EA Exec: "We Want An Open, Standard Platform"
In an interview with the BBC, Gerhard Florin, head of international publishing for Electronic Arts, said that his company is sick of these silly console wars, and thinks a one console future is in the cards.
"We want an open, standard platform which is much easier than having five which are not compatible," said Florin. "We're platform agnostic and we definitely don't want to have one platform which is a walled garden." He added, "I am not sure how long we will have dedicated consoles - but we could be talking up to 15 years.”
By then, increased bandwidth could theoretically allow publishers to distribute their games over the internet, either through downloading or streaming content directly to the consumer. If that happens, video games could adopt a cable television-like model, with relatively inexpensive set top boxes replacing individual consoles and saving precious real estate under televisions around the world. Florin fails to mention that, freed from trolling message boards and blogs, console fanboys could go back to their everyday lives, curing cancer and rescuing puppies from snakes.
EA wants 'open gaming platform' [BBC News]
[via: biz.gamedaily.com]
Dawdle
Posted to Miscellany on 20 October 2007
· Comments (7)
Other stuff like this: EA, ps3, wii, xbox 360
As much "sense" as that makes its not going to happen in my life time (24 here).
Without healthy competition the market will go stagnant. Its the same as saying that its stupid to have a choice in cars, we hope to eleminate the car industry and release 1 type of car for everbody to use.
Variety is the spice of life! Personally I would hate to see a single console market, while I can see the upsides its really unappealing.
Was the Phantom a prophet then? Struck down before its chance to lead us to the next generation of television based gaming?
Now, one thing to think of is that a standard platform doesn't necessarily mean the demise of console competition...a single shared development kit could mean that ports would be easy and that systems could still have different configuration.
Imagine if the PS2 had also used WindowsCE as a development kit along side the Dreamcast? How different would our console landscape be now?
If the PS3 had been as successful as the PS2, making the 360 irrelevant and forcing Nintendo to go all-software as many analysts predicted, this actually stood a chance of happening. Nintendo's comeback and Microsoft's "release early" strategy (plus Kutaragi and company's lack of connection with economic reality) staved it off for another generation.
Sony's ascendance once prevented it from happening in the mid-90's when Nintendo was king and Sega was faltering, so it could happen again -- either with the current players, or with a new one if the PS3 ends up being regarded as a funny looking Blu-Ray player in the annals of consumer electronics history.
Can you imagine a world where EA games are only available on a single console, namely their own? They killed the Dreamcast.... could they kill two or more competitors?
Just wanted to say: that picture is funny =p
A unified platform for gaming is about as likely as a unified OS for all computers. It's not going to happen because different people want different things and are resistant to change.
But it is a good idea. It would be nice not to have to spend 1200 bucks every 3 years just to be able to play the latest games. A single developer platform does not have to hinder innovation or diversity in the market. Sure, there can be competing devices that can do different things, but just make it easier to develop software, sort of like the PC market and Windows.
The problem of course would be when someone want to do something that the platform won't allow, so in this kind of model we probably wouldn't see something as cool and different as the wii. Add to that the need for creating a standard of performance and how high or low that should be, or even how it could shut out potential competitors who can't afford higher performance and you get something that isn't going to happen.
If EA really felt this way, they would look at the sales of their PS3 games, and then decide that the simply don't want to waste their time anymore. By doing so, they would pretty much put the nail in the coffin of the PS3, thus creating 2 consoles for them to focus on, one for "Wiimote low-graphics, low expense" games followed by the "360 hd-powerful, higher expense" games.
I Say this, not as an xbox fanboy, but from a business perspective, making games for the PS3 with high budgets which don't return nearly as much profit as a game created for the xbox, is just not a good business decision... How can it be?
Am I the only one seeing the irony of big ol' EA, who throws sooo many sports games down our throat on every single console (including cellphone games) at simultaneous launch, that they are whining about having to do all of this multiplatform challenges? To me, it's like them whining about the sequalitis of the game industry ::coughMaddencough::