The War Of The Consoles


	The War Of The Consoles


	by Guido Henkel

In the upcoming months we will have the joint pleasure to sit back and enjoy a “Battle Royal” among video game console manufacturers, as they try to wow consumers into buying their precious piece of hardware, and put it under the Christmas tree of their loved ones. “Well, don’t they do that every year?” you may wonder. Yes, they certainly do, but this time around it’s the clash of the Titans quite literally. Sony is repromoting “Playstation 2” anew for the Holidays, while Microsoft is shipping the hotly anticipated “Xbox” and Nintendo is following suit with their own next generation console, “GameCube.”

Recently I had a conversation with a friend, who knew of my ongoing background in the computer and video games industry. “So, who do you think will be the big console winner this year?” he asked me. It is a fair and trivial question it seems, but the answer is much less simple.

Ultimately it will be a war between Microsoft and Nintendo. “Playstation 2” won’t make it into the equation for a number of very simple reasons. First of all, it is “old news.” The console has been released over a year ago and has lost its luster. Sony’s botched release further added to the gloom surrounding the console, and from a developer’s standpoint, “Playstation 2” is simply outdated. Even after dropping the retail price significantly, people just don’t seem to care much for the consoles, and the hardware architecture is so poor that many game developers have turned their back on the once celebrated format.


	Playstation 2 has been released over a year ago and has lost its luster


	That leaves us with Microsoft and Nintendo. Microsoft has a strong agenda, but no experience in the field. They have some big shoes to fill if they want to win against someone like Nintendo, who has established itself as a household name. However, Microsoft’s mega-advertising budget will not go unnoticed by the public and if the company is able to fulfill consumer demand, they should be in a good position to celebrate this Christmas. Fulfillment is a major roadblock for both, Microsoft and Nintendo, though. Both companies had to move their official launch date because they were not able to produce their consoles in numbers they would need for the roll-out typically not a good sign in a market where one-hour sales figures are more celebrated than Hollywood’s weekend boxoffices, and where manufacturers brag about the length of people queuing up in front of retail stores.


	Let’s face it, much about this battle is as juvenile as a WWF wrestling match, and it is often shocking how the business people in charge of these launches lower themselves almost to the level of profanity to bash their competitors


	Let’s face it, much about this battle is as juvenile as a WWF wrestling match, and it is often shocking how the business people in charge of these launches lower themselves almost to the level of profanity to bash their competitors. You can hear Nintendo executives bash Microsoft all over the trade press, and if they don’t have real arguments, they just make on up. The same goes, of course for Sony and Microsoft. It is as low as publicity can go the Jerry Springer version of the console industry but it seems that in the days of the Internet and uncritical writers who don’t question what they are served, noise is better than nothing. It is ridiculous to hear executives say their competitor will lose the battle because they don’t have the software in place, while their own catalog for the platform counts a meager 5 titles at the time. Be that as it is, the real battle is fortunately won on another front.

“Forget Nintendo,” my friend said, “GameCube doesn’t even have DVD capabilities. No one’s going to buy a console without the ability to play back DVD videos.” I disagree and tell him that most console players simply do not care for DVD in their console. If Nintendo shipped their console with a cartridge system as they did in the past, people would still buy it. “Gameboy Advance” doesn’t have DVD capabilities and just look how its flying off the shelves. The demographics for those consoles buy these machines to play games and nothing but. If it plays DVDs as a bonus, fair enough, but to assume that DVD capabilities are any sort of selling point for video game consoles is looking the wrong way. Of course you always have the niche of people who do care, but the majority of console owners play games and rather spend $100 on a set top player than messing with something as clumsy, unfunctional and unstable as, say, “Playstation 2’s” DVD capabilities.

“Isn’t Microsoft losing over $100 on every console they sell?” my friend interjects. “How can they make money?” Fact of the matter is, yes, Microsoft is losing money with every Xbox they ship. But guess what, so do Nintendo and Sony. Sega did so too in the past. It is part of the business model of this industry. Ultimately, what makes a console successful and profitable are software sales. Microsoft will be receiving a royalty on every “Xbox” game that is sold, and when you consider that every year hundreds of millions of console games are sold, I think it is easy to see that this is where the real money is. It is a practice that has been in place since the early days of Nintendo’s NES and it still works today.

The key defining elements in this war are the audiences. I am deliberately talking in plural here, because Microsoft and Nintendo are in fact targeting entirely different audiences. Hardware capabilities and monetary issues aside, if you take a look at the games coming for both consoles, you will immediately notice that the games targeted for Microsoft’s “Xbox” have a very different feel than those for the “GameCube.”


	Microsoft is basically bringing us a set top PC in a box with games that look, feel and play like PC titles


	Early on in the development of the “Xbox,” Microsoft directly included PC developers into their plans and the crop of games that you see on “Xbox” today have an unmistakable resemblance to current PC games. Sadly Microsoft’s first- and third-party development executives are poorly picked, funneling the PC-feel even further, rather than breaking that mold to embrace the hard-core console gamers. Many games are sequels of existing PC titles, and the roster of developers is recruited almost entirely from PC publishers and developers. As a result, Microsoft is basically bringing us a set top PC in a box with games that look, feel and play like PC titles and developers that use “Xbox” as a cheap cross-platform conversion of existing technologies and games. It’s “PC Lite” without the hassles of an operating system and hardware configurations. By the way, isn’t it ironic that Microsoft was the very company responsible for these hassles in the first place, only to circumvent them now?

Nintendo on the other hand remains very hard-line traditional. The first batch of games includes “Luigi’s Castle” and other “Super Mario” titles, continuing essentially where the “Nintendo 64” left off. There are no surprises here. No real hot developments, and the games look as sweet, bubble-gummy and big-eyed as ever. “GameCube” is a traditional video game console through and through, from the hardware to the marketing, all the way to the restrictive development licenses and development costs that Nintendo imposes. Nintendo also has very strong ties with retail chains and toy stores, which Microsoft lacks at this point, due to their lack of a track record in the field.

As a result of these differences, the two consoles innately cater to very different demographics. Both companies have made a lot of petty deals with developers to get them to sign on exclusively to their platforms, but ultimately the product lines are very clean-cut. The question that will determine the success or failure of each platform lies in the consumer. How well will Microsoft

entice PC gamers to switch from desktop PCs to a set top console? How well will Microsoft be able to dissuade hard-core console players into believing that PC-style games are more fun than cartoony Marios? We will see, but it will be a tough sell, while Nintendo simply has to deliver the goods and make good on its reputation of excellence. It will be an interesting battle with a lot of finger-pointing, a lot of propaganda and a


	I think that against all odds, “Xbox” will be the surprise winner because it has the world’s developer community squarely in its pocket

flood of commercials. Personally, I think both will succeed in their own ways. Both will find their audience and we will see flame wars among the users that are hotter than those between Atari ST and Amiga fans in the 80s. Personally however, I think that against all odds, “Xbox” will be the surprise winner because it has the world’s developer community squarely in its pocket. Don’t forget at its core, it is a Windows machine with DirectX and one of the fastest graphic cards in the market.


	This article has originally been published in my monthly column “DVD Unclassified” in “Media Line” and is reprinted here by permission.



		December 6, 2001

	© 1997-2001 by “DVD Review”. All rights reserved.