Right Now is the Best Time to Launch a Console

As this generation of gaming draws gently to a close (according to Wikipedia, it's the seventh generation), and it seems that right now there's quite a few new consoles being released- besides the obvious ones from bigger companies, such as the Wii U, there's also a slew of consoles that are aiming for a smaller market, such the the Ouya, Wikipad, and now the MG. Why now? Well besides the fact that it's much easier to get both funding and a responsive audience thanks to tools like Kickstarter, this was historically bound to happen. Why? Because history repeats itself, and right now things are coming full circle, as it were. Just for the record, when I refer to console generations in this article, I'm referring to them as they're listed on Wikipedia for quick, easy reference, and also because some people refer to this generation as the third.

So what happened in the past? Well, the first and second generations just saw a massive variety of machines, and while there were some obvious heavy hitters, most devices sold a few hundred thousand to a million units. It was during this time that new edges were being cut as potential was just being recognized in a brand new medium. It was mostly the second generation that crashed the industry, leading to the rise of Nintendo and, subsequently, a revival for the industry as a whole. While this may point to an unfortunate (and an uncomfortable) outcome for the industry today, I'm not pointing to this generation as representing the current one. I'm not pointing to the third generation either, which was essentially the first and second generations combined, but this time with a much smaller set of consoles and a much bigger set of rules. This current generation is a lot more like the fourth, to be honest. How so, you ask? To begin with, most of the consoles of this (the seventh) generation are essentially reiterations of the previous generation's consoles except for perhaps the Wii, which in spite of having the innards of a Gamecube on steroids, has a completely new control scheme that manages to set it apart- if only support of the thing hadn't quite dried up so quickly. Quite frankly, it seems that the Wii just decided to throw itself ahead into the big changes of the fifth generation (more on that a little later). The Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, however, are the improved versions of the predecessors, in much the same way the SNES and Genesis were improvements on the NES and Master System, respectively. The peripherals, or add-ons, that the Playstation 3 has received seem to correspond to those that the SNES received, specifically the Super Game Boy, which allowed a person to enjoy their Game Boy titles on a television. Similarly, the PS3 allows certain titles to run on the Vita, and while it's not implemented too often, sometimes a game that's running on the PS3 will have a second function on a PSP or Vita.
Microsoft, meanwhile, has released quite a few add-ons that they later abandon, much like Sega did to the Genesis. Sega released the Mega-CD and the 32X, neither of which went anywhere fast. Microsoft, has released an HD-DVD player and a webcam, both of which wound up abandoned, the former on account of Blu-Ray winning the format war, the latter on account of the fact that it didn't really do anything special, and wound up underutilized. Besides those, however, there were also quite a few other similarities, such as the birth of new franchises and improvements being made upon older ones. So how is this relevant? That question brings us to the fifth generation.

The fifth generation saw really big changes, mostly on account of the introduction of 3D to the mass market. While, again, there were some heavy hitters (just like in the first and second generations), there were definitely clear winners. The Sega Saturn wasn't one of them (at least, not within the United States), and its sales suffered in spite of having a few good games. Seeing as the seventh generation feels as though it's being dragged out a bit, I have to say that the Wii, during the first half of its life, was a lot like the original Playstation- while some things were certainly kind of rough around the edges, it was new, unique and exciting and it certainly sold well, but it ended up dying like the Saturn did- cold and alone and forgotten. The fifth generation saw a plethora of new consoles, and it was at this time that a new competitor was finally able to enter the ring. As mentioned before, the Playstation really shook things up among gamers. In spite of coming out after the Saturn, the Playstation sold better and bore a more powerful processor. Thus, the big main competitors went from Sega and Nintendo to Nintendo and Sony (which could've been friends had Nintendo not stabbed Sony in the back and created a powerful rival in the process).

What does this mean for the eighth generation? It's obviously going to be a time of great change, just like the fifth- while the seventh generation primarily introduced the Internet more powerfully than has ever been implemented in consoles (all except for the Wii, which was still stuck a generation behind in that regard), not much else changed. Things will need to be different in the next generation. Besides the fact that the eighth generation might be the best for consoles, there's another reason why things will need to be different- that will be be discussed in greater detail a little later.

But it also means that one of the major competitors might get knocked out of the running, or at least get knocked down a few notches as a new challenger appears. At current, I'm looking at Sony, which, in spite of showing a bit of innovation and having a little more under the hood, is lagging behind Microsoft right now. It's just the way the Genesis lagged behind the SNES in spite of quite a bit more under the hood and attempting to make itself look edgy and grown up. It's the same way Sega was unafraid to bash the competition.

Unlike the fifth generation, however, I believe that the flood of new devices will find greater success by holding a smaller audience. Look at the Pandora- it's a niche product, certainly, but it's also a very good one that does a good job serving its target audience. I think in many ways, the Internet is going to be responsible for preventing the crash that happened when the market was flooded during the second generation, and it's going to spare the little guy- the smaller manufacturers- from being failures. This is partially on account of the fact that an Internet-based community can keep just about anything alive, and partially because of Internet-based distribution significantly bringing down the cost of distributing a game. At the same time, most of the new little niche devices coming out are running on Android. How's this good? Besides pushing development on a much more unified system, it makes the device you're using less significant- more on this a bit later. For developers, this means that it'll be much easier to take advantage of audiences across multiple platforms. Imagine if there were fifteen or twenty niche devices with audiences of a few million, and that these devices all had different system software. That would be fifteen to twenty required development kits, which are typically expensive (for no good reason except to lock the little guy out) and porting a piece of software to so many different systems would require a colossal effort. Therefore, the smaller niche systems may see just as much success as the larger mainstream ones.

Now as we draw closer to today, we reach the sixth generation, which is in many ways similar to the fourth. The sixth primarily improved upon the generation before it- just like the fourth, the sixth expanded the video game market, and it helped set the stage for the next generation. The sixth and seventh seem to be preparing the world for the eighth, in a way. Just as the fifth marked a massive shift, so too will the eighth.

There's Another Good Reason Why This is a Good Time for a Console

The other reason this is a good time to launch a console might be something of a sad one, and that's because consoles are slowly, surely losing relevance. Dedicated gaming hardware might not be necessary for much longer- I think that devices such as the Wikipad are clear evidence of this. Sure, I believe that physical controls will be necessary for as long as gaming exists (as far as I can tell, but then again we believed the same about joysticks, didn't we?), but I don't think that dedicated devices will be quite as important because of other devices that are slowly, surely gaining the ability to deliver the same experiences across the board. Android might be the winner in a mere few years. It's powering a great many niche devices that will hopefully find their respective audiences, and is unifying that part of the industry- quite a pleasant surprise. Could Android become the next Windows, as it were, shipping on just about every new device? Quite possibly.

Need we mourn the loss of consoles? Probably no more than we need mourn the death of the Walkman, really. The death of the console might not happen in much the same way a marriage doesn't mean a proud set of parents are losing a daughter so much as gaining a son. Game consoles might wind up permanently mashed into more complex multimedia devices. The CD-i attempted this and failed, yet all the consoles of the seventh generation are succeeding in this. This is a change that seems to have begun around the late fourth generation, with the Sega CD and then later on into the fifth generation- the Playstation could be used for music CDs, and its successor could be used for DVDs. Right now, I think that the media applications of the Xbox 360 are underutilized (a discussion for another article), but I also think that in the next generation, these functions will be better integrated, and in the generation to follow they'll be inseparable from devices that can be used for gaming.

In conclusion, right now's the perfect time to launch a smaller niche device, especially an Android-based one. Besides the fact that it could grow faster than anticipated, a small niche audience could be the best way to make money in the industry as a hardware manufacturer for the next several years.