Inside The Console: One Console World

Sunday, December 2, 2007

So yeah. Our next episode is: What about a one console world? And Episode 95 is up. And we forgot to blog it. Yeah... Sorry.

-John

Unknown said...: Ironically, I was just thinking about something like this on the way home from work today, only my thoughts were more along the lines of "What would video games be like today without Nintendo?" In a one console world (premise not granted! In a free-market economy, it would be highly unlikely for any significant period of time. But for the sake of purely hypothetical argument...) games would basically stagnate and...

No, I can't go on.

Games, by their very nature, involve competition. A one console world could never exist. There is *always* going to be someone out there programming the the next big game, even if one company has a monopoly. Sony dominated in the late 90's, but look at them today. You think the Activision/Blizzard deal means anything? Three words: AOL Time Warner. EA will fall, to be replaced by any number of other developers.

A one console world cannot happen because they operate the same as anything else in a free market economy, only with far less stability because the technology changes so rapidly. Even if one company dominated for a few years, its console would be outdated. And in the meantime, several companies would put together a much better console to compete.

I'm interested to hear your take on the subject, though. Hmm...
Wednesday, December 5, 2007 at 9:50:00 PM CST