Video Gaming: The Future Of Gaming

While Ben Franklin’s famous quip that “nothing is certain but death and taxes” still has a nice ring to it, in today’s world we can count on at least one more certainty: Every five years or so, with unfailing regularity, the video gaming world will go through a major metamorphosis. Each of these successive half-decade generations sees new game consoles take the market by storm, old platforms begin their decline toward obsolescence, and a further blurring of the line between game machines and other forms of home entertainment.

Standing as we are at the dawn of the next generation of gaming—led by Microsoft’s new Xbox 360 this holiday season, with Sony’s PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo Revolution to follow in 2006—we can see how different this new era is from those before it. One key difference is that, for the first time in more than 20 years, we see no new upstarts attempting to stake a serious claim in the market. As we moved into the 16-bit era in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Sega made a serious dent in Nintendo’s dominance with the Genesis. In 1995, Sony came out of nowhere to define the new 3-D era with the PlayStation, leaving Nintendo and Sega battling for second place. And although Microsoft was unable to match Sony’s success in the last platform war, its first foray into the console market with the Xbox wedged Sega out of the hardware business and quickly became the system of choice for videophile gamers. This newfound stability—a familiar triopoly of household names thriving from one generation to the next—may well lend an air of legitimacy to dedicated gaming machines in the eyes of those who previously wrote them off as nothing but fleeting children’s playthings.

Format Wars
Game consoles have for the most part merely followed the trends of the rest of the computer and consumer electronics industries. This next generation of consoles promises to reverse the hierarchy, with the rest of the electronics world now following the gaming trends. In fact, the war between the two upcoming potential successors to DVD—HD-DVD and Blu-ray—could see many, if not most, of its major skirmishes fought on a video game battlefield. But the key word in this case is could.

First Out of the Gate
This November, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 will be the first of the new game consoles to appear in stores. Although it offers high-definition video for games (such as Project Gotham Racing 3 and Dead or Alive 4 (below, top to bottom), it does not at present play either of the upcoming high-definition DVD formats: HD-DVD and Blu-ray. (HD-DVD capability may be offered in future versions.) Nor does Xbox 360 include DVI or HDMI digital video output, which is rapidly becoming standard in high-def video devices. (Click images to enlarge)

While Sony is building the PlayStation 3 around its own Blu-ray technology, Microsoft (which officially supports HD-DVD) decided to launch Xbox 360 with only a standard DVD drive. But that could easily change at some unknown point in the future. Jeff Henshaw, executive producer for Xbox Digital Entertainment at Microsoft, says, “We’ve built in some real flexibility in the Xbox 360 hardware design … so down the road, once the high-definition optical media formats have been straightened out in the industry, and we’ve got a compelling library of content and a consumer demand for high-definition optical media, we can innovate in hardware when the time is right.” This could be due to a unwillingness to delay the release of its new machine until HD-DVD is ready to launch. Or Microsoft could be playing it safe, waiting to see if Toshiba and Sony, the companies behind HD-DVD and Blu-ray, respectively, can settle their differences and agree on a unified format—or if not, which of the two nascent high-definition disc standards ends up as the reigning champ. Then again, with the Sony PlayStation 3 featuring Blu-ray functionality out of the box, the war could be over before the first real shot is fired unless Microsoft acts quickly. If history is any indication, the PS3 could create a market for prerecorded Blu-ray movies single-handedly. “By the time PS2 came out in 2000,” says Dan Silverberg, executive director of new business development for Buena Vista Home Entertainment, “we had [more than] 10 million DVD players in the marketplace. Prices had already gone from nearly $1,000 to probably really close to what the PS2 itself cost. So DVD was already established, and was at a comparable price point, yet we still know that for a significant chunk of people out there, the PS2 made DVD accessible for the first time. The same thing will happen with the PS3, but I believe even more dramatically, because the PS3 is coming out around the same time as [Blu-ray] set-top boxes, possibly with a favorable price point. I think it’s going to be profound.”

Portable Powerhouse
In less than a year, Sony’s PlayStation Portable has surpassed two million units in sales, partly as a result of its incredible versatility. In addition to games such as Kingdom of Paradise (bottom) and Gretzky NHL, it also plays movies recorded on the PSP-specific Universal Media Disc format. Through its WiFi wireless networking capability, it can surf the Internet. And the PSP’s Memory Stick Pro slot allows it to display photos from a digital camera, or to play MP3 music files transferred from a computer. (Click images to enlarge)

While PS2’s boost to the already-established DVD market may not prove to be the perfect predictor of the PlayStation brand’s impact on a new format, the release of the PlayStation Portable, or PSP, this past March provides a more solid parallel. A handful of studios, including Buena Vista, began distributing their films on the PSP’s proprietary UMD (Universal Media Disc) format concurrently with DVD releases as soon as the PSP launched, and sales have been surprisingly strong. As Silverberg notes, “DVD, in its first six or nine months, sold maybe 250,000 to 300,000 players. We’re well north of the announced two million for PSP, so if you just look at the raw numbers for first-year sales, PSP has really delivered.”

The Future Is Now
Despite the fact that Xbox 360 is launching without a next-generation optical media drive, Microsoft’s Henshaw points out that the console is still very much a high-definition entertainment system. “It’s really exciting to be that first horse out of the gate, taking customers across the finish line to high-definition gaming.” While the PS3 may end up determining the fate of one video format, Henshaw believes that this new era of gaming is going to light a fire in the home theater market as a whole. “A lot of our retail partners … are actively looking for a catalyst to help them sell not only the next-generation game systems,” he says, “but to help them move complete ecosystems of high-definition hardware into customers’ hands beginning this holiday. They’re looking for the catalyst to sell high-definition TVs and digital surround sound. And with Xbox 360 being high-def-focused, it gives them the content catalyst; it gives the retailers a reason to show their customers why this whole family of products is going to be relevant in their households.”

And even if the hinted-at HD-DVD version of Xbox 360 never materializes, Henshaw is quick to point out that the console is poised to offer a high-definition experience that extends beyond gaming. “We’re going to begin working in the high-def video category beginning this November. Xbox 360 includes online functionality called the Xbox Live Marketplace, which is going to allow people to download high-definition video content beginning this holiday. It will be initially focused on games—demos and trailers—but the software and services element of Xbox 360 gives us a lot of flexibility to really grow aspects of the 360 platform without having to do hardware changes. So for example, if we wanted to do a high-definition movie delivery service over Xbox Live, we have the ability to update the software to enable us to do that.”You Will Be Assimilated—Resistance Is Futile
Video formats and multimedia devices are not the only places where games and other forms of entertainment continue to converge, though. As we move into the next generation, not only will movies become more interactive—pause the Blu-ray disc of Ocean’s Twelve on the PS3, for example, and you might be able to click on Brad Pitt’s jacket and find yourself at an online store selling a convincing replica—but games will continue to become increasingly realistic, and hence more cinematic.

The Odds-On Favorite
Sony’s PlayStation 3 is the most eagerly anticipated of the upcoming game systems. Not only can it play games such as Heavenly Sword and Formula One (below, top to bottom) in high-definition, it can also play Sony’s upcoming Blu-ray high-definition DVD format. It is the only one of the three new platforms to include HDMI digital video outputs. (Click images to enlarge)

David Jaffe, game director for the Santa Monica division of Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) and producer of such acclaimed gaming classics as Twisted Metal and this year’s smash hit God of War, says, “The most exciting thing to me as we move onto the PlayStation 3 is that we’re going to get substantially better graphics. And more realistic graphics mean more people playing, because they’re able to suspend disbelief easier, and allow themselves to get immersed in the fantasy of video games, whereas, when things didn’t look as realistic, they tended to stay away because it felt like a kid’s toy. I think that’s really the biggest thing that subsequent generations give us. The audience continues to expand as the virtual worlds become more realistic and people feel more comfortable, and less embarrassed, becoming immersed in those worlds.”

Jaffe seems completely disinterested in the fact that gaming consoles also play movies and music. He could not care less that the line between gaming machine and set-top box is fading. Far more interesting to Jaffe is the way in which the divide between games and movies themselves continues to narrow. “For the game I’m working on now,” he says, “we’re working with Oscar-nominated screenwriters. We’re looking at an Academy Award winner for our lead character. [These things are] a necessity in terms of the kinds of games we want to make, which tend to be story-driven, emotionally driven.”

In the words of Ryan Bowling, public relations manager for SCEA, “The difference between cinema and PS3 games is going to be a really fine line. Our dream is to be on an equal playing field with Hollywood—where actors and actresses, when they are deciding on their next gig, perhaps look for a video game to star in. Our goal is to be seen as an equal player in the entertainment industry.” The irony of this statement is that in so many ways, games are already on equal or better footing: The record for single-day entertainment revenue is held not by a Hollywood blockbuster or a Britney Spears CD, but by a video game, Halo 2, which took in an astounding $125 million on its first day of release in November 2004.You Say You Want a Revolution
Perhaps those amazing sales numbers are what drive Nintendo’s philosophy. Its current system, the GameCube, is the only current gaming console that does not play DVDs. And although its next-generation system, code-named Revolution, does promise DVD playback, it’s almost an afterthought. While Microsoft’s Xbox 360 bears more than a passing resemblance to a Media Center PC, and Sony’s PS3 could well become the defining piece of home theater audio/ video gear in the coming years, Nintendo’s hardware designers seem to be distancing themselves as much as possible from the rest of the home entertainment market. And they may be onto something.

Radical Revolution
Nintendo’s soon-to-launch Revolution video game system ignores the trend toward high-definition video that Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are pursuing. Instead, it focuses on the way the player interfaces with the game, using a motion-sensing control technology similar to that employed in the “air mouse” devices often used for business presentations. For greater control precision, Nintendo is considering offering a joystick device (bottom) that can be attached to the controller. (Click images to enlarge)

Nintendo Senior Director of Public Relations, Beth Llewelyn, says, “I’ve been working in this industry for 13-plus years now, and when I first started, people were talking about convergence. It’s a topic that’s always been around, yet computers are [still] growing, set-top boxes—with TiVo and all of that—continue to grow, and obviously video games have evolved. So, yes, some of the technology seems to converge, but it’s our philosophy that there’s always going to be a place for the dedicated gaming machine.”

At first glance, the aesthetic design of the Revolution system, especially its controller, makes Llewelyn’s words sound a bit hollow. Look at the controller by itself and you might be more inclined to change channels with it than to play Super Mario Bros. or Zelda. But while its looks are familiar, if not conventional, the controller’s operation lives up to Revolution’s lofty name. Rather than working a joystick or holding down buttons to move your on-screen character, you simply wave the Revolution controller around in the air to interact with games in a new and truly three-dimensional way.

“We were showing some demos to select media in Japan, and one of the demos was a fishing game,” Llewelyn says. “Literally with a flick of the wrist, it is like you’re casting your fishing line, using the same kind of motions. And we showed it to a variety of media––one a very hard-core gamer who loved it––but we also showed it to someone who never played games, and she picked it up and got it immediately, and said, ‘Oh, this is cool, I would play this.’”

While Nintendo has drawn criticism for ignoring the high-definition movement in gaming, Llewelyn feels that Sony and Microsoft have that corner of the market covered. “Our feeling is that with Revolution, you’re going to get an amazing game play experience, and high-definition just isn’t necessary,” she says. “We’re hearing from game developers who say, ‘Wow, all of these things I’ve wanted to do, I can now just imagine the possibilities.’ So yes, Nintendo is doing things differently, and it makes sense. And it is going to work for us. And it is going to make gaming exciting again.”