The death of the gaming console and what it means

[Kinthalis]

@Airk

Clearly, people are convinced there is money to be made in consoles, or at least, console ports. Similarly, people are convinced there is money to be made in the PC space - but not so much that they are generally making exclusives anymore.

This is a weird statement, considering the PC has the most exclusives of any platform…

And that’s even though there is ZERO incentive for PC game devs to stay PC only. It’s not like there’s a Sony or Microsoft money-hatting game devs to pretty please, with sugar on top stay exclusive to the PC.

The reason for that is probably a combination of the availability of early access programs, the limitations of game pads, and possibly low interest from console gamers in certain genres. That’s my guess anyway.

[Apocalypso]

@Justin_Bailey

Mario Kart Wii was an original game, not a port, and it sold almost 36 million copies. It was, IIRC, the most popular non-bundled game of the PS3/Wii/Xbox 360 era by a significant margin.

Also, the 53-47 split between digital sales and retail sales that the article talks about is misleading. For one, digital sales refers to all money made by the sale of “subscriptions, digital full games, digital add-on content, mobile apps and social network gaming.” And two, the retail side doesn’t include used games. It skews the data in favor of digital and ignores the fact that bandwidth is going to start hurting if many more people start buying exclusively digital games. Services like Steam work as well as they do and are as popular as they are because they’re not too popular.

Does the digital sales numbers include things like in app purchases and downloadable content? Because that would further skew the numbers.

[Justin_Bailey]

@Zakalwe

I think I see the confusion here. Superhal is saying that Kart is a port to the Wii from other Nintendo consoles not from another gaming company. I don’t agree that makes it a port, they did add new content, but I think that’s what he’s saying.

He’s wrong however he says it. Mario Kart Wii was an original game. It had never previously been released for any other Nintendo system. By definition, that makes it not a port. And that’s why it sold more copies than any other game (barring Wii Sports) in the previous generation.

@Apocalypso

Does the digital sales numbers include things like in app purchases and downloadable content? Because that would further skew the numbers.

Yes, the ESA considers digital sales to include all money made from “subscriptions, digital full games, digital add-on content, mobile apps and social network gaming.”

It’s like comparing the population of a metropolitan area with that of a single city. Of course the metropolitan area (AKA digital sales) is going to be much much larger.

[Mahaloth]

Is there any chance the PS5 or NextXbox would try to team up with Steam and run their games as well as their own exclusives?

Or even the PS4 or Xbox One adding this later?

[Justin_Bailey]

@Mahaloth

Is there any chance the PS5 or NextXbox would try to team up with Steam and run their games as well as their own exclusives?

Or even the PS4 or Xbox One adding this later?

I’m not a hardware guy, but I don’t believe that there’s theoretically anything prohibiting that (as long as MS or Sony allow it). It would certainly be a very interesting development.

The PS3 had a Linux mode, so I don’t see why the PS4 or Xbox One (or PS5 or NextXbox) couldn’t as well.

[The_Hamster_King]

@Mahaloth

Is there any chance the PS5 or NextXbox would try to team up with Steam and run their games as well as their own exclusives?

Or even the PS4 or Xbox One adding this later?

I’m having a hard time picturing how to do this. Each game would have to have some work done to port it. Not necessarily a lot, but at least a little. You’d need to change the code that handles control inputs, probably some stuff with display resolution, add the hooks to allow exiting back to the the console OS instead of Windows, etc. When you recompile to the new platform you may discover that some things that ran fine on a PC don’t on the console – even a multiplatform engine like Unity has some platform-specific quirks.

So there’s not really any way to just flip a switch and say “All these titles are now available on PlayStation!” You’ve got to port them one-by-one. But that’s exactly the situation we have now. PC games that can make money on consoles get ported to consoles, and those that won’t earn back their porting cost don’t.

[The_Hamster_King]

@Kinthalis

The reason for that is probably a combination of the availability of early access programs, the limitations of game pads, and possibly low interest from console gamers in certain genres. That’s my guess anyway.

Barrier to entry for developing on PC is much lower.

You can download Unity to your PC for free and start making games immediately. You don’t have to buy anything or get approval from anyone.

If you want to develop for consoles you need a dev kit. To get a dev kit you need to be a registered developer. To become a registered developer you need to incorporate. It’s not a lot of hoops to jump through. Even tiny studios can get access to kits pretty easily. But it does weed out hobbyists.