more console jockeying

There has been a fresh wave of news articles out relating to current console sales, and projected console sales futures in the last week or so, and they throw up some interesting insights. Now, it has to be said that i'm not overly interested in which console wins this generation of sales - although i might offer the opinion that most of the previous console generations have had a successful duopoly, rather than a single winner (ps2/xbox; ps1, n64; sega/snes; etc), and so we should be punting for the likely loser, rather than the likely winner.*

That said, what i find interesting about the current console war is not the likely result, but the process of getting there: the presumption, 18 months ago, was that the likely result of the next generation would go the same as the previous generation (this is hardly surprising: i can vividly recall this issue of WIRED magazine, from 1993: cover story 'Sega's Plan for World Domination') - and thus that Sony and Microsoft would be duelling it out for supremacy, with Nintendo nowhere.

This presumption was reinforced by the technical specifications of the Wii - it's a GameCube rebadged, essentially, and the GameCube was the big loser of the previous game generation - and by the naming debacle (for some years, the new Nintendo console was going to be named the Revolution; only to be renamed the Wii quite late in the production process). Game journalists and market analysts overlooked the innovative controller - again, with some good reason, as Nintendo had past form in not supporting good hardware with good games (the Gamecube, again) - and the new forms of gameplay that this could provide, and just compared relative console power.

What is interesting about the current console war is the extent to which the new console generation is introducing turbulence into the existing market segmentation (i'm mixing my metaphors: i should really be referring to the turbulence being introduced into market flow). The appearance (and rapid success) of the Wii has thrown into doubt existing presumptions about the gaming market (ie, that it's dominated by technological fetishists and power-queens) and with them, the accepted consensus about the constitution and future of the gaming industry. As a result, we're seeing much chatter as observers try and guess which stable state the system will come to revolve around.

Have MS and Sony taken a dead-end in console design? Is the Wii a flash in the pan? Are gamers qualitatively different from non-gamers, or is a non-gamer simply a gamer who hasn't found a game they're interpellated by yet? the questions that the current console generation is throwing up are, to me at least, quite facinating.


UK Retailers Reporting Massive Demand for the PS3 - gamesinustry.biz
Analysts Downgrade Games Publisher Share Outlook - gamasutra.com
Is the Wii Novelty Wearing Off? - computerandvideogames.com
EA Playing Catch-up on Wii, Waking up to PS3 Failure - Information Arbitrage
Japanese Perspective on Console war in US - Kotaku


* and yes, even talking about console sales in terms of winners and losers is mendacious: although the GameCube might well have been a distant third in global sales in the last console generation, no-one could ever claim that Nintendo weren't extremely profitable over that period. the close correlation between market analysts and football commentators has been remarked upon by many people.