if they're not complete unaware of what Sony and Microsoft are up to, they certainly come across as ambivalent towards it. I believe the Nintendo made some fundamental errors with the launch of Gamecube - primarily aiming it at too low an age group. Nintendo have stated several times their goal to expand the audience for their games beyond the usual demographic of 25-35 year old gamers, but in do so they've not payed as much attention to that key demographic as they should. And, for the moment at least, that's where money lies. Nintendo have continued to cede market share to Sony and Microsoft this generation, and whilst that's far from good news, it should be remembered that Nintendo remains a hugely profitable company with liquid reserves in the billions of dollars.

So what's coming up next? Each of the major console companies announced new hardware at E3. Sony have come up with the imaginatively titled PS3, Microsoft have come full circle with the Xbox 360, and Nintendo are promising a Revolution. Most information came from Microsoft and Sony with Nintendo showing little more than the design of the box. What's clear, though is that the battle for the high end is being fought by Sony and Microsoft, whilst Nintendo are gamely attempting to broaden the appeal of Nintendo world.

In raw technical terms, Sony appear to have the edge of Microsoft. Don't worry, I'm not about to going into the raw details. Suffice it to say that both are tremendously powerful machines, though not as powerful as the raw numbers may suggest, and come complete with a new set of idiosyncrasies for developers to get their heads around - multi core cpu's for one. Broadly speaking I don't expect to see much graphical difference in games, at least for the initial round of games. Still, there are still some significant differences between them Like it's predecessor, the 360 comes with a hard drive to supplement it's dvd drive whereas the PS3 with a blu-ray drive, one of the potential successors to dvd's. The 360 supports high definition televisions but only at 720p, while the PS3 on the other hand supports twin 1080p displays.

However, the most important similarity between these two competing consoles will be cost. Neither of these machines will be cheap to produce. Merrill Lynch recently estimated the production cost of a PS3 console at just shy of $500. The 360 may be cheaper to produce, but not vastly so. Console manufacturers generally rely on selling their hardware at a loss, hoping to turn a profit on the games themselves - the licensing model is such the the console manufacturer will claim a fee for every game sold for their platform, regardless of who produced it. Even if Sony retail the PS3 at $399 they stand to lose just shy of a billion dollars in their first year if they sell the 10 million consoles they're predicting. Even for a company the size of Sony, that's a considerable hit. Of course, no pricing has been announced for any future console yet, but Sony's president, Ken Kutarugi, recently went on record saying that the PS3 would be "expensive" and that "the PS3 can't be offered at a price that's targeted towards households." To be honest, I find Sony's position to be absolutely bizarre. They've stuffed the machine with an array of extraneous functionality which raises the price whilst offering games little in return. I mean 6 USB2 ports? And the support for twin 1080p displays when it's debatable whether even the machine even has the power to do much with them? All that's missing is the kitchen sink. Someone at Sony should have been keeping an eye on costs and that doesn't seem to have happened. Either the price will rise for consumers, or else Sony will absorb the cost to keep the price low. The net result is still costly for Sony. Just to put that into perspective, for the last couple of console generations the launch price has been $300. Deviating to far above that risks alienating consumers. By comparison, Microsoft seem to have done a better job loading the 360 with the essentials without skimping too much. The primarily downside in terms of cost is the hard drive. I was initially sceptical about that at first, viewing it as an expensive luxury, but it's since become clear that Microsoft are planning on stepping up their foray into online gaming with the 360 and they have big plans for making money through downloadable content. In this context the hard drive could well turn out to be a shrewd investment.

And then there's Nintendo, a bit of a black horse again. Unusually, Nintendo isn't trying to compete at the high end, claiming to have realised that regardless of how powerful the machine may be, it's not going to fundamentally alter the way we play games. Pictures of the Revolution show a very small machine, around the size of 3 stacked dvd cases according to Nintendo's publicity. The size of the machine limits it's power. It makes no allowance for the sort of heat generated by the fastest processors. Instead Nintendo have stated their desire to produce a console, that's small, affordable (certainly cheaper than the PS3 or 360), powerful enough, and which can appeal to a broader spectrum of gamers. The last part is the interesting bit. Nintendo are claiming that the Revolution really will offer a revolution, something that will change the way we play games, as well as the demographic that will play them. The controller will be the key they say. There's plenty of speculation as to just what the new controller will offer. Hints have been dropped by Nintendo, but nothing more. Shigeru Miyamoto has said in several interviews that current controllers are to complex, confusing users to with two many buttons and sticks. Given that the average controller has 3 control sticks and between 8 and 10 buttons, it's a point that probably has some merit (the fact that it comes from the man behind Mario, Zelda and some of the most influential games ever created should lend it extra weight). Still, it's difficult to say exactly what the new controller will offer. Speculation has ranged from the reasonable (a gyroscopic sensor, a trackball), to the feasible but unlikely (a touchscreen on the controller), to the truly outlandish (3d holographic displays, vr headsets). My money is on the gyroscopic sensor, and I like the idea of a trackball, particularly as consoles move online and interfaces become more complex. And just think what a cool conversion of Marble Madness you could do with a trackball. Nintendo have promised we'll know more before the end of year. It's worth pointing out that raw power alone doesn't necessarily define the winner of the console wars. The PS2 was by far the weakest of the previous generation after all, and Sega's Genesis/Megadrive managed to trump the superior SNES a couple of generations before that. The handheld market also offers an interesting view of what might happen, with the innovative Nintendo DS holding it's own (despite it's horrible industrial design) against Sony's technically superior, and infinitely more graceful PSP. Coupled with the fact that Nintendo are the only company talking innovation in the games themselves means that they could well be on to something.

Anyway there are interesting times ahead. Microsoft will be first to market with an ambitious world wide launch for the 360 this November, trying to avoid the fate that befall the Dreamcast as games sat on their wallets and waited to see what Sony came up with. The PS3 is expected for Easter next year, whilst the Revolution seems to be slipping further back to the middle of the year. My bet is that Sony will retain their top spot, but that Microsoft will achieve a much closer second and that Nintendo will continue to be Nintendo, producing games that only Nintendo can.