Sony goes Home and gets Game'¦ Game 3.0!

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Thursday, 08 March 2007 18:48

Your IT - Entertainment

The ability to predict an eventual winner in the next-gen gaming stakes keeps on getting harder and harder, as each games console offers unique features or experiences that differentiate it from its competitors.

Could we be entering a phase where there simply won’t be an all-out winner, but one where all three games consoles happily co-exist, much as competing TV networks or websites exist today? Why does one particular games console have to win, exactly?

Of course, a ‘losing’ console will receive fewer new games which will eventually result in a ‘death spiral’ as happened with technologies like Betamax for consumers, despite Betamax still widely in use by professionals today.

The case for a winner between Blu-ray and HD DVD seems far clearer than a games console, which is really a powerful computer that plays games, and these days, much more besides, including Internet access and much, much more.

No-one truly considers Apple a loser because they have a 5% market share compared with Microsoft’s 90%+, do they? Indeed, Apple has never done better, nor has it ever made so much money.

Perhaps the reality of three successful games consoles on the market can be a reality after all. Only time will tell, but until then, the predictions, claims and counterclaims are unlikely to show any signs of slowing down, with Christmas 2007 set to be a tremendously spectacular battle for dominance, even if that true dominance may never come, but could instead be more or less equally shared in a way that has never happened before in the world of games consoles.