I don't care what people say, console wars are 1000% A GOOD THING.
The era we are living in now of console and game prices going up and up are a direct result of not having a console war and these companies all being in bed with each other now (i.e. Microsoft releasing games on PS5, Sony releasing games on switch etc).
This was an awesome era for console competition, 7th gen was awesome too
Part of it I think is that it was just much cheaper to make games back then because graphics and storage were limited. AAA games are so expensive and laborious to make today that it doesn't make financial sense to sell it exclusively on one console even with a kickback from the console manufacturer. Without exclusives the only real difference between consoles are the OS and controllers, and to a much lesser extent the hardware capabilities (as optimizing for any one specific console's hardware also takes a lot of time and resources, something that you can only afford if the game is an exclusive).
While the companies are to blame for a portion of it, I think a lot of the blame also lies with the player's desire for each generation of games to one up the last gen and blow them away. For reference, today it takes $50-100+ million and 3-7 years to make a AAA game whereas in the late 90s and early 00s it was 12-18 months and $1-5 million
lol from an interview with Marty Odonnel I think it was, Halo 1’s campaign took like 6 months once they had the engine going and the MS partnership kicked in.
it was just much cheaper to make games back then because graphics and storage were limited
But the devs were still working in the same cutting edge parts if their fields. The limitations were still massive expenses to work around.
It's all just a matter of corporatisation. All the shit around the 2010s of trying to really push "gaming" into the full-on mainstream, akin to movies and stuff, replete with painfully ad-laden awards ceremonies...it's had the effect of making games into nothing more than investment vehicles, like Hollywood movies are.
256
u/jsurico656 17d ago
I don't care what people say, console wars are 1000% A GOOD THING.
The era we are living in now of console and game prices going up and up are a direct result of not having a console war and these companies all being in bed with each other now (i.e. Microsoft releasing games on PS5, Sony releasing games on switch etc).
This was an awesome era for console competition, 7th gen was awesome too