This time it's war. Since 2001, when Xbox and GameCube entered the fray to compete with the PlayStation 2, the Big Three home-console developers—Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo—have been butting heads, but the new console generation means an all-out battle. And Microsoft, that great assimilator of corporations, fired the first shot.
On May 12, Microsoft unveiled its latest gaming monstrosity to an audience of MTV viewers. By year's end, the Xbox 360 will be the first console to usher in a new era of interactive entertainment. It's all part of Microsoft's long-running, diabolical scheme to achieve total dominance in home-gaming. With respect to PlayStation lovers everywhere (and they are everywhere), the original Xbox is far and away the most impressive game system of the current generation. Its 8-gigabyte hard drive makes its games run faster, smoother and prettier than anything on PlayStation 2. It also makes the console far more costly to manufacture, and yet the Xbox has been able to continually match the PS2's price. That's because every time Bill Gates sells an Xbox, he loses money. But don't worry about him; he's saved enough cash for a few thousand lifetimes of rainy days, plus he never intended his first console to make a profit. Thanks to insanely popular Xbox exclusives like Halo, Fable, Knights of the Old Republic and Halo 2, Microsoft has scored legions of fans who will fork over cash for whatever game system carries those franchises. That's where the Xbox 360 comes in.
"Our team has put in passion and commitment to build the most powerful game platform in history," says Xbox executive vice president J Allard. That must have Sony worried. After all, according to Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony Computer Entertainment, the PlayStation 3 is only going to be "the most powerful game console ever created." But wait a second, they can't both be right. And what does Nintendo have to say about all this? To set the record straight, here is the first major information on the next-gen platforms, straight from E3, the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo in LA, the front lines of the console wars.
E3 is the world's biggest gathering of the $10 billion-a-year video- game industry (that's a higher revenue than Hollywood), with 70,000 industry folks 5,000 products and 400 exhibitors, and of course, untold numbers of drooling fans getting early glimpses of what the future holds.
"In the next generation, a billion people will play our games," says Allard. That seems to be the driving principle behind Microsoft's attack plan. The Xbox 360 pushes the idea of creating an online community that will appeal to a mass audience. "To encourage this," says Allard, "every Xbox 360 will come with a free service of Xbox Live straight out of the box." The free, or silver, service will let gamers create an online profile that includes a name, experience rating and indication of whether you play well with others, which will help players weed out the jerks who frag their own teammates in Halo multiplayer.
To illustrate the 360's broader appeal, Microsoft created three fictional profiles: Stryker, a hard-core gamer; BeatBuilder, a casual gamer; and VelocityGirl, a non-gamer. Stryker will be able to play death matches with the best of the best, BeatBuilder will be able to compete in a tamer arena, and VelocityGirl can simply chat online or even design death-match courses to sell via Xbox Live to Stryker and BeatBuilder. But while the idea of having something for everyone in an online community is fascinating, it remains to be seen whether someone like VelocityGirl, with no interest in playing games, is going to dish out hundreds of dollars for a console, let alone be able to design a multiplayer map that would be the least bit interesting to Stryker or even BeatBuilder.
Regardless, the depth of VelocityGirl's pockets or interest, the 360's success will primarily depend on how it impresses the Strykers of the world—and graphically, the 360 is a mixed bag. While some of the pre-rendered cut-scenes are gorgeous nearly to the point of photo-realism, most of the in-game graphics are only marginally better than what the current Xbox can do. In fact, many of the 360 games showcased were originally intended to be standard Xbox releases. The long-awaited sci-fi shooter, Perfect Dark Zero, made such a disappointing appearance on MTV that it was noticeably absent at E3. Kameo: Elements of Power was impressive only in how many enemies it could have on screen without a loss in frame rate. But gamers expect more than smoother frame rates from a next-gen console. They want the kind of amazement that came when consoles jumped from 16-bit to 3D. Microsoft's determination to get the 360 out long before its competition may cost the console its title of technical powerhouse. Many are already likening it to the Sega Dreamcast, which also had a white case, was early in release and eventually was killed by the mere rumor of what Sony's next-gen console could do. So, what can Sony's next-gen console do?
"Empowered by the cell processor with super-computer-like performance, a new age of PlayStation 3 is about to begin. Together with content creators from all over the world, Sony will accelerate the arrival of a new era in computer entertainment," Kutaragi announces at the Sony press conference. The first half-hour of the event is more of the same: a technical, jargon-heavy lecture about what Ps3's cell technology makes possible. Then, moments before the world's gaming media lapses into a collective coma, Luna appears on a giant screen.
Luna, a creation of Ps3's cell processor, is a highly expressive, near photo-realistic Asian woman floating in space who can be manipulated in real time. "Luna looks good enough to fall in love with," Kutaragi says in a disturbingly candid way. Light reflects off of her skintight body suit in an eerily realistic way and her motions are just as lifelike. And this is just the frost on the tip of the revolutionary iceberg. What follows is a demonstration of Unreal Tournament that appears as the most highly polished action-sequence cut-scene ever. But it isn't a cut-scene at all—it's actual game play. The two combatants are then frozen in space as the camera swirls around them and the bits of flame from their firearms are similarly held in suspended animation.
The cell processor can manifest photo-realistic figures that can be maneuvered through authentic-looking backgrounds in real time. Picture little Nemo in Finding Nemo swimming up to his father with a look of defiance. Now imagine it didn't take Pixar's best animators hundreds of hours to render the shot, but instead only required a flick of the thumb stick and a quick tap on the X button. Does it sound too good to be true? It might be.
Sony's demonstration is by far the most impressive, and this sort of technological advance is exactly what will satiate those of us longing for the kind of leap that took us from the side-scrolling Super Nintendo to the 3D Nintendo 64. But is it really possible? Sony insists the Ps3 will be capable of the incredible graphics seen in the demos for the new KillZone and Fight Night. But will game publishers be able to deliver those visuals on a tight time line at an affordable cost? Sony doesn't have any playable demos to demonstrate the magic of its wondrous hardware, and I have to question if this is all just a marketing scheme to steal thunder from the 360's early launch.
It wouldn't be the first time game manufacturers have played dirty. Even the timing of the press conferences seems like carefully premeditated battle tactics. The Sony conference starts late and runs long, cutting into the Microsoft conference later that night. The Microsoft conference is then followed by a late-night party, with the Nintendo conference starting early the next morning. Coincidence? I don't think so.
Speaking of Nintendo, with the industry overwhelmingly under the control of mega-corporations like Sony and Microsoft, it has become the little engine that could. "Two billion games. That's the number of games Nintendo has sold since we entered this business 20 years ago. Some people might call that a great run. I'm here today to tell you we call it a great beginning," says Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo's executive vice president of sales and marketing.
Nintendo's offering to the present console generation, the GameCube, has always been the cheapest, but quality still managed to shine through. The GameCube, despite looking like a purple lunch box, frequently outperforms the PS2. Again, apologies to Sony fans, but when this year's best game, Resident Evil 4, is released on the PS2 later this year, it won't look nearly as good as the GameCube version. Still, Nintendo's console sales have slipped into third place, and were it not for Nintendo's cash cow, the GameBoy Advance, the company would be working for Sony. And with Sony's PSP a worthy challenger to Nintendo's handheld monopoly, the little engine that could needs a next-gen console powered by another little engine that could.
But it's uncertain if Nintendo's offering measures up. Though the Nintendo Revolution is unveiled here, there are no demos, playable or otherwise, to showcase the hardware's power. Nintendo seems generally unprepared to issue a retort to the 360 the way Sony did. Even the console's look is subject to change. "The final design will be about the size of three DVD cases stacked," says Nintendo President Satoru Iwata, holding aloft a mock-up for photographers. Conspicuously absent is the console's controller, which knowing Nintendo's quirkiness, could be a veritable Swiss Army knife, containing various touchscreens, microphones and bongos.
Revolution's greatest revelation is its backwards compatibility, which gives it an immediate library of 20 years worth of gaming history available for download. And yes, Nintendo realizes it missed the boat with online play and intends to catch up with the Revolution. But when the full brute strength of the console is revealed, chances are it won't measure up to its adversaries. However, one of the most interesting details about the new console is that it requires a peripheral device to play DVDs. While this initially seems like a negative attribute, since it's a forgone conclusion that the 360 and PS3 will play DVDs (the PS2 always has), it does suggest the Revolution will be a streamlined device that will be far cheaper than its multimedia competitors.
So which is the best? Time will tell. At this point, it's all smoke and mirrors. Different consoles will appeal to different gamers for different reasons. And as always, whatever the technical strength of the platform, it's the software that truly dictates the appeal. And with new Zelda, Burnout and Ratchet and Clank titles coming out, there's still plenty of quality to eke out of the current generation.