Editorial: Hardware + Broken Promises = /facepalm
There are two things that are absolutely certain in this industry; sequels and remakes. After countless disappointments from the Big Three with regards to the capabilities of their machines, I think that we can add ‘bullshit‘ to that list.
From the inaugural display of this generation of hardware during May 2005, much has been touted about the abilities of each machine with regards to their individual abilities. From teraflops to storage, the average consumer would likely find it hard to remember what exactly was promised from each company back in 2005. Rest assured, this isn’t the first generation of hardware to face barefaced whoppers, but it is the most important generation to date as the world feels the grip of the current economic crisis. This generation of hardware has proven not only to be costly to the consumer but also to the manufacturer, and with a global recession in effect it is quite possible that any one of the big three could find themselves out of the hardware business when it comes to producing another Xbox or PLAYSTATION successor. Within the current climate, it has so far been proven that the consumer will put their cash where the best value for their money is, but the question begs to be asked :
Have they lived up to their initial regarding hardware and are the consoles actually worth their price points?
Rebirth: When Nintendo failed to match the sales of Sony’s PlayStation 2 with their Gamecube in the last round of the console war, many discounted their chances of surviving within the hardware market unless they made a herculean comeback. The first stage of this was to increase their dominance within the handheld market, one they have succeeded in since 1989 with the release of Game Boy, by producing the Nintendo DS and later the DSi. Hailed as a veritable money printer, the Nintendo DS went on to help rescue its parent company from financial ruin whilst at the same time discontinuing the strong and established Game Boy series of machines. This led Nintendo to further exploit the touchscreen capabilities of their machine and lean towards expanding the casual market by directing their efforts at people who generally don’t fall under the ‘gamer’ tag. When it paid off in unbelievable sales, this fueled their resolve as they continued to develop the Wii, a console under development since 2001 – codenamed Revolution. In brief form, it was a machine that initially only told people that they would be able to play old Nintendo titles from the distant back catalog when in reality they were about to promise, and try deliver a whole lot more.
There is no denying the Wii Remote is a technical marvel, very much so in the same league as the wonderful Wavebird controller that Nintendo released last generation for their Gamecube. The initial reveal of the Wii Remote involved Nintendo studio producer Shigeru Miyamoto conducting an orchestra using the Wii Remote to widespread acclaim – this was Nintendos ‘Second Coming’. The initial reaction across the board was one of awe and wonder regarding the possibilities of such a control scheme. Subsequent advertising added to the already growing interest and portrayed groups of people wildly swinging their remotes every direction imaginable, as if they were playing Dance Dance Revolution with their hands! In the beginning for the core gamer the possibilities seemed endless with Ubisoft promising to release a true first person experience in the lackluster Red Steel. Much was touted at the ability to use the pointer as a directional aim but its when used in game, that old friend once again reared his ugly head – disappointment. It’s not that the Wii Remote is a terrible motion sensing device – far from it, right now it’s the most accurate and fun console controller with motion control functionality – far outstripping Sony’s SIXAXIS technology. It’s when Nintendo did little to inform people that true 1:1 motion was not included out of the box that they failed to live up to one of the – mostly presumed by the media and end user – promises of Wii.
If we were to judge Nintendo negatively on their lack of ‘out of the box’ 1:1 motion control it would be understandable. People expect to pay for the full experience out of the box, not have to buy attachments in order to enjoy a game the way it was originally conceived. Many would, in fact – and probably will – feel slightly cheated when offered the optional Wii MotionPlus attachment which comes bundled with Wii Sports Resort. With Wii being touted as a family entertainment device, it’s conceivable that each Wii console sold has an attachment rate of between two and four remotes each! If those devices were all to ‘upgrade’ to MotionPlus then you’re looking at around 70 million remotes worldwide. When developers see the potential of this new attachment with regards of providing a more interesting and accurate experience for the gamer, then the attachment will likely become necessary in order to play specific titles, much in the same way that The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask for Nintendo 64 required the Memory Expansion Pack in order to play the game. In fact, Rare classic Perfect Dark stated the following on its cover art ‘Expansion Pak Required for Maximum Gameplay!’ One wonders how long it will be before Nintendo’s core franchises such as Mario, Zelda and Metroid all become part of the ‘MotionPlus-only’ family. Time will tell, but an attachment that could very well retail for $19.99 per unit could end up a costly investment for a family simply wanting to play a round of the next Mario Kart title together…and I haven’t even mentioned the Nunchuck at all yet, as it’s been well documented online and not all Wii titles require the accessory, but since one came as a pack-in with the console its arguable that Nintendo aren’t forcing you to buy one to play certain titles since it’s already part of your setup.
Costing: Since the release of the Nintendo Wii, the price has remained mostly static in and around the $249/£179.99 price point within the United States and the U.K. Nintendo, unlike competitors Microsoft and Sony, have turned a profit since day one with the Wii console, mostly in part due to resisting the move to High Definition gaming and instead using technology similar to their Gamecube in order to achieve their goals. Just how much exactly does the Wii cost to produce? This is the interesting part, because not long after the machine made its debut in November 2006 a summary of the Wii costings was leaked to the Internet and those figures claimed the machine costs a total of $158.30 to produce, including manual labor, and has a wholesale price of $195.99. Of course this only covers the Wii console itself and not the Remote nor its Nunchuck attachment, but it’s a strong statement that from the get go Wii has made its parent around a cool $783 million. Not bad Nintendo, as since the general release of the system the console has sold approximately 20.8 million consoles as of December 31st 2008 within the United States alone! But honestly? Where is the price drop associated with driving down costs which surely they have been able to accomplish long before now? If Nintendo understood the concerns of a global economic downturn, then yes it makes sense to be the cheapest system on the market, something which they, and Wii itself are no longer title holders….
That title now belongs to Microsoft and its Xbox 360 console which has two configurations below the price of the Nintendo Wii, the 60GB model and its Arcade counterpart. When Microsoft declared that they were entering the ‘next generation’ contest a year before their competitors they hedged their bets on the early adopter, a tactic which paid off in spades for the manufacturer from Redmond, Virginia. The Xbox 360 was released in November 2005 and immediately sold out in all available regions except for Japan, in which Microsoft has traditionally struggled, and was available at launch in two configurations. The original Core edition – similar to the current Arcade model – and the Pro edition which included a 20GB HDD both were highly sought products smack in the middle of the holiday season shopping fever that grips the country every year. More shocking was the price of the hardware attachments available for the Xbox 360 itself, as the machine had less features than its rivals touted a year later.
Products such as wireless controllers were only available with the Pro console at launch, or available separately for a substantial amount of money whilst the unlucky who managed to grab themselves an Arcade found themselves having to shill for the extra accessories in order to make up the contents of the Pro model. In order to achieve most of the potential offered by Xbox 360 an Arcade owner would have to buy the following: a 20GB HDD, wireless pads, HD component leads and a headset if they wanted to talk over Xbox LIVE. The cost of the Pro unit was £279.99 whilst the Arcade was £209.99 at launch with the accessories coming in at the following price points.
* 20GB HDD – £59.99
* Wireless Controller – £32.99
* HD Cables – £19.99
* Headset – £14.99
Factor in the Wireless Network adaptor, which is still priced within many retail outlets at £59.99, the Xbox 360 added up to a ridiculous price if you went budget at the start but decided to change your mind later. These days, the price of the hardware has fallen drastically, with the introduction of what was once the third model – the Elite. Gone is the Core, replaced with the HDMI capable Arcade for a sweet £149.99. The old 20GB 360, which was given a storage upgrade to 60GB and a drop in price to £169.99 is now no more, replaced by the aforementioned Elite. These both fall well beneath the Nintendo Wii and its price point, yet the Wii still outsells the Xbox 360 and PLAYSTATION 3 at every turn. It is entirely possible that the dearth of attachments and accessories for the 360 causes it to lose some of its value, as they are essential to maximizing the potential of the system, as evidenced with the recent NXE update which requires a HDD unit or minimum 512MB memory card to perform the update. In hindsight, it’s entirely possible that Microsoft could have added the wireless networking and the wireless controllers to every 360 at launch, but they desperately needed to come in at a cheaper price point than Sony. Therefore, they omitted the things not entirely necessary – giving the consumer the choice whether or not to ‘jump in’.
Design Flaws: The decision to release the Xbox 360 with known system crippling faults will be one that stays in every gamer’s mind moving onwards through this generation and into the next, if Microsoft continues to maintain its commitment to the video game industry. Recalling an incident when I worked for GAME in the U.K. during the launch of the console, a customer phoned the store on launch day to complain his Xbox 360 wasn’t working straight out of the box. He was given instructions to contact Microsoft on a specialist phone number in order to get a collection and/or replacement model directly from them, which leads me to believe that the design flaw in the console was not only known by the manufacturer – but by the retailers themselves. The evidence for this is based upon a number of factors such as the preparedness for any RROD incident (a hardware flaw unknown to the consumer at the time), as well as the retailer refusing to have anything to do with the console post-sale. When you purchase a machine retailing at £279.99 you expect it to be perfect in its design, rather than sitting around, waiting for the inevitable failure of one of its delicate internal components, a problem which occurred for me shortly before the console turned three years old… For myself however, Microsoft put their money where their mouth was and repaired the console, then shipped it back within two weeks. Not bad, but it still has the flickery image on screen on occasion, and it’s only a matter of time before its inevitable re-death. It is curious whether or not these problems could have been avoided if they launched a year later than they did, next time I can only imagine they will try to avoid any such issues with the hardware.
One last tale from the mouth of Major Nelson : “At launch, Xbox 360 will be backward compatible with the top Xbox games. Our goal is to have every Xbox game work on Xbox 360. You will NOT need to purchase a new ‘version’ — your original games will work on Xbox 360.”
Three years on, that was a disappointment too.
Losing your way: Sony had absolutely everything to lose coming into the third age of their PlayStation era. Its such a shame that they promised so much and delivered nothing but a facepalm to themselves in the earliest days of the PS3 launch. A t the time Sony Computer Entertainment head honcho Ken Kutaragi also touted a number of hardware features to show the PS3′s superiority over the Xbox 360 which have been photographed extensively. Early prototypes of PLAYSTATION 3 hardware featured two HDMI ports, three Ethernet ports and six USB ports; yet when the functional hardware was displayed again at E3 2006, Sony reduced them to one HDMI port, one Ethernet port and four USB ports in what could only be described as a cost cutting exercise. How then could the console launch at a staggering £425 within the U.K. when the fastest selling console of the past few generations (Wii) was less than half the price?
It likely has more to do with being the only one of the three to offer full functionality with regards to film formats, the source of which being high definition Blu-Ray being included from the beginning. As a point of interest regarding the value of a film capable machine, many bought the PlayStation 2 on that basis alone as it was at the time one of the cheapest available DVD players on the market. The Xbox 360 has a vastly inferior DVD player with terrible artifacting, and the Wii is a non-starter as it takes an illegal hack to even play DVD films on that system. The PLAYSTATION 3 launched as the cheapest available Blu-Ray player on the market, something that may yet save them later on in their ten year plan.
“Now, rumble I think was the last generation feature; it’s not the next-generation feature.
I think motion sensitivity is.”
Phil Harrison, 2007
The exclusion of rumble within the PS3 controller was not as Phil Harrison says, a last generation feature….it was two generations old. Regardless, there were a number of reasons why it wasn’t included, the most obvious one involving a dispute with Immersion regarding their usage of vibration technology in their Dual Shock controllers. They originally announced that vibration functionality would be removed from the controller, reasoning that the vibration would interfere with the motion-sensing feature of the controller. However, as of September 2007 Sony reversed their stance and announced the Dual Shock 3 claiming that they had solved the technological barrier that prevented them from achieving this feat of engineering in the beginning. I think personally it’s a great thing when a company has the strength to stand up and make decisions that only benefit their customers – but hate it when they can’t be straight with them about the reasons behind good, strong business decisions. I understand that there’s something to be said for protecting one’s interests and not giving too much information away, but Sony outright lied with this, just like Microsoft saying that the RROD failure was limited to a small percentage of the install base. Where Microsoft omitted wireless networking (an important feature when available) it was included with PLAYSTATION 3 consoles as standard and with the price falling to below the £300 price mark from its original £425, it’s definitely a good time to get re-acquainted with this platform.
So really what can we summarize at the end of this collection of musings? That Sony are over-priced? That Microsoft make shoddy hardware? Or perhaps Nintendo throw too many attachments out there hoping each new one sticks as well as the previous one – see the Vitality Sensor for example!?! In the end, if you have no idea about what made the very idea of these machines upon their announcement so exciting, then I’d suggest you choose the one that best suits your lifestyle and budget. In a time such as the one the world is going through at the moment, where jobs are being cut left, right and centre, people are more conscious about their spending habits and any one of those problems are reason enough to steer clear of a specific platform. So choose wisely, and if you have any more thoughts regarding this editorial please feel free to leave comments below!
