Console Game Trading (The discs)

[owsf2000]

I've ranted on what Microsoft attempted to do the console industry with their xbone plans a few years back before outcry made them pull a 180 so fast I'm sure some of them got whiplash. But I wonder if Microsoft (And Sony, who had secretly planned to do the same thing until they saw the reaction Microsoft got.) realize how close they came to potentially ending consoles entirely - except for the Wii U which was already released and very much a relatively "normal" console. Tablet controller aside...

If you think about the differences between consoles and PCs, you'll probably notice that the lines have becomed very blurred over the last few years as consoles adapt all of the worst parts of PC gaming, make it worse, then export it back to PC gaming.

Reasons to use a console include:
1. The Game Just Works.
2. The Game is Complete and bug free.
3. The Game can be traded with friends.

Of these, the games rarely "Just Work" anymore, often requiring patches or even firmware updates to launch. They're virtually NEVER complete with anywhere from 20-300 dollars of DLC, etc.

Meanwhile consoles start their life cycle off with aging hardware compared to PCs. They have lower frame rates on average, lower resolutions, less effects, etc. PC Master Race, blah blah blah, you get the idea. During the console's 5-10 year lifetime the difference simply grows. A LOT. At least in the cartridge era they could hide that somewhat by adding hardware to the cartridges to expand ram, rom, sound, video effects, etc. Plus modding (assuming it survives the TPP) is far easier on the PC whereas most modding is limited or simply extra DLC on the console. (I'm lookin' at you Minecraft)

So now consoles have none of the PC advantages, but they also don't have their OWN advantages anymore. With one exception. You can trade your games with others, buy and sell games you bought, etc. This was something Microsoft had intended to END with the xbone. The very last benefit to having a console, period since PC gamers lost that ability decades ago over bullshit EULA abuse that did a run around the first sale doctrine and whatnot. If they had succeeded, and Sony had followed through as well, I suspect we would have had a much much smaller install base on both consoles and a surge, if any, on PC gaming. Yes you would have had the die hard fanboys on both consoles still. But the companies would have been taking a lot longer to make the consoles profitable with the much smaller audience.

Let's face it, the vast majority of console AAA games are also PC games nowadays - although that's another of those things that Consoles have taken in, made worse, and exported back to PCs. Consider the various horrible PC launches lately. The reasons for those existing is because the game was designed and tested on consoles, then hastily, and sloppily, ported to PCs. People wouldn't have lost out on much gaming, and odds are some of those console exclusives would have ended up being PC exclusives.

Ok finished ranting. For now. >_>

Comments

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, consoles have taken from the PC A) the ability to patch games, B) the inability to trade or resell games used, and even C) the ability to "offer" digital-only versions of games, with no physical counterpart (which ties back into point B, since such a game that's tied to one console usually can't even be played on another of the same consoles), and they have made all of those things their own, with their own shitty twists applied to them. And I think that has been a detriment to the industry as a whole.

One of the few advantages left to the consoles is that the developers of games ostensibly only have to worry about one set of specs (or two or three if they're trying to go multiplatform, but still remaining within console-only territory), and don't have to worry about all the millions of different possible configurations you'd see on the PC. You'd think this would mean that console games would still be far less buggy and broken than their PC brethren... but these days, apparently not. Go figure. Also, as you say, this is why PC ports from consoles, which admittedly have never been all that great to begin with, are especially shitty nowadays. Some ports of games on PC even still have the fucking controller buttons from the consoles in their tutorials and settings options and such, which just goes to show that the PC port of such games were an afterthought, at most. There's also the "dumbing down for consoles" issue to worry about, where they design games which eventually get ported to PC to be a lot more simple than they could have been had they been designed for the PC from the ground up, simply because the consoles can't handle the complexity, for whatever reasons. It's also why ports from PC to consoles have always been almost universally terrible and is why you rarely even see such things anymore (unless said PC game was already trying to ape console games to begin with).

Also, as you say, very rarely do games that show up on consoles these days remain truly exclusive to those consoles, or to consoles in general. Even if a game is exclusive to a console, in the sense that it will never show up on one of the other consoles, it still usually shows up on the PC in addition to that one console, at least. It's, like, what's the point of even buying a console anymore? And same as always, at least you can still upgrade a PC fairly easily, but with a console, you just have to wait 5-10 years for the next generation to roll around.

Yeah, while I hate all that stupid PC vs Console fanboy bullshit as much as, if not even more than, most people, I guess for me at least, the PC has definitely been the clear winner in that regard, even so. I don't hate consoles. I still have nebulous plans to eventually probably get at least a Wii U and maybe a PS4 at some point in the distant future (but I'll still never touch an X-bone with a 10-foot pole, no matter what). But I haven't had much use for them in quite a long while, all the same. Hell, when I moved from WA back to NC, and I had all my consoles and games shipped back to NC, I literally never even took any of them out of the shipping boxes until a day or so before I hauled the whole lot off to be sold (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/743924.html). And even for years before that, while I was still living in WA, probably 90% of my gaming time was spent on the PC rather than on any of the consoles.

As such, at this point, it honestly wouldn't matter to me if this was indeed somehow the last ever generation of video game consoles. I don't foresee that being the case, the way things are going now, but it wouldn't much bother me if it were. If anything, I almost wish that MS and Sony had gone ahead with their boneheaded plans, just so that it definitely would have been the final nail in the coffin. (Then again, knowing how video game consumers behave, on the whole, most of them likely would have sucked all of that shit down the sewer pipe into their grinning, slack-jawed mouths anyway, just as they have all of the other asinine shit the modern video game industry has been spewing out for the past decade or two. So... who knows how it actually would have turned out?)

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

"(Then again, knowing how video game consumers behave, on the whole, most of them likely would have sucked all of that shit down the sewer pipe into their grinning, slack-jawed mouths anyway, just as they have all of the other asinine shit the modern video game industry has been spewing out for the past decade or two. So... who knows how it actually would have turned out?) "

Actually this is one time I think most (non-super-fanboy) gamers were serious when they cried they wouldn't take that shit that microsoft was trying to pull. Microsoft wouldn't have done anything drastic like a 180 if it was just the normal bellyaching that gamers do before lining up on launch day. I'd have to assume microsoft actually saw lots of preorders for the console being cancelled. And where Sony pulled ahead at the start selling multiple consoles for anything microsoft managed to sell, I'd have to say many gamers were serious.

However. I fully expect them all to be on board with the shitfest next generation.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

That's the main reason why I still kind of perversely wish that MS and Sony had indeed gone ahead with their boneheaded schemes anyway, because then maybe that would have been the final tipping point that would have brought on the next big game industry crash, at long last, and we'd already be well into the aftermath of that by this point in time.

But, still, things would have sucked ever so much more today if things had gone the opposite way, if gamers had just blithely accepted it in the end, despite the complaints, same as they have accepted every other vile thing the industry decides to shit into their mouths.

If anything, all that the backpedaling has accomplished is to simply preserve the status quo, both the good and the bad, for another five to ten years or so longer than it otherwise would have lasted. As you say, though, we'll just see how the wind lies by the time the next generation rolls around. Like you, I also expect there to be a lot more mouths mistakenly tasting shit as chocolate by then than there were this time around.