The Game Console Launch Dance
There is a very interesting dance going on right now in the games industry. I call it the console launch dance. The three major game console makers (Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo) are expected to launch their next generation consoles over the next two years. It is rumored that Microsoft will be the first one out of the gate with its follow on to the Xbox. When Bill Gates was scheduled to give a keynote at CES in January, the whispers started - will it be revealed? No, it wasn't. The next logical venue is the game developers conference in March. But today, it was announced that it would not be revealed there either. The next venue is E3 in May. All three console makers have stated that they will reveal their next generation consoles in some form at E3. This is all a very elaborate marketting dance between all three companies. They will all say that they don't care about when the others launch, but they do.
But does it really matter when they do the public reveal? It completely depends upon what they think their biggest strengths are in their new products. I know for sure that all three companies are hard at work building amazing demos for their public launch. Most of the time these launches are months before the public can buy the new console, so most of the launch demos are examples of what the machine will be capable of - not what it does today. In some cases, like the Playstation 3, details about what people believe the processor to be (the Cell chip technology) was announced years ago. If a console maker wants to be known as the greatest tech box, then the launch event can set them up for that position. All of this won't matter. The only thing that will matter is the quality of the games when the public can buy the new consoles.
If you really think about these launch events, they are aimed at us games geeks. They are not aimed at the game developers. All game developers that have signed up to build games for these machines have a really good idea of what the machines can do already. In some cases, they have probably known for over a year. It takes that long, and then some, to build the games for these machines. No, the launch dance is purely for the benefit of us consumers. Like Pavlov's dog, we are being set up to salivate from the launch event until we place that pre-order months in advance (how many of you have the PSP on pre-order) or plan to camp out in line to buy one. It's all about the hype.
Don't get me wrong, the launch dance is fun to watch, and I can't wait to see what wonderful enclosures will house these machines of gaming. But at my heart, I am a techie, and therefore I am just as interested in the announcment that Nvidia will provide the graphics power of the Playstation 3. I will check out the launch events and start to salivate, but the games will really determine who dances best.
Posted at 08:41PM Feb 02, 2005 by dtwilleager in General | Comments[0]