It started with a quote that triggered a firestorm. When asked about the development of the PlayStation 3, Sony Executive Ken Kutaragi said, “[PS3 is] for consumers to think to themselves ‘I will work more hours to buy one’. We want people to feel that they want it, irrespective of anything else.” This quote fired the opening shots in a relationship between video game creators and consumers that would grown increasingly sour over the course of the PlayStation 3’s and Xbox 360’s lifespan. Today, the quote is often translated into Sony believing people would get a second job to pay for their PlayStation 3 amidst one of the worst economic periods in recent U.S. history. Over the last generation, the tenor of video game announcements and conversations has turned into a viscous on unforgiving circle of conversation, revolving around online connectivity, price points, and hardware power. As we start a new era of console hardware, is it possible to leave these feelings behind and start fresh?
While Sony seems to have put the majority of its bad press behind it with a decent announcement in February and an applauded E3 press event, Microsoft started their generation out on the wrong foot, getting dogged by social media and enthusiast fans almost instantly. The argument over always-online connectivity started even before the Xbox One was announced, when Adam Orth tweeted a few comments that eventually led to him losing his job. Orth gave a seminar recently at GDC Next in which he addressed how to deal with being the center of negative internet attention. A lesson that Phil Fish would have found valuable earlier this year when he ended development of Fez 2 and abandoned social media. These two events are just the most recent battles in a long standing feud between the people who play games and the people who make them.
The bridge between Kutaragi and Orth is a long one that twists and turns in ways that defy architecture. In 2006, video games were in a much safer place, more in control of their own destiny. Facebook games were but a twinkle in the eye of Mark Zuckerburg, iPods had yet to evolve into their cellular dominance, phone gaming consisted of little more than Snake, and the majority of online gaming was advertisement heavy flash games. In some ways, Kutaragi’s comment was not out of place. People were going to pay for consoles because that was what video games were. However, as the mobile market has expanded, as the internet has become a mobile source of entertainment, video games have found themselves suddenly under siege.
Not only were there more ways to play games, but the second-hand market ballooned into an extremely lucrative business. While GameStop grew over the last generation, they were joined by Amazon and Best Buy as second-hand retailers. Instead of challenging consumers to not pay the advertised price for a console and its games, publishers were looking for new ways to try and bleed more money out of players with DLC, online passes, pre-order bonuses and other trivial charges. Publishers and developers began to cite piracy numbers and money lost to second-hand retailers as reasons to devise more avenues for income.
Microsoft and Sony both came under fire by players for having poor outreach to their customers. Sony faced a larger challenge with their online capabilities being called into question during the 24-day PlayStation Network outage in the spring of 2011. Microsoft built more consumer appeal with a strong independent showing during the middle years of the Xbox 360 lifespan. Games like Braid, Super Meat Boy, and Bastion powered an impressive new movement in console-gaming, one that fueled creativity and old-school mechanics. However, after a few deals went south, developers began to turn from Microsoft. Microsoft lost more momentum as first party franchises like Gears of War and Halo began to grow stale.
Further hindering the console market, was the growth of Steam. PC gaming had been at a low point during the release of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, but found resurgence as the people of Valve made Steam a service to compile and store all PC games. Not only was Steam a convenient way to manage a library, but it also paved new ways to sell games. Steam featured lowered prices due to their digital marketplace, they also boasted a summer-sale that has become a video game event. Play-while-you-download, an easy-to-use digital marketplace, and a focus on streaming content are all user-friendly features that Sony Microsoft looked to improve heading into the next generation of hardware. Both consoles began to look for new ways to keep themselves relevant, offering streaming video services and other alternative uses for consumers.
Late in the console generation, consumers began to demonstrate their faith in publishers was at an all-time low. Announcements were met with hostile fan responses, people groaned as games like Dead Space had multiplayer shoved into design, Mass Effect 3 shipper with day-one DLC, driving up their price. Halo, Call of Duty, and Battlefield came with multiple map packs that would not be released until a year after the games release, milking more money out of marquee franchises. Games began to lose their faithful fans as they moved on to other forms of entertainment or other platforms.
When Sony took the stage this February, they attempted to continue a focus on a player-friendly network that spoke to the core gamer, the exact consumer that they had sneered at in 2006. Earlier this year, Microsoft changed their unpopular policies regarding the internet and used-games to try and show a consumer-friendly face after getting out-sold by Sony early in the next-generation race. After a rocky eight years that pitted consumers and creators against each other, Sony and Microsoft have both realigned their message to appeal to players rather than demand their allegiance. What is strange about this, is that consumer appeal is the very basics of any company. The last eight years created a strange schism between the publishers and players, console games held a firm grip over interactive entertainment as things like Facebook, mobile, and PC games were either suffering decline or non-existent. The rising competition in platform has made console makers face a marketplace where they must fight to maintain relevance, and win back the consumers they dismissed less than a decade ago.
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