PCs vs. Consoles: The Need for Integration

Ever since we all fired up our first NES console, we have been hooked. Then, a succession of great consoles came out: Genesis and Dreamcast, 64 and Gamecube, Playstations 1 and 2.  Then Xbox and Halo came out and even the jocks stopped chest bumping long enough to play.  Finally, out came the Wii, 360, and PS3.  And here we sit, an entire society on video games.
Remember - some of you young guns may have missed this - when your teacher told you that in high school and college you would need to either type your papers on a typewriter or write in cursive?  Then you got your first computer, and you realized that they were wrong. We all (except some kiddies) saw Al Gore invent the internet and we stumbled into a new era in which each of us slowly realized our full potential by flaming others on forums and playing video games online.  Starcraft, Counter-Strike, Everquest, and World of Warcraft, just to name a few larger titles.  God how we loved our ever-evolving complexities and interrelations between our internet and gaming avatars and the world around us.
Now, disparate, these two worlds stand apart.  Our computers sit idle as we game on our consoles, and our consoles lie lonely near our TVs, gathering dust when we use our PCs.  Even worse, we the gamers ignite tensions over which is better for gaming: the PC or the Console?  I ask a deeper question, what the hell is the difference anymore?  In a time when we can surf the internet on our PS3; communicate with our friends on our wireless mics through the 360; exercise with our Wiis; and yes, game on our personal computers, why the hell are we fighting over which is better at what?  I had a discussion with a friend over this very topic and it sparked the flame for this little piece.
When we play each individual system, or PC, how many processors stand idle?  In an ever increasing reliance on technology and information to drive the economy, it seems backward to let these power sinks (you know you don’t unplug them from the outlet when you aren’t playing) waste away while you spend your time on other devices.  Even more importantly, with current research requiring more and more processing to complete, it seems a crime to let these units get breaks of more than weeks at a time.  Come on, you know you haven’t fired up your Wii since the bowling got boring   At least my room-mates and I haven’t.  I still do all my working out analog.
A small step in the right direction is the folding@home being run on PCs and PS3s.  This is the kind of achievement we gamers can be proud to be a large part of, as the graphics processing units are the most efficient way to vamp up the projects efficiency; and we all know we upgrade our video cards far too often to not contribute.  (If you aren’t a part of this, you should be.) [1]
Like all gamers, I enjoy occasionally championing the endeavors of the human race and sharing my processing wealth, but I still wonder what could be if all the PCs in my house could not only be networked together, but could help each other and my consoles process information.  This is possible, of course, but it requires skill-sets far beyond mine or that of most people.  Furthermore, if I were to attempt this, it would require the integration of so many separate elements never intended to communicate about anything more than parsing up a small stream of information delivered by our internet.
So, how would the giants of the gaming, entertainment and information industry (Nintendo, Microsoft, Apple, Playstation, and the various personal computer titans game developers, et cetera)  come together to standardize anything?  Even more importantly: why would those gigantic corporations come together?   There are reasons for and against, and they lie -surprise -  in the difference between personal computers and consoles.
While consoles began as dedicated units designed to do a single task, computers began as flexible, modular units designed to be upgraded and programmed to do as many things as a brilliant early adopting person could think up within limits.  As with anything, each got more complex; and soon our consoles became some of our most expensive toys, and computers became some of our most expensive necessities.  In the organic growth of each individual market, consoles and PCs began to eyeball the others’ business as each produced video games.  In the mix of all this were the hapless game developers who couldn’t figure where to produce their games, when to release them and which consoles or operating systems to release them on.  In each company’s bid to secure a niche in the market we entered the era of franchise gaming.
Everyone just takes for granted that certain games are released on certain systems and that owners of only a single system are shit out of luck when it comes to enjoying the best of all three systems.  The inherent flaw in this system of hedging your bets on your own console being the bestseller: the consoles are not where the money is   Just look at Sony’s titanic loss on the original production costs of the PS3 versus its profits: around 250 dollars lost per unit.[2]   Xbox threw the dice, selling units valued by market researchers to be around 525 dollars for 399.[3] Only the Nintendo Wii (easily the least technologically ambitious of the three systems) has sold for a profit, around 6 dollars per unit sold.[4]
So, it begs the question, why continue the obviously insane scheme of trying to corner a large section of the market for yourself by gambling on the sales of a system cycle after cycle?  The proof is in the pudding: it has worked before, and it will work again.  In a bittersweet irony, despite the archaic and masochistic tendencies of these industry mainstays, they make loads of money, or are a big enough seller to offset most production cost and induce investment.  Even in this economy, with investment and commercial banks crumbling, the gaming industry plods along, continuing to seduce more and more people into the growing demographic: gamer.  However, can this be similar to the IT bubble of the late nineties?  I hate to say I told you so early, but I’m gonna be the first to call this one: unless these guys get their chickens in a line and start working for the consumer instead of trying to cut our market into thirds, eventually they are going to be staring into the faces of consumers so strapped for cash and content that they are sick of buying.  Can you honestly tell me that the investment in each system has yielded half of the enjoyment - dollar for dollar- you have garnered from your Ipod or seasons of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”? At least for me, the answer is no.  I haven’t bought a system when it was current since the Nintendo 64 and despite the wonderment I felt for Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask, I was disappointed that I couldn’t play PS titles.  I simply did not have enough money at the time to buy both systems and ever since, I have had that bitter taste in my mouth.
That is not to say I don’t enjoy consoles now… I do.  I play Halo 3 regularly and have dabbled in other 360 titles and played the shit out of Super Mario Galaxy.  I will play Left 4 Dead, but only as a rental because I do not own a 360 (it is my roommate’s).  After I move out, I will never go back and revisit those experiences like I still do occasionally on my 64 and my PS2 that I bought four years late for twenty bucks to play FF titles.
So, having pointed out some major flaws in consoles: what about PCs?  I happen to love gaming on mine, recently renewing my love of World of Warcraft and *attempting* to play casually.  I was, until a while ago, a fierce proponent of the PC cause, flaming all who dared challenge the PCs superiority in the gaming world.  But, frankly, the PC can stand to see some improvements too.  Look at the Wii and its amazing ability to bring people older than my parents to the TV for some entertainment that isn’t cinema or television.  Who could have predicted that an easy to use system would do something I never thought possible, make one of my friends get up and exercise not once or twice, but on a regular basis?   The Xbox and PS3’s are not without achievements of their own, further fusing the “casual” and “hardcore” gamer together through easy internet accessibility and increased interaction between larger groups of people. PCs still remain a bastion known only to those addicted to WoW, and the others of us who have been there from the early days of Starcraft, Tribes, and the like.
Now is idealizing time.  Imagine if, instead of a Wii, we had a motion sensor that plugged into the usb port, or a card that could be placed in a PCI express slot, that allowing you to use a Wiimote while playing Wii (now a theoretical software company) titles that are geared towards children and adults just starting in on gaming.  Better yet, imagine if you could by a processing unit that would augment your personal computers graphics, memory, and general computation by a similar card or usb or wireless interface?  Instead of systems, we could upgrade simply buy buying the equivalent of a PS3’s processing power and then buying the titles?  It would be a game design company’s wet dream to be able to design to demographics rather than owners of individual systems.  Even more potent would be game designers’ ability to sell advertising within the game itself.  Online patches and updates could be made free through the advertisements played while the updating occurs or through internal advertising (see NFS series).  Games advertising on similar games could only drive profits and increase the functionality of the whole system, allowing gamers to find more games they like, from software developers they know because they produce good games, not because they produce for a certain system.
So how can we, the gamers, bring about this utopian dream of free and open development?  Bad news: we cannot.  We can only sit and watch as our money gets poured down the drain by these corporations with their outmoded methods while our processors grow old and obsolete performing a mere fraction of their possible functions.  When the industry bubble bursts - and it will burst - only then will we see a shift; but that may be in a long time, as games continue to be an integral and growing part of our lives.

Thoughts or Comments? Post ‘Em!

[1]http://folding.stanford.edu/
[2]http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/ps3-launch-damages-sony-profits
[3]http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/24/xbox360_component_breakdown/
[4]http://www.gamespot.com/news/6201833.html