Why 2013 could be the year of the microconsole

[wraggster]

The game console is a form factor that has been with us ever since Atari dreamed up the idea of a dumb machine whose sole job was to interpret game input through a controller and render the results. In one format or another, it has essentially remained that. It may have gone 3D, digital-connected, become able to play movies and recognise gestural input, but the console is still the same basic idea.Most significantly, consoles have always been heavily controlled. Publishing a console game is not the same as publishing music, a DVD or a book, where there might be some licensing or rights issues to deal with, but the power otherwise rests with the content owner. In the console sector, the platform owner takes a hand in determining what gets published and when, mandating what kind of content it wants to see and entering into complex agreements with publishers to that end.Sometimes that heavy-handedness makes sense. The research, production and distribution costs for a console are enormous, as is the effort to spread a marketing story for why customers should buy into the platform. There is also the perception that being heavy-handed on quality control leads to better games.However, control has its drawbacks. Console manufacturers have largely misunderstood the App Store, for example, even though some were in the business of selling digital games years before Apple. The idea of allowing developers to do as they please is not one that makes sense for their business, and the prospect of unrestrained development leads them to fear a loss of power.However, that makes no sense in a world where the rest of publishing is moving to digital-native, regardless of the chaos that it brings. Services such as Google Play, Steam, iTunes and Amazon have progressed far further in distributing games in ways that console makers just can’t match, and they seem out of step as a result.For a while, the traditional approach looked archaic but unsolvable. Getting games onto TV was expensive and the expectations of consumers were what they were. For better or worse, the generational cycle was needed in order to make that business work at the mass market level, because that was the only route to profit.

http://www.edge-online.com/features/why-2013-could-be-the-year-of-the-microconsole/