Do you belong to the XBox360 camp? PlayStation3? Wii? Or are you a diehard last-gen loyalist who will only give up your PS2 if they can pry the controller from your cold, dead fingers?

No matter which console you prefer, the latest word from Electronic Arts will probably leave you feeling a bit annoyed. A senior exec at the world’s largest video game publisher (and, to some, the living embodiment of all that is evil and wrong in gaming) has, in statements recently published by the BBC, called for an end to the Console Wars, claiming that having to develop for multiple incompatible architectures at once is stifling innovation. (Stifling innovation? This from the same company that recycles its Madden NFL and FIFA Soccer codebase, year after year after year, with only minor upgrades in each version? Irony, thy name is EA…)

Gerhard Florin, the head of EA’s international distribution arm, is quoted as saying that standardizing on one single, open platform throughout the industry would be “easier” for developers. “We’re platform-agnostic and we definitely don’t want to have one platform which is a walled garden.”

His vision is of a gaming future where the gamer won’t have to care what name is stamped on the hardware — he or she can just buy a game and play it, assured that it will work the same as it does for anyone else.

It sounds good to say it, but every time the industry has attempted to standardize on one platform (as opposed to letting the market decide which platform should become the standard - hello, Atari 2600, NES, and PlayStation), the results have never been pretty. Remember the 3DO Multiplayer? It, too, was going to be exactly this sort of standard, and it was a complete and utter commercial bomb. Same deal with the Nuon, a DVD player optimized for gaming that was going to be another “console killer” in this vein.

So while Florin’s comments about a one-console future may be worth considering, history paints a different picture altogether about what happens when an artificial standard is imposed on the gaming world. Matter of fact — and keep in mind, this is just me free-associating here, not a statement of verifiable fact — it wouldn’t surprise me ‘tall if EA was already working on just such a platform, and would use its considerable clout to ram it down consumers’ throats (all it would take is a statement that the latest Madden would only be published for that hypothetical system, and no longer ported to others, for EA to basically win the war in one fell swoop). That’s how much power EA holds in the industry, campers.

Standards are a good thing. Competition that drives innovation (and lower prices for us gamers) is even better.

If you liked that, try...

1. $500 Gaming Rig Upgrade
2. 2008’s Game of the Year
3. Switching Sides - A Gamer’s Lament(?)
4. Let Penny Arcade Pick Up the Tab
5. LittleBigPlanet: 2008’s Great White Hype?

1 Comment »

1. 
   Jacob Bond
   October 20, 2007 at 5:26 pm

   So pretty much they want one console because they’re too lazy to develop for all three? Perhaps they should actually be talking to Sony or Microsoft about coming up with better ways to help developers make games for their systems.

   But apparently EA doesn’t believe in competition, either. They proved that with the NFL / 2K Games deal.

   (although this news makes me wonder if their purchase of BioWare and Pandemic might be to help ensuse development only for their own specific system, if your theory on that is true)

   [Reply]

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