The next generation of video game consoles promises everything from cool graphics to features galore. But what about gameplay and that little thing called “innovation”?
Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo: Get real
Digital Journal — The launch of new Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo game consoles this year and in 2006 may transform the global video game industry. Just don’t expect cooler games.
In what was described as “a showdown of intergalactic, pan-dimensional and fantastically epic proportions” by a popular entertainment site, the big three teased gamers with their new consoles at the 2005 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), the biggest industry trade show. Sony and Microsoft, first and second in market share respectively, boasted how their PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 would have HDTV-quality graphics, superior audio and more processing smarts than Stephen Hawking, as well as the connectivity and multimedia capabilities of a media-centre PC.
In contrast, third-place Nintendo eschewed technological chest-thumping for its new console, code-named Revolution. “Development costs are pushing into eight figures and developers are endangered,” Nintendo president Satoru Iwata told ZDNet. He suggested that with the Revolution, “big ideas can prevail over big budgets.”
We can only hope. Though processing and graphics muscle can enhance realism in games, creating high-definition images will elevate already soaring development costs, according to DFC Intelligence, an industry observer. Worse, it seems neither the new PlayStation nor Xbox will deliver improvements to AI, game logic and other code critical to good games, DFC concluded. Thus, as development expenditures soar, game quality may remain static or decline.
This article is part of Digital Journal‘s Summer 2005 issue. To read the rest of this story, pick up your copy in bookstores across Canada or the United States!
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