Console Drop

Like many of you, I have been following the big new consoles, and what they do. There have been talks of power, and speed, and amazing games throughout this blog. Obviously I happen to be a Nintendo fan, but that has never stopped me from enjoying a game on another console. I loved the first Halo, and its great story line. Every now and then I play GTA San Andreas because I miss Phoenix AZ, or Honolulu HI. I own both a Dreamcast, and a Saturn, and several Genesis games for Steam. So it gives me such a strange feeling today to say that I really don’t enjoy the newest systems at all. Not only that, I have been noticing a pretty sad pattern happening to all three big time next generation systems that needs to be talked about.

Basically put, the XBox One and Playstation 4 are awful, and have me wondering if they will even be around much longer. I have played as many of the games that I could, and have been completely underwhelmed. The graphics really aren’t that interesting, the level design is poor, and any game that does interest me can be bought on Steam. This seems to be happening because both Microsoft and Sony have been following Generation Y right up to the point where the consoles were supposed to become computers, and didn’t. At this point I feel more like rooting for a survivor than a winner.

I think at this moment the best description I can give is in this set of pictures.

This is at the Fry’s Electronics in Phoenix. I will be writing an articles about all of the videogame places I saw over that weekend soon enough. These two pictures explain everything very very well. The display units for both the XBox One and Playstation 4 are not working, and the Wii U has a small corner but is being played. The Playsation display not working has been a personal joke of mine since the PS3 came out, but now it has become a sign.

To give you an idea, here is the charts forsales for the three systems.

You will notice a drop in sales, and not a lot of recovery. At this moment you are saying that this should be natural, the sales should drop after Christmas. What you should also be seeing is that they are starting to equal out with the Wii U. The Wii U had the same thing happen to it on its release.

The top game sales show that there is almost no reason to own a new console. In fact console sales have been dropping pretty hard.

See that little yellow line at January? Thats all of the console sales that have happened this month. We are nearly over with this month, and it does not look like the sales are working anymore. Another look at game sales, and we find a giant drop. As you can see, even the game sales have not been performing at the rate they usually do. The biggest game is Grand Theft Auto 5 and it appears to be about done with its sales run. The only Next Gen systems even on the top ten are barely selling under 60,000 units. This is from a top selling franchise list, and we see major drops. The sales are not working out for any of the systems.

So what is happening? From a gamers point of view, most of the games released for the PS4 and the Xbox One have been sub standard. Of the games not released for all consoles, the PS4 has Knack, and the Xbox One has Forza. Those were the demos played, and they not only fit into my description of games released for a new console, they don’t add anything more.

I went to Gamestop because they had the only working XBOne and PS4 available, and found myself wondering what was going on. Knack is not even a beautiful game, it is built with the same design as many original Playstation games. I had way more fun playing those games though than this one. Forza handles badly, and doesn’t really feel like that much more of an improvement over other racing games. I love racing games, and found myself not caring.

This is starting to show that the Steam Console is in a very good move. The XBOne and PS4 are not backwards compatible, and do not offer any games I want that are not already on Steam. A Steambox would not only be compatible with any game I own, I could continue playing off my computer as I am doing right now.

Sony and Microsoft have been following Generation Y for a while now. If you watch the games, you can see how slowly the characters get older, and take on more responsibilities. We now have games with Father Daughter relationships. If we follow games backwards, we can see that Sony has been trying to get the millenials since the PS1. My Baby brother has basically grown up with the PS1, and was amazed recently to find out that Final Fantasy 7 had a story line. He was enjoying the simulator and toy like enjoyment of the game over the story that I was enjoying.

The attempt was to place the system next to the TV, and use it to sell other products. Eventually the Playstation would become the video hub of the house, and rule over the livingroom. Sony had an invested reason to look at it this way since they owned a computer company, a music company, a movie company, and others. To make everything work with around a Sony made device would mean incredible profits, and taking away competition as well. Although I have some problems with the numbers of PS1’s or PS2s sold, I don’t deny that they won those generations with this hub mentality.

When PS2 was announced to also be a PC, Microsoft jumped in with the Xbox. They did the exact same thing as Sony. When the XB360 came out, Microsoft supported a video format that Sony did not. This wasn’t to be contrarian, but to compete at the livingroom hub idea. This was why BluRay and HDDVD were so big between the two. The purpose was not games, but the livingroom as a whole. This much is fairly well known, what we didn’t realize was how they were using the millenials to do that.

The problem was that the Generation Y, and previous generations began to stop using the livingroom as much. The Disruptive power of the iPod, and then iPhone destroyed the need for a livingroom setting to watch a movie, or look up stats. Even worse, Netflix and other websites began to pop up and allow video streaming, which neither Sony nor Microsoft could really control. Smaller devices like Roku came in, and took away the need for an expensive DVD/BluRay/VHS player. Instead, it was so cheap that neither giant like Sony or Microsoft could compete. Netflix, Hulu, and others are now on the 360 and PS3.

Far worse, the core gameplayer was not the majority of Generation Y. If you look at the picture above, you can see two sets of sales for GTA5. One for 360, and one for PS3, which adds up to 30 million users. At 30 million, we have a good passionate number of players, but no where near the 96 million people born between 1983 and 2003. The majority of kids growing up with those games fell away for one reason or another. They enjoyed games, as proved by the Wii, and some facebook games, but they were not going to buy the new version of every game every year.

To try to make money, both game making companies, and the PS360 console companies began to promote themselves to the 30 million users. So far, it worked so well, that the sales of PS4 and XBone have not been very much, and do not look to rise.

Even worse, the idea of backward compatibility for the XBOne and PS4 seem to be netflix like accounts where you never really own the game. This has been tried on PC before, with a great little group called Game Tap. The fact that you don’t know about Game Tap should be evidence to you how well it works. Steam allows me to play all 300 games on whatever PC I have, and even allows me to hook my laptop up to a HD TV. Many of the games on display for the PS4 or the XBOne are also available for Steam, and in fact will likely be bought that way.

We saw the same thing with the Wii U. It had fairly nice games -way better than Knack is for certain- but nothing that really sold the system. The demo units for some odd reason did not have Nintendoland, which was designed specifically to show off the Wii U. After a while it became sad to even visit Best Buy, and see that they still didn’t have cool games to show off.

As of this moment, Console gaming seems to be dropping. The battle for the best system sales is going to become a battle for survival. As Sony loses money, and Microsoft continues to fail at catching interest, the purpose of the central hub is leaving. The attempt to bring in the Generation Y crowd worked at first, but has not gained the traction desired. Sales continue to drop, and the serious question is who will drop first?

When I went to the Fry’s Electronics in Phoenix, I saw two dead demo units. It reminded me of how bad the Wii U stood at the same time the year before. There was a point where the Wii U sold all of 5,000 units in a single week. Nintendo has had to report a third year of losses this January. However, they were able to fix their ship, and get the failing 3DS to rise back up. While playing the demos on the one working demo unit, I enjoyed the games. They were not perfect, but they were fun. The Wii U had survived, and felt like it was getting out of a bad slump. The big question is, will Sony or Microsoft do the same? Will this slow rise back out of the ashes save the Wii U, or will it only survive to the next fight? Right now though, I can not recommend buying the PS4 or the XBOne.