Among older hardcore gaming fans, brand loyalty remains a powerful force. Whether you’re an Xbox 360 gamer, a Sony fan or a PC aficionado, the platform means a lot.
To mainstream gamers – and financially beleaguered parents – the idea of a common platform seems like a common sense solution.
Welcome to the two solitudes of gaming (and the splintered factions within those ranks).
Staking out your ground in this battlefield is a personal decision and every now and then a franchise comes along that really focuses a light on the issue. Crysis is one of those.
First, a confession: I am an unabashed console gamer. And I play on all the major consoles in order to review games. I do not, however, typically review PC games. Why? Do I hate PC gaming? Nope. I just can’t afford to stay current with the hardware demands that the ever-changing landscape of PC gaming requires.
As a parent of a teen and tween, I appreciate the fact that if I have to plunk down cash for a console, I can rest assured that there will be games for that system during the course of anywhere from three to eight years, depending on how much market penetration there is and how well the third-party development industry supports it. (The PS2 had product support for about a decade, while the GameCube was dropped like the proverbial hot potato when it failed to impress the mass market.)
As a console gamer, I remember when the original Crysis game debuted as a PC title. It was 2007. Xbox 360 gamers were enthralled by Halo 3, Mass Effect and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Wii gamers were digging on Super Mario Galaxy. The PS3 was struggling to catch on due to massive hardware shortfalls. And PC gamers were raving about this gorgeous shooter called Crysis – a game whose graphics were worlds ahead of what the new 360 and PS3 consoles could offer.
“It’s too powerful for your console,” was a typical putdown used by the PC crowd.
And it stung because at our core, all gamers want to play the best games possible – preferably at the same time as our fellow enthusiasts.
Xbox and PlayStation fans would, of course, eventually get to play Crysis on their consoles (after a 3½ year wait and – ironically – a full seven months after Crysis 2 debuted simultaneously on the 360, PS3 and PC).
And now, finally, we have Crysis 3 in our hands. The game hit for the 360, PS3 and PC in February and has met with generally good reviews (personally I love the game and give it a grade of 85%).
What has, for the most part, disappeared are the taunts of the pro-PC crowd. Console gaming has triumphed, capturing the mass market and the favour of teens and older gamers alike. The fanboy arguments today are largely about whether the PS3 or the 360 is the kick-ass system to own. As I’ve listened to young gamers talk, you don’t hear them spouting off about their new PC graphics card these days. Most of the time, they’re talking about some cool multiplayer kill they made on Battlefield 3, or in Black Ops II.
And about the only thing they seem to agree on is that they wish they could all have a way to play against one another regardless of which system they own. They lament the fact they can’t stab, shoot or blow up one another because one family owns a PS3 while another has a 360.
See, to them, the game is the thing.
Me, I’m fortunate in that I get to play all the systems and I have to remind my children that not every family has all the current consoles to fire up. But then I grew up during a time when, as a gamer, I defined myself by the system I played on.
First it was the Intellivision (hey, not my choice. I was a kid and my parents didn’t know any better, otherwise they clearly would have picked up the more popular Atari system and sparing me a couple years of shame). I messed around with my aunt’s Super NES system while living with her during my college years and then, when I got a job, I bought a Sega Genesis.
From there came the original Sony PlayStation. And then a PS2.
Had I not worked into a position of writing about the gaming industry, I probably would have remained a Sony fanboy. But when Microsoft’s Xbox arrived on my doorstep so that I could review titles, well, Halo blew me away. To this day, if given the choice, I prefer to review games on a 360 over the PS3 (largely because I’m an achievement junkie and Sony’s trophy system didn’t really do much to win me over). In terms of performance, the systems are largely the same, although the fact many third-party developers work off a 360 dev kit means that there are occasional performance issues with games on the PS3. But even that gap has been closed during the consoles’ life cycles, which are now winding down.
Yes, the next Xbox and the PS4 are in development. And no doubt they will be much more powerful when they hit the market.
And yes, older folk like me and the mainstream gaming market of 30-somethings will no doubt still have brand loyalty on their minds.
But the landscape is changing, folks. As I said, kids today just want to play games against one another. Gaming, for them, is as much a social activity as it is a pastime. And they don’t care about whether they’re playing a Sony or Microsoft product. They want to blow one another up, whether it’s at each other’s homes or if they’re just able to do it online.
Parents today often lament the amount of time kids play games, the same way parents complained about the amount of time my generation spent talking on the phone to one another back in those ancient 1980s and 1990s.
Canadian developer Denis Dyack, the head honcho at Silicon Knights in St. Catharines, Ont., has written extensively for years about his belief in a single-platform solution and that, one day, it would become a reality.
I’m beginning to believe him.
Not with this next generation of hardware that’s in the pipeline now. But maybe after that.
The 30-somethings are going to be having kids and the teens of today will one of these days, as well. And their desire to socialize over games will eventually drive the market to adopt a single console, I believe. (Not to mention the fact some of them will become key players in the gaming industry, bringing about change from within, as well.)
I don’t expect Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft to be too pleased about it. But that’s business and if the market wants it, eventually brand loyalty will be sacrificed.
Look at the mobile phone market today. We’re moving to, more or less, a place where content and apps are available across multiple platforms. And an iPhone can easily text an Android phone or a Windows phone. Is it hard to picture a day soon when the market will demand a format where people can play together regardless of the brand of console or PC they own?
By that time, maybe Crysis 5 will let shooter fans lock and load en masse.
Here’s hoping.
* Wayne Chamberlain has covered the gaming industry since 2003. Follow him on Twitter @ChamberlainW. He is also co-host of the Star Wars Book Report podcast, available on iTunes.