Game economics (was Re: The good old days of tape players)

From: Mike Ford <mikeford_at_socal.rr.com>
Date: Wed Dec 1 20:31:57 1999

>>As for PC's eating into PS2 sales, don't hold your breath. When you can
>>buy a PC with a 128-bit reconfigurable integer CPU with 10 floating point
>>units organized into two vector processors, synchronous rambus, a dedicated
>>rendering engine, ethernet, 56K modem, DVD drive and sound for $300
>>(they also throw a PS1 chipset into the box, since the PS2 chipset
>>cannot run PS1 code) then SCE will find themselves in the same position
>>they were in 12 months ago. But then I'd expect the PS3 to be in the
>>works by then ;-)
>>--
>
>
>Very well put!

I would hazard putting forth the view that a "cycle" exists in gaming where
consoles dominate a few years, then take a nose dive, and computer based
gaming dominates, repeat. Video games have some powerfull points pro and
con.

Pro
Dedicated hardware, massive sales, and low priced consoles.

Con
Low priced consoles mean hardware budgets are TIGHT, serious lack of talent
(ie lets do Donkey Kong one more time), no third party innovation, 3 dozen
different games isn't a lot choose from, Long product revision cycles (ala
3 years vs 6 months). TV based products have limits that PC based does not.

I can play most N64 games on a moderate PC, most playstation games on a
newer G3 mac. When you look at just what a current generation machine can
do, I'm not sure how much all those bells and whistles will really gain a
person in actual game play on the new consoles.
Received on Wed Dec 01 1999 - 20:31:57 GMT