In the old days, game consoles competed against one another directly. One game console would tout its ‘better graphics’ and ‘blast processing’ to be better than the other console. You could call these times the Era of Console War.
Now, we are in an Era of Disruption. What does that mean? It means there will not be direct competition unless the company is insanely stupid. Competition will be asymmetric. Currently, I’m seeing our old journalist buddies try to puff up the release of Move or Kinect into a ‘Motion Control War’. Or we’re seeing Google or Apple be a new ‘Console War’ participant. This would be amusing if it wasn’t so sad.
Come on guys. Get with the present. The Era of Console War is over. Nintendo has known that for a long while. Microsoft knows it. Only Sony, like the stupid kid, still believes in ‘Console War’.
Look at Fahey’s latest piece for a moment.
The statistics reeled off by Jobs weren’t the really important part of the event. Yes, iOS devices are outselling Sony and Nintendo’s handhelds combined on a week to week basis – that’s a solid achievement, but not actually all that relevant.
Such figures are similar to the occasional claims that the PC is the world’s biggest gaming platform based on PC hardware sales. Now, the PC may well be the biggest gaming platform, but PC hardware sales do little to prove that, since PCs are multipurpose devices and many of them will never be used for gaming. The same holds true for iOS devices.
I’m surprised Fahey brings this up as most people don’t realize it. There is a dedicated home console and there are computers. The two are very different and have different business practices. Note that the home console came out before the home computer did. Steve Jobs used to call Nolan Bushnell ‘boss’, not the other way around.
In the same way, dedicated game hardware was in the portable market before portable computers were. Saying that portable computers are going to take over dedicated portable hardware is the same as people saying the PC made the home game console obsolete back in the 1980s. Apple fanboys do not realize this because they either do not wish to realize it or because they are ignorant of gaming history.
What Fahey does not question is, if the statement of selling more portable computers than dedicated portable game systems is silly because it smacks of saying PCs outsell home consoles, then why did Steve Jobs say it? Instead of asking this, Fahey moves on.
What was much more important was the tone of Jobs’ statements on gaming. For the first time, Apple seemed to be aggressive in its approach to the sector – directly laying down a gauntlet to Sony and Nintendo, talking up the installed base, the distribution platform, the software library and the device capabilities, all from a specifically gaming perspective.
In the past, Apple has always treated games on iOS as a slightly amusing aside, raising an eyebrow at the wacky and weird things people choose to do with their devices. Yesterday, games were serious business. Jobs has got gaming religion – he sees his firm as a gaming platform holder, and if that means taking the fight to Nintendo (a new rival) and Sony (a long-standing rival), then so be it.
If Jobs was serious, that was an incredibly stupid statement. Direct competition, as every generation has shown, tends to be a loser. It was a loser for Nintendo. A loser for Sega. A loser for Sony.
So why did Jobs compare one of his recent products to the PSP (which is dead) and to the DS (which is being phased out), both products released over half a decade ago? When the PSP and DS released, the video iPod had not even been made yet. Six years is a long time.
Just like the prior statement, this statement is also silly. Why did Jobs say it then? Is it because of some super ulterior move on the company? Does it shine a riddle of Apple releasing a new game console to compete with the PS4? What could it mean!?
Did anyone consider that it is was just red meat to throw at the Apple fanboys? Jobs does do this from time to time. If Jobs is seriously trumping that portable computers outsell dedicated portable game devices made six years ago, then Apple is in big trouble. I don’t think Jobs is serious at all.
I have been ramming heads with one major Apple fanboy for a while (he runs a popular Apple website, I won’t say which). He declared the DS ‘doomed’ to the iPod, ‘doomed’ to the iPhone, even doomed to Mac gaming (lol). And throughout this, nothing has affected DS sales. It would be as if they were in totally different markets.
Apple fans are really in go go mentality about Apple ‘beating’ the game companies like Nintendo and Sony. Remember the cracks Jobs would make about Microsoft at these conferences? Did they hint at some secret plan? No. They were red meat for the Apple fanboys. Jobs is playing to his audience.
Rhetoric aside, a number of concrete factors in the press conference point to this more aggressive approach to the gaming sector. First, of course, there’s GameCenter, the company’s stab at an Xbox Live/PSN style service, which allows users to maintain friend lists, compare scores and achievements and invite friends to multi-player games – as well as providing a game matchmaking service. It is, bluntly, a much better service than anything Nintendo or Sony offer on their handhelds, and a fairly clear challenge to them.
I should hope it is a better service than a platform released six years ago.
It isn’t a challenge to them for the same reason that Instant Messenger on the PC isn’t a challenge to the home game consoles. The game business is defined by games, not these little service doodads. Wii sold well because of its games, despite the ‘online services’ on Xbox 360 and PS3.
Secondly, and equally importantly, there was the unexpected unveiling of an Epic Games title for iOS, a graphically stunning game which was demoed by walking around a medieval citadel and then taking part in a bout of swordfighting. A free demo of the engine, titled Epic Citadel, was later placed on the App Store for everyone to try.
For most people, the important part of this demo was simply how incredibly good the game looks – with graphical quality which was more like the present generation of HD consoles than like a handheld. It’s apparent that Apple’s conversion to gaming has not happened overnight – services like GameCenter are the result of a lot of work over many months, and Epic Citadel shows that 3D gaming was a central consideration for Apple in the hardware design of its recent devices.
One HD console was released in 2005, half a decade ago. Another HD console was released in 2006. I should hope that hardware released in 2010 performs better than even home hardware in 2006. It took around the same years for gaming portables to catch up with the home consoles. And Apple’s portable hardware is often more expensive than the traditional dedicated gaming hardware.
The real story behind Epic’s demo is that Epic wants developers to buy licenses to their sorry engine. We’ve seen this story play out before. When another new hardware comes out, PC or game console, Epic will have a ‘demo’ of it to advertise its engine.
The promise of console-quality gaming on a handheld device is a major lure…
I’ve heard this before about a certain Sony handheld half a decade ago.
…although the majority of iOS games will almost certainly remain in 2D – titles such as Words With Friends and Angry Birds aren’t the platform’s top sellers because that’s all it’s capable of, they’re successful because they’re excellent uses of the platform’s capabilities and fit well with how people use the devices. Even so, an RPG or adventure game set in a world as gorgeous as that of Epic Citadel would undoubtedly turn heads, even among iOS gaming refuseniks.
I should hope imaginary games are impressive. If you ever conjure up an imaginary game that is not impressive, I would be greatly worried.
Finally, there was a subtle touch – the unveiling of the TV advertisement for Apple’s new iPod Touch devices. At least half of the advert was dedicated to footage of games on the device, significantly more time than was given over to the new headline features (HD video recording and the FaceTime video conferencing system).
If iPod Touch was so popular in gaming, as Apple says, then why advertise it so hard? Perhaps it is because the iPod Touch has gotten the music crowd, the movie crowd, and for future growth Apple may be looking for the gamer crowd. But gamers are a very different breed of consumers. Unlike movies or music, how games are played on the hardware is extremely important and makes up much of the experience. The things Apple would need to do to get their devices to be picked up by gamers (like put buttons on them) would make them shunned by the music and movie crowd.
Fahey sees Apple advertising the iPod Touch to be a gaming device is a display of Apple’s recent gaming strength. I see it as the opposite.
Some analysts have compared Apple’s entry into handheld gaming to Microsoft’s entry into the console market – yet the comparison with Microsoft’s multi-billion dollar landgrab actually underestimates the threat posed by Apple’s devices to Nintendo and Sony, if anything.
I’d like to know who these analysts are because that is a really dumb comparison. Apple is not buying any company like ‘Bungie’. Apple is not making a gaming centric device (i.e. with tactile interface like buttons). Apple is not adopting the business structure of dedicated gaming consoles where homebrew is not acceptable. Apple has always struggled to get traditional gamers as consumers. Nothing has changed in this regard. The best thing for Apple and gaming was being able to install Windows on your Mac.
We are in the Era of Disruption. There is not going to be any tit for tat console war between any company. There are more things going on below the surface.
Remember when Jobs bragged how a game for the iPhone or iPod Touch was considerably cheaper than a DS game? Attacking from the bottom end, not the top end, is disruptive. Nintendo responded by allowing cheap games to be bought on the DSi.
Apple’s threat is not a competitive one but a disruptive one. Apple has disrupted Intel for example. The iPad does not use any chips made by Intel. The chips are all made by Apple. Intel is on Christensen’s recent list of ‘disrupted companies’.
Iwata is not losing any sleep from Jobs’ statements. I’ll tell you what would make Iwata lose sleep. It would be the release of a television, made by Apple, that can play movies, music, games with the TV being 3d. Apple is in a position to pull that off. While Nintendo is putting out a 3d visual output handheld, Apple could beat Nintendo to the home version of 3d gaming. This is why, secretive Nintendo, was very un-secretive about wanting the successor to the Wii to be 3d output gaming for home. Nintendo cannot make a 3d TV. And it is going to be a while before 3d TVs have a nice install base. Apple will likely get there first.
To find the next big change in gaming, one should look at potential disruptors, not potential competitors.
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