Can we really take 10 years of these consoles?

All of the games companies keep saying seemingly dumb things. Microsoft and Sony harp on about motion control being the future, everybody except Microsoft harp on about 3D being the future and Microsoft and Sony say that they’re going to keep the current generation of console going for years to come. We know these are dumb, right? So why do they say them?

I have a certain distrust of these 10 year lifecycle statements as popular consoles seem to have a 10 year lifecycle. The PS1 and PS2 both did, but that didn’t stop their replacements being released 5 years into their life. The fact that they are still releasing PS2 games says wonders for the success of that platform, a success that wasn’t totally wiped out by the release of the PS3. In fact for several years the PS2 outsold the PS3 and gave Sony some much needed market share and revenue as the PS3 established itself.

Now everybody is talking about addons to the existing hardware as a way of extending the life of the consoles and they need it. Coincidentally five years into this generation the market isn’t looking healthy. Of course some of this is from the fact that the global economy sort of imploded, but part of it has to be because there isn’t a coincidence that we’ve gone five years between hardware before. That wasn’t an arbitrary number just pulled from the air; these companies knew that they needed new hardware ahead of their rivals and just at the point where their current hardware started to decline. It could be said that Sony misjudged this with the PS3 by releasing a few years early, but it didn’t harm them in the long term and probably actually did them some good.

The whole 10 year lifecycle cannot mean that the hardware isn’t going to be replaced. You just can’t sell a 10 year old console against a PC that is 10 years ahead of it with a straight face, and something like OnLive would be very attractive if the current generation of consoles looked so crappy in comparison with it. Add to that the fact that this generation of consoles can barely manage HD properly, with a very large majority of games this generation not even managing 720p graphics properly let alone 1080p and the future looks doubtful for the 10 year claims.

Of course Sony and Microsoft say motion control will extend this generation. At the same time they announce a range of games that is extremely biased towards the casual players, in fact those players who are getting towards having a Wii for around 5 years maybe? Those people whose CRT TVs need replacing with an HD one and realise that maybe they could do with an HD console as well? There are two options for “core” games for these new controllers. The first is that they’ll come and they know we’ll just buy them if they’re good. This seems plausible to me, we’ll take care of ourselves by building hype and discovering we want it in our own time. We’re year 2-3 buyers in that case, we’re the long tail they need. The other alternative is that there just isn’t a core market because they don’t care about one. They don’t need to care about one. Core gamers are covered by something else.

Is it 3d? 3D has a massive advantage in that if it takes off then it makes our entire back catalogue of games look old. In fact look like they’re from the last generation. This must be a major boon for the publishers and gives the hardware a whole new lifecycle starting from scratch. Of course it doesn’t address the two main problems: aging graphical abilities straining even harder because of 3D and the fact that nobody has a 3D TV. I’m sure 3D TVs will be mainstream one day, but it’ll not be Christmas this year. Or next year. Or the year after. Only when every TV is also 3D in the same way that every TV is now HD will it get the penetration, and the adoption of HD proves this. There are still large numbers of people using an SD CRT who have no desire to upgrade unless their TV breaks and they need a new one. I have several 360/PS3 owning friends who are in this camp, they just don’t want to spend that money on a new TV when it can be spend on better things.

3D won’t extend the lifecycle for at least 3 years, probably longer.

So what about the threats to the lifecycle from other factors?

Apple is a massive threat, each year they release something more powerful and better for games. It’ll not be that many more years until the iPad is as powerful as a 360, certainly within its 10 year lifecycle.  Luckily Apple have a terrible reputation for staying on focus with gaming.

OnLive is a massive threat. Hassle free gaming with state of the art PC graphics? Very tempting.

The PC is an even larger threat. PCs are getting more and more stable hardware wise as time goes on and the number of boxes designed to plug into a TV is getting larger too. I can see Steam having an alternate fullscreen TV interface before the consoles see out this lifecycle, and those games will blow the consoles away.

Brand apathy is the biggest threat. When it comes down to it only a couple of games have actually looked better on the PS3 and yet, partially due to the Slim, the console is seen as more powerful than the 360. Sure there may be more power in there, but get away from the Uncharteds of this world and we’re still not seeing it. The slim was a masterstroke by Sony, it reset the expectation timeline for Sony with the customers. All of a sudden this console is now nearly a year old instead of nearly five in the minds of the average buyer who doesn’t already have one. The 360 was looking very long in the tooth until they released their new smaller console. Don’t underestimate the need for people to have the next, big thing and discard something totally serviceable in favour of a new shiny because it’s new. A 10 year old console is still a 10 year old console, even if the games are looking better than ever.

It’s impossible to escape from the conclusion that this whole 10 year lifecycle doesn’t work economically for the hardware. Software yes, people will buy games but after a while everybody who wants one will have a console and those who still might want one (people are still growing up don’t forget) will be able to get really good 2^nd hand deals. High hardware sales aren’t sustainable even if Kinect/Move shift units to the Wii crowd for the next few years. Soon the smaller percentage of people who want to upgrade their Wii will have done so.

The conclusion is inescapable. At the E3 after next Microsoft will announce a new console. Sony have a couple of extra years of sales in them, but both are peaking over the next year going by sales. No amount of motion control will pick up the entire Wii market; there are too many dusty Wiis that haven’t been touched since the Christmas they were brought for that to happen. 3D is too far away to extend a 10 year lifecycle and is much better used for the next generation of hardware.

The thing is that now, more so than at any time in the past, making an upgraded console is easier to design. Up the processor speeds and core count, up the amount of memory and up the power of the GPU. You don’t need any quantum leaps in graphical power such as back when adding texture mapping or HD was big, it’s all a programmable pipeline that the developers can do with what they want. They’ll do the heavy lifting with more complicated scenes, more effects and more shiny and it’ll all work with our current TVs. It’s almost a no-brainer, especially as you can keep backwards compatibility that way if you don’t change your architecture just as PCs have kept their backwards compatibility in fact.