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Console Wars: Difference between revisions
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And if you really want to rile people up, you can throw in the bickering between [[PC vs. Console|PC and console owners]]. You're sure to get [[Flame War|enough noise to]] [[Internet Backdraft|drown out a jet engine]].
See also [[Computer Wars]]. For a game series that has fun with the concept [[What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made
Not to be confused with [[wikipedia:Core War|Core War]].
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* '''Winner''': Odyssey
The infancy of the home video-gaming industry began with the [[Magnavox Odyssey]]. This era is most famous for the arcade game "Pong" and its clones (both on and off of home consoles). What is not well known is that many other games also existed, such as ''[[
What console games did exist were rudimentary, mostly because, until the end, the Odyssey was the only console. While revolutionary for its time, the console pretty much just used variable screen lights with one or two white squares on screen, and colored sheets to cover the screen and simulate board games. A pong clone was possible with one of the cartridges and a couple made use of the [[Light Gun]].
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The console that virtually everyone associates with this generation is the Atari 2600. Initially developers just produced more ''Pong''-esque games for the system, meaning that it had a slow start, but Atari really got things going when they started porting their arcade hits to the 2600. The ports weren't perfect (in fact, a lot of them were flat out awful), but it showed what the system could do. Soon, other companies such as Activision started developing for the console, and it rapidly became a smash hit. Atari released a second console, the 5200, later in the generation, but got a lot of things (most notably the controller design) wrong, meaning that it never took off.
The first major competitor to Atari's dominance was the Intellivision by Mattel. Although it was somewhat more advanced than the 2600, it wasn't enough of an improvement for developers to abandon the more successful 2600. As a result, the Intellivision maintained generally solid sales, but never came close to challenging the 2600 for the market lead. A bigger challenge to the 2600's dominance came later with the Colecovision, which was technically far superior to any other system on the market and could boast near-perfect arcade conversions, an advantage exemplified when Atari shot themselves in the foot with the 2600's disastrous ''[[
Magnavox tried their hand again by releasing the Odyssey 2, a console that combined gaming with some rudimentary home computer functions. Unfortunately the system wasn't significantly better than the 2600 on the gaming side, and its computing features were badly underdeveloped. As a result, the system never took off, and Magnavox left the market. Another early competitor was the Bally Astrocade, which was one of the first ''and'' most advanced systems from this generation, but it was expensive and not backed properly by Bally, meaning that it remained a niche product. Probably the weakest of the major competitors was Emerson Radio's Arcadia 2001, which boasted abilities similar to the Intellivision, but suffered an awful game library and being released near the end of the generation, ensuring that it was blown into the stratosphere by the Colecovision.
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This one marked down boundaries that are still followed to this day (boundaries that were arguably drawn by one of the actual companies — "Genesis does what Ninten''don't''"). Fifteen years on, you'll still encounter long-time gamers who identify themselves as "SNES people" or "Genesis people".
The Genesis initially competed against the NES and, as is often forgotten, did so rather poorly — the better graphics meant little against the juggernaut that was Nintendo at the time, and flawed arcade adaptations like ''[[Altered Beast]]'' (the Genesis' original pack-in game) didn't compare well with the then-recent ''[[
Though the Genesis would be extremely well-received in the UK, in the US and generally, in the long-term the later-released, powerful SNES won out. The Genesis had a faster [[CPU]] ("Blast Processing" was what its commercials touted), but the SNES had the more advanced graphics hardware, even without the expansion chips which cartridges could provide. Sega struggled to remedy this through releasing a number of add-ons (the 32X, the Sega CD/Mega CD), which did little for gamers that the Genesis didn't already do.
Another important factor in the SNES' victory over the long term was its ''tremendous'' library of games — especially in its native Japan, where the console released anime [[Licensed Game|licensed games]] at bargain prices. Whereas Sega catered mainly to a "hardcore" gamer market of young males, especially with sports or fighting games (with the SNES derided as the bloodless ''[[Mortal Kombat]]'' system), the SNES could simply saturate the market with games targeting ''every'' demographic, including the casual gamer that would make Nintendo such a success a decade later. Much like the NES before them, and later the [[
Another contender was the NEC [[Turbo Grafx 16]] (aka PC-Engine). The system was very popular in Japan (outselling the NES and consistently ahead of the Megadrive) but poor marketing, a bad pack-in game, and a lack of exports of some of the more popular titles condemned it to obscurity in North America.
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===The Fifth Generation: The 32/64-bit era (aka The Leap To 3D)===
* '''Duration''': 1994-2002.
* '''Sides''': ''[[
* '''Winner''': PlayStation by a country mile and Nintendo [[Useful Notes/SNESCDROM|shooting themselves in the foot]].
Despite quality games such as ''[[
Sony, meanwhile, recognized the increasing age bracket of console gamers and tapped into the influential twentysomething "big kid" market, legitimizing console gaming in the eyes of many and laying the foundation for the newcomer's market dominance. It should be worth noting that one of (if not the) greatest asset of the PlayStation's victory was due to the fact that their games were released on [[Compact Disc|CDs]]. Since at that time, CDs were widely available to the mass market as writable media containers, the PlayStation became the first console with a large-scale piracy problem. People would buy PlayStations because they could pirate the games for it at less than one-tenth the games' retail price, whereas there was hardly any piracy on the other disk-based systems (and it goes without saying that it was way harder to copy an N64 cartridge).
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The PS2, meanwhile, proceeded to grab up the majority of the market early on and hold it, despite being less powerful than the later GameCube and Xbox consoles. Once again, a factor outside of its game library helped the PS2 achieve victory — at the time of its launch, it was the cheapest DVD player on the market. The system continued to release new games and sell at retailers for a ''long'' time; while the Xbox and GameCube had largely faded out by 2006, the PS2 will still be supported until the final game, ''MLB 2K12'', releases on March 6, '''2012'''--at which time an ''eighth''-generation console had already been announced. In the end, the PS2 sold nearly three times the ''combined'' sales total of its two main rivals, making this easily the biggest [[Curb Stomp Battle]] since the NES took on the Master System and Atari 7800.
Despite a whole set of (theoretically) exclusive M-rated games from Capcom — ''[[Killer 7]]'', ''[[Resident Evil 4]]'', a remake of [[Resident Evil 1|the original]] ''RE'' (followed by eventually the entire main series to that point), and [[Resident Evil 0|a prequel to it]] — along with a few mature games such as ''[[Eternal Darkness]]'', Nintendo was unable to shake off its uncool "kiddie" reputation. The GameCube also didn't play [[DVD|DVDs]] (unlike the PS2 and Xbox) thanks to using smaller discs in an attempt to ward off piracy (which didn't work), and barely even put out an attempt to do something about online play (a lame adapter was only compatible with two ''[[Phantasy Star]] Online'' games released by Sega). Although it took second in Japan, the GameCube was third in Western markets and Australia. In fact, after a relatively strong first eighteen months, once it became obvious that Nintendo had released all their major franchise games for the system and had no plans for further ones (outside of the endless ''[[
The Xbox entered the fray last and, despite initial skepticism, carved out a niche for itself thanks largely to [[Killer App]] ''[[Halo]]'' and the Xbox Live online system. In Japan, however, it barely made a dent and relied on Microsoft to back it up financially, as the company treated it as a [[wikipedia:Loss leader|loss-leader]] rather than a source of revenue in its own right. One place where it became oddly popular was in the Linux community, who exploited its PC roots to create an early version of the modern-day Home Theatre PC.
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Microsoft was last in, first out with the Xbox 360, gaining a comfortable head start thanks to an even more advanced version of the Xbox Live system (with a point-comparing gimmick which catches on fast) and HDTV compatibility. However a hefty price tag, limited backwards compatibility with original Xbox games, and complaints about machine malfunctions plagued the console's early days (and, in the case of the malfunctions, continue to hurt it). Surprisingly, however, Microsoft did gain traction as a console developer after negative publicity in the run-up to the PS3 launch (specifically about Sony's hardware bottlenecks, poor viral marketing via fake blogs, and what is seen as the mistreatment of Sony's European customers) causes some waverers to jump to the 360. This is not helped by what is perceived to be Sony's decision to [[Follow the Leader|copy its competitors' unique selling points]] and the whopping [[Memetic Mutation|five-hundred and ninety-nine US dollars]] price tag of the PS3. However, Sony's die-hard supporters, gathered through the PS1 and PS2 days, remained in droves, and reported excellent stock take-up in the first weekend of sales, through sales really didn't pick up until the eventual and inevitable price cut.
However, both the 360 and PS3 are now lagging behind Nintendo's offering — the Wii. Instead of trying to compete with cutting-edge hardware<ref>the Wii is somewhat more powerful than the Xbox, it has a larger polygon count than the Xbox (Wii's 500 million polygons max and 410 million polygons in game play compare to the Xbox's 120 million polygons max but can only put out 15 million polygons at max in game play) but lacks the modern shaders that the Xbox uses, however when the Xbox only has 4 shader units, the Wii uses 24 TEV units to make up for it</ref>, Nintendo debuted a unique two-part controller setup fitted with motion sensors and IR (pointer) input. Bolstered with games appealing to both traditional gamers (''[[The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
The Wii is unique amongst the competing players in that the console hardware is not a loss-leader; Nintendo makes a profit for every console sold, whereas Microsoft and Sony rely on revenue from software to plug the gap. This is [[Older Than They Think|actually a return to prior trends]], as the idea of selling console hardware for a loss originated with the PS1.
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Whether the three systems are in competition with each other is a point of debate. Some dismiss the notion, claiming that the Wii targets a different demographic to the 360 and PS3, while others point out that they're all competing in the broader arena of "recreation time" with other forms of entertainment. One undisputed fact, however, is that [http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=22291228&postcount=262 Microsoft and Sony have lost hundreds of millions] on their consoles and Nintendo is the only company to have profited throughout this generation (for instance, Sony's losses on the PS3 have already eliminated all the profits from the PS1 ''and'' PS2) and only in Summer 2010 have begun to turn a modest profit. This is seen as the main reason why Microsoft and Sony have [[Follow the Leader|released their own motion-control schemes]], in an attempt to grab some of the Wii market. (This made their "[[It Will Never Catch On]]" claims about the Wii [[Hilarious in Hindsight]].) The actual ''structure'' of this generation is a matter about which analysts will debate and argue (and, given the increasing size of the gaming market, it actually now ''has'' analysts!).
The latest convolution in all these events happened in April 2011, when Sony suffered a ''major'' breach of digital privacy and someone was able to make off with the financial records of millions of consumers, both on their [[Playstation Network]] which serves the [[
Meanwhile, far away from all this mess, a Brazilian company known as Tectoy has released the Zeebo, their first original entry to the console market (they had previously been highly successful distributing Sega consoles in Brazil), which is specifically targeted at emerging markets such as Brazil, China, Russia, and India (except that no one has really heard about it outside of Brazil, which has import laws so ludicrous that having a local console seems to be the only realistic outcome) with its less powerful architecture and lower price point, but a wide variety of classic games from past console generations delivered through [[Useful Notes/Digital Distribution|online downloads]]. The system also boasts infrared technology, similar to the Wii, on some games and has a very user-friendly controller. However, it failed horrendously in the markets it was launched in (India, Brazil and Mexico) and ceased production in September 30 2011.
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This generation will be met with a fair amount of competition from tangent industries. Cellular phones and handheld computers have advanced to the point of being able to play simple but graphically appealing games; this could cut into the casual market, as such games are cheap, can be played for a few minutes at a time, and assuming the player already has a cell phone, don't require additional hardware. As consoles become more full-featured and offer non-gaming services, while PC services like Steam standardize the buying, installation, and customer support processes, the two camps will find themselves in closer competition for consumer dollars.
A number of rumors in 2009 about Microsoft kick-starting the 8th generation ended up being Sony and Microsoft jumping late onto the motion-control wagon with PlayStation Move and Kinect, respectively — and most analysts are bullish on their chances of success. Microsoft has apparently reported that the Xbox 360 (which came out first in the 7th generation, mind) is only halfway through its lifespan, expecting it to last until 2015. Similarly, Sony has claimed that the [[
So it was up to Nintendo to upset the applecart. They did, announcing the [[Wii U]] at E3 2011, with a release planned for sometime in 2012. It is back-compatible with all Wii games, controllers and accessories, but not Gamecube ones. The console itself looks like a downsized X360, but that's because all the excitement's in the controller, which is the lovechild of a Wiimote and an iPad — in addition to rumble, motion control, and all the buttons and thumbsticks you'd expect, it's got a touch-screen (single-touch only), camera with videochat support, and can display both secondary outputs (non-important information) ''or'' be used to play the game directly while someone else uses the TV to, say, watch TV. However, it is ''not'' a portable; without a set-top box to think for it, the controller accomplishes little on its own. So far, response has been mixed; Nintendo stocks went down 10% in the days following the announcement over doubts about the (relatively) astronomical cost of controllers, the revised market strategy (going high-tech in comparison to the Wii's [[Every Man]] approach; initially focusing on games that will only support one uPad at a time, with others required to use Wiimotes), and the lack of innovation in comparison to the Wii.
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===The Original (Third and Fourth Genenerations)===
* '''Sides''': ''[[Game Boy|Nintendo Game Boy]]'' vs. ''[[Atari Lynx]]'' vs. ''[[Game Gear|Sega Game Gear]]'' vs. ''NEC TurboExpress'' (aka PC Engine) vs. ''Sega Nomad''.
* '''Winner''': Game Boy by [[Tetris
Even when it came out, the Game Boy's chunky design and simple monochrome display made it look old-fashioned; at the same time, the Atari Lynx was wowing people with its "turn it upside down if you're left-handed" gimmick and full-colour display. But Nintendo's wide range of third-party developers and stranglehold on game shops saw it getting more shelf space. The Game Boy's greatest weakness was also its greatest strength; while the other handheld devices boasted color screens and more sophisticated graphics, Nintendo's device offered far better battery life, making it more easily portable. The Game Boy's [[Killer App]], [[
The TurboExpress also failed, despite being the most powerful handheld at that time, largely because it cost $299 on release. A late entry by Sega in the form of the Nomad, a handheld console that could play Genesis games, was a flop — it came out the year ''after'' the first [[Play Station]] console.
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* '''Winner''': The Game Boy variants.
The cultural dominance of the Game Boy was immense, and continued to be bought by thousands for years after its initial release. But as the hardware aged, its competition saw a chance to strike. The Neo Geo Pocket and Game.Com were both attempts to knock the monochrome bleeper off its feet. But Nintendo had another trick up its sleeve; the original Game Boy was swapped out for the streamlined, bigger-screened Game Boy Pocket while a new, colour, backwards-compatible Game Boy was put on the market. Combined with the burgeoning ''[[
The Neo Geo Pocket Color was released to compete, and while its library of classic Neo Geo titles saw it gain a mild amount of success, it never managed to make any real headway against Nintendo's established brand name and backwards compatibility. Japan also saw the introduction of the hugely-popular Wonderswan, created by [[Gunpei Yokoi|the Game Boy's original designer]] as what was his final project before his tragic death, but it never made it outside Japan. The Game.com was easily the least successful handheld from this generation, boasting a touch screen and online features, but they were clumsily implemented and the overall hardware was badly underpowered (it actually had a similar CPU to the original Game Boy, but this wasn't especially impressive considering it came out ''eight years later''), consigning it to failure in the marketplace. Tiger Electronics would see a similar failure with the R-Zone, which managed to sell even worse than not only its Game.com, but also the [[Virtual Boy]], which the R-Zone is generally a [[Shoddy Knockoff Product]] of, and which had three equally disappointing different versions and graphics that can't even exceed the quality of those of the Virtual Boy.
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The creation of the Game Boy Color was ultimately an admission that that iteration of the console had gone as far as it could go. In 2001, Nintendo released the Game Boy Advance, effectively a portable Game Boy-compatible SNES. (Compare with humorous intent to the first Portable War's massive casualty — Sega's Nomad, which played the original Genesis cartridges, doing away with porting/repurchasing games. Another instance of Sega's console curse — good ideas, horrific timing.)
The GBA was built upon an idea that would have been seen as terrible if it hadn't worked out: theUpdatedRerelease, more so than any other console before it. If the GBA was essentially a portable SNES, so the logic goes, then there was a generation of children who had never played those games, and another that had would be willing to pay for nostalgia. With a launch line-up that included versions of ''[[
The GBA was followed up two years later with the improved SP model, which had a smaller size and a clamshell style flip-up screen with sidelight. Later they released the Micro, which was smaller and hipper (at the cost of backward compatibility) and an updated SP, both with true backlighting.
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In addition, the PSP and it's easy memory stick compatibility made it a haven for software pirates. Considering how much had been banked on the impressive back catalog of Playstation hits to provide an easy series of releases, emulation definitely made Sony and third-party developers nervous. Eventually [http://www.edge-online.com/features/third-parties-abandoning-psp the device would lose much] of the third party support [http://www.gamezone.com/editorials/sony-psp-failing-due-to-overreliance-on-third-party-developers it had counted on], and presumably Sony's high-profile failed attempt to block piracy only made other developers more nervous.
In Fall 2008, Nintendo announced the DSi, a third model of the DS. It no longer has [[Game Boy Advance]] compatibility (and by extension, no support for the portable ''[[
In October of 2009, the DSi's "sister console" was announced worldwide and released in Japan. Rather than replace the current DSi, the DSi LL/XL at first seems counter-productive — it's ''larger'' (actually about the same size as the original DS), comes in subdued colors like dark brown and burgundy, and includes a larger pen-shaped stylus in addition to the typical Nintendo DS styli. The point seems to be an attempt to attract more of the casual market by having larger screens which are easier to see and easier to write with. And for people with big hands.
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An odd twist of this generation is the invention of smartphones--Apple [[IProduct|iProducts]], Android phones by [[Google]]--which have become competitors in their own right. They provide download-only games and are popular among some gamers — particularly for simple, low-cost games. They're not competing directly with the Nintendo DS or Sony PSP, but they still have a noticeable market share — certainly more visible than the GP2X. Major third-party developers, such as Konami, Capcom, and Square, have all launched classic as well as new/exclusive titles in the App Store, proving that it's being taken seriously. Also, the App Store has brought many other budding companies to the surface, such as [[Gameloft]]. But it remains to be seen how big a presence this new market is in the Console Wars, because we can't measure their impact yet.
The first question one might ask is, "Why are we bothering to include these smartphones at all? People don't play games on them." In counter-argument, we offer a simple sales figure: ''[[
* One would think the easy way to figure out smartphones' market share is to do what we do for everybody else, which is count how many consoles Apple, Verizon, Google etc has sold. That's kind of the problem: smartphones ''aren't'' consoles. When you buy a DS, you're buying it to play games. When you buy an iPhone, or an iPad, or an iPod Touch, you're buying it to do...what? Maybe you want to play games on it. Maybe you don't. Maybe you're a grandma who received it as a Christmas present and you never took it out of the box.
* It's easy to claim that smartphones aren't consoles, and, well, that's kind of true. While gaming consoles don't really have a standardized definition, we [[Blatant Lies|learned experts]] here at [[TV Tropes]] are going with, "an electronic device that is designed ''primarily'' to play games," which smartphones obviously aren't. The problem is, this sidesteps the real issue. The simple fact is that most people don't want to carry around more than one electronic interactive device at a time, so smartphones compete with consoles in the greater arena of "pocket space" (and, more concretely, "leisure time"), even if they aren't consoles themselves.
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* '''Winner''': ''Way'' too early to tell.
In March 2010, Nintendo announced plans to release the [[Nintendo 3DS]]. More details about the system were made available at the 2010 E3 trade show; features included a wider upper screen, which is capable of full, scalable, glasses-free 3D effects (similar to those seen in recent films like ''[[Avatar (
Sony has now officially announced one next-generation hardware platform, the [[Play Station Vita]]. The Playstation Vita will sport dual analog sticks, a rear-mounted touch panel, a larger screen, 3G internet, and of course more power (rumors claim it's as powerful as the [[
Rumors of a [[Fan Nickname|PlayStation Phone]] have circulated since 2006, but it was five years before Sony's Ericsson subsidiary confirmed that they were trying to revive the NGage idea. The Xperia Play is an Android-based phone with a slide-out gamepad, including a central touchpad in place of dual analog sticks. (Note that, while it is associated with the [[Play Station]] brand, it is ''not'' a [[Play Station]] console.) It was announced in an ad during the 2011 [[Super Bowl]] and finished its worldwide rollout in May of that year, and can not only play any games available to Android (IE ''[[
As for other possible competitors:
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* Many cellphone manufacturers have began a shift towards gaming. Nokia resurrected the N-Gage name to now refer to both a framework and a section in many Nokia phones in which downloaded games are found, Google's Android OS is beginning to become noticed for gaming, Samsung's launch of its Bada store which is primarily to act as an app store that's mostly filled with games, Microsoft's integration of Xbox Live into Windows Phone 7, and Apple ramps up its seriousness in the iDevice-as-a-gaming-system strategy by introducing a Game Center segment in iOS 4.1 and newer. (And of course there's the Xperia Play).
'''Current Standings:''' At the moment, Nintendo obviously has the biggest lead. The 3DS got off to a rocky start with not much in the way of software its first few months; the high point being an [[Updated Rerelease]] of ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
The Xperia Play, on the other hand, has done pretty dismally in its short time of availability (thus far), but the few people who have bought them have tended to pay for more games than other Android users and developers are still adapting their games for it, so Sony Ericsson must be doing something right. The Playstation Vita, while getting more press than the Play, is also struggling with its Japanese release - let's put it this way; the 3DS was considered to have low sales when it launched, and the Vita's numbers aren't even ''that'' high.
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