Sunday, December 11, 2005

Convergence: A great word to hate

We are entering the mythical land of game consoles as convergence devices. The Xbox 360 can play music, movies and games. So can the PS3. So can the PSP and it even has a web browser. Nintendo might toss in a bit of DVD playback into the Revolution for a chuckle or two. The dream of big media conglomerates and technologists seems to finally be coming to fruition. Just imagine: a single box that does everything. What could be better?

Yet most attempts at forcing convergence of disparate devices fails. A few geeks buy into the hype, but consumers tend to ignore mutants like PSX and other technological monstrosities.

What drives the big console manufacturers to create convergence devices if they have such poor historical track records? Technological hubris is of course always a player, but there are certainly deeper issues worth exploring.

Mind you, convergence is a messy marketing term that is going to need a bit of structure in order to discuss in a meaningful fashion. Let’s look at the two key strategies that are often described as ‘convergence’ and pick them apart to see why they are attractive to those shiny boys in sharp suits.
  • Convergence as a product design strategy
  • Convergence as a platform strategy.



Why convergence as a product design strategy sucks
I’m not a fan of convergence devices that promise to do everything. They tend to under perform in the market due to a variety of factors. There a several great articles wandering about the net covering this topic in more detail, but here are the four basic reason the sink these brilliant technological marvels.

Issue #1: Confusing benefit statement
Instead of a single clear benefit statement, consumers are bombarded with a dozen half-baked benefit statements. You need to be able to sum up your entire value proposition in a short sentence.

Look at the PSP’s promise to the customer “Experience entertainment without boundaries.” That, my fine lady friends, is vague and meaningless marketing speak that fails to describe any sort of concrete benefit. Check out the value statements of some successful non-convergence products:
  • iPod: 5000 songs in your pocket.
  • Google: Find anything on the web easily and quickly.
  • Nintendogs: Own a cute dog (even if you can’t own a real one)
  • Gmail: Friendly webmail that never forces you to delete your messages.
  • Tivo: TV without the crap. (Admittedly, Tivo’s biggest problem is that they aren’t allowed to promote this as a value proposition without irritating the advertisers)

Issue #2: Compromised solution that competes poorly against single purpose solutions:
Look at the classic VCR TV. You end up with a crappy TV and a crappy VCR glued together by a weakened user interface. Many consumers would rather buy a quality TV that gives them those warm post-purchase fuzzies. The quality of the individual buying experience matters.

The complexity that attends convergence is typically the kiss of death. A poll the Consumer Electronics Association found 87% said ease of use is the most important feature for users when they are purchasing new technologies.

Issue #3: Higher cost of entry
A multi-function device forces you to buy a bundle. What if a VCR TV costs $300 and you only have $200? By increasing the entry point, you limit your audience. Often consumers will buy the cheaper single component and then save up to get the secondary or tertiary elements of the bundle.

Issue #4: Single point of failure
When one piece fails, the whole thing fails. The perceived risk of system failure is much higher for multi-function devices. This is quoted as a typical issue, but it sounds a bit academic relative to how consumers typically purchase.

The failed logic of convergence focused product design
The traditional product design logic of a company focused on convergence is deeply flawed.
  • Both product A and Product B are valuable to consumers.
  • If we combine product A and Product B into a combined Product C, we will end up with a product that is twice as valuable to consumers.
  • Other companies aren’t selling converged devices so our super product will have a unique competitive advantage that will help us dominate the market.
Customer value however is not an additive property in consumer products. For all the reasons listed above, a converged product will often have dramatically less value than its individual parts.

A company strategy based on convergence is often that of the lazy corporate strategist who attempts to avoid the radical cultural shifts required by real innovation by playing a childish game of mixing and matching existing product lines.

Product successes are not based on convergence
I can only assume the myth of convergence as a product strategy came about when someone saw the occasional success of a convergence device and mistakenly assumed that the chimeric nature of the device was indeed the source of the product’s sales mojo. Let’s look at a couple convergence devices and dissect the real reason why they were successful.

The classic one is the “clock radio” combo. Though this is certainly a ‘convergence device’, the ultimate driver of adoption was a simple, easily articulated use case: “Wake up to music.” Customer benefit drives adoption.

I find camera phones to be another interesting example of customer benefit being the real driver of adoption, not convergence. At first glance the combination of cameras and phones seems to validate the logic of convergence. Cameras are successful and cell phones are successful. And what do you know; camera phones are successful as well!

Yet something curious occurs here. The marketing people at phone companies are running around frantically trying to come up with ‘convergence’ products and services that take advantage of this obvious ‘camera-cell phone synergy’. This task ends up being really quite difficult. Why? Because the benefit of having a camera phone has very little to do with synergy.

The reality is that the benefit of a camera phone is really quite simple: “Always having a camera with you helps you take better pictures.” Any professional photographer will tell you that the real trick to taking great photos is having a camera with you when the right moment occurs. By stashing a camera in an item that is on your body 99% of the time, you increase the value of the camera.

By this argument, if the technologists had managed to figure out how to pack a camera into a standard keychain (and people were constantly encouraged to upgrade their keychains), the “camera keychain” would have been nearly as successful. The customer value is what matters. The fact that the value takes place in a convergence device is mostly random happenstance.

What I’m harping on here is that most ‘convergence devices’ are in reality just a combination of technologies that happen to tap into a concisely defined customer need. Rarely does someone use a radio-alarm clock as a main clock. Nor do they use it as their main method of listening to music. Instead, they use it for a narrow, highly specialized purpose that has a very strong value proposition.

So focusing on “convergence” in consumer products is a silly, meaningless product innovation strategy. What you should be focusing on is serving a customer need. Sometimes that involves slapping two mature technologies together, but more often it involves traditional product design techniques that attempt to solve unrealized customer requirements.

As a game designer, the obvious lesson is that you shouldn’t expect to create a RTS-FPS-RPG that is an overwhelming success in the market place. But we have bigger fish to fry today. If convergence is a poor product design strategy why do console manufacturers insist on designing consoles that promote convergence?

The other face of convergence: Platform creation
The other face of convergence is when a company attempts to create a technology platform that serves as the foundation of a wide array of successful products.

The logic here is straight forward.

  • Create a technology base that allows product companies to make innovative products.
  • Product companies will focus on filling the needs of real customers with great, easy to use products.
  • Customers will buy the well design products and in the process the platform will come along for the ride.
  • Ultimately, network effects will start to make their effects felt and it becomes silly for anyone to develop products without the help of the underlying platform.
You provide technology so that someone can create a Grand Theft Auto and then when everyone wants GTA, you happen to sell them a large number of PS/2s in the process.

Platforms are about potential, not about results
Platform creation is often mislabeled as convergence by the ignorant press and the marketing lackeys that goad them onward.

It is in the platform provider’s interest to claim that they do everything under the sun. They have no idea what the killer application will be for the platform, but the last thing they wish to do is define the platform too rigorously and turn off potential developers.

We are entering into a turbulent time in media. The traditional console game industry is stumbling and future growth is coming from poorly defined markets like cell phones, online games and casual games. Pundits are describing an all digital future where media is downloaded on demand. Digital music and movies are driving the creation of radical peer to peer distribution system outside of the control of traditional channel owners.

In short, if you are a large company such as Sony or Microsoft, you can’t afford a narrow focus. If you focus on a few carefully chosen product benefits and fail to pick correctly, you’ve put the entire platform at risk. What happens if you don’t include great movie playback features and in the next few years someone comes out with an amazingly popular movie distribution system that doesn’t run on your platform? Billions of dollars of potential revenue are lost.

When platform strategy meets product design reality
This thinking puts Sony and Microsoft in an interesting position. They release products that hedge their bets and promise to do everything. All the standard convergence flaws apply.

  • The new consoles have confusing benefit statements. Is the PS3 a game playing device? Sony isn’t saying.
  • Convoluted UI’s. The classic consumer devices of the world have two or three buttons that a grandmother could use. To really tap into a PSPs capabilities, you need to be an uber geek. Downloading a special program to download movies onto your PSP using you PC is not a strong value proposition. Where is my ‘download music’ button?
  • The new consoles are overly expensive. Do you really need Blue-ray or HD capabilities? Most people don’t, but you end up paying for those technologies now because they need to be part of the bundled ubiquitous platform capabilities.
From a product design stand point, all this is very silly. From a platform design standpoint it is essential. When some of those extra features are used by a killer product that plays on the platform, the platform can explode into the market. Your risk is greatly reduced because by building a platform, you have hundreds of smart companies trying to create a killer product for you. You don’t need to rely on your own (often questionable) product design capabilities.

Sony makes a bet that a GTA will come along and use the streaming capabilities of their DVD player to create a must have game experience. Microsoft makes the bet that a Halo will come along and use the Xbox Live capabilities to create a must have experiance. They don’t know what the ultimate hit product will be, but they pack enough attractive goodies into their offering that someone, somewhere will build a success using their platform.

Do platform companies innovate?
There is a big difference between the culture of a product company and a platform company. At the most basic level, the DNA of how they think, react and value products and innovation diverge.

Innovation is almost always about creating a small set of easy to use functionality that serves an underserved customer need. The initial results are unpolished and compare badly to established products. However, because they have little competition in their niche, they thrive and grow at a rate far better than the main industry.

Platform companies are horrible at creating new products that target customer needs. They are always looking for someone else to make the hard customer-centric decisions for them. Trimming features is agonizingly difficult since there is always the little voice in the back of their head saying “But this could be useful in the future.” The result is bloated product offerings that do everything for everybody.

The closest a platform company comes to innovating is when they spot a product category that is critical to the adoption of their platform. Superior resources will be spent in order to own that product category and ensure that its predominant home is the company’s platform.

For Microsoft’s original Xbox this product category was the FPS genre. They invested heavily in making Halo the predominant FPS title on any platform. Halo was certainly a good game, but the combined marketing and hype that Microsoft lavished up on it was critical to its ultimate success and recognition as a major brand. They spent this money because they realized that owning the product category would strongly drive the adoption of the overall Xbox platform.

Since they own the dominant brand in this product category, it is doubtful that they’ll lose it to another platform. Nintendo made this mistake with Final Fantasy. Instead of creating their own RPG offering that dominated the RPG genre, they relied on Square. Ultimately the relationship faltered and Square took Final Fantasy over to the Playstation. The N64 platform suffered a major blow. A product category leader moved to a different platform and took their customer base with them. The lesson for a platform company is the importance of owning your product category leaders.

As we’ll see, this mistake was not an isolated incident, but instead was a classic result of Nintendo’s product focused philosophy.

Why do product companies remain small?
Product companies are great at innovating, but often poor at building up platform-style network effects.

Nintendo is quite happy to make hard choices and try to understand customer needs. Last generation, they made the choice that online services didn’t bring enough value to their customers. This generation they are rolling out a service that has only a few features (what, no match making?!), but serves the true needs of their customer base far better than any current solution. The claim of twice the percentage of gamers playing Mario Kart compared to Xbox Live is a strong one.

Again, we see the philosophy of choosing simple products that serve clear needs and leap into the market with impressive success.

The downside is that product design is a heavily centralized activity. If you look at three very different product innovation companies, Nintendo, Apple and 3M, the vast bulk of their innovative products are designed internally. The culture and processes required to make great customer-focused product decision are highly refined and quite delicate. The fundamental activity of cutting the junk and keeping the good stuff can be easily sidelined by ever a few doubter or hedgers. You literally need to build your entire company around the product design process.

This product design process is not easily transferable to external firms. You can’t easily imbue a 3rd party developer with the design processes that Miyamoto and crew have built up over the past decades. You can’t easily replicate Steve Jobs’ eye for design. In fact, there is limited strategy focus in most companies. The more you are a product company, the less energy is put into being a platform company and vice versa.

Instead of hundreds of developers innovating on your platform, you have one. That one company is generally a highly profitable powerhouse, but its output often will rarely compare to the shear bulk of people putting out content for a broader platform. The result is that massive platform momentum is hard to generate

A tricky balancing problem
All of this creates a complex set of difficult-to-balance requirements.

  • A new console must be marketed to consumers with a clear value proposition at time when there is very little value and lots of potential.
  • If you increase the potential of your device, you make it more expensive by bloating it with extra features.
  • If you increase the out of the box value of the device, you limit the breadth of the platform’s capabilities and tend to focus on first party innovation at the expense of 3rd party development.
A snapshot of the console manufacturers
Using some of these thoughts we can come up with a snapshot of each of the console manufacturers.

  • Microsoft is a pure platform company that dabbles in product design only as a method of ensuring the dominance of their platform. Innovation is secondary to creating a rich and full featured platform. This ties heavily into the culture and history of the company.
  • Sony historically has been a strong consumer product design company. In the past 10 years, they’ve caught the platform bug and are still figuring out how to deal with it. The success of Playstation literally saved a company that was hemorrhaging money from a stalled electronics business. The shock to Sony’s DNA is that it succeeded as a platform offering, not a product offering. With the Playstation 3, they are embracing the platform strategy fully. The question is whether or not they have the skills and the internal culture to pull it off. They certainly have the brand.
  • Nintendo is a strong product company that dabbles in platform development to the degree necessary to make their products succeed in the marketplace. It is quite likely that their individual products will be surprisingly successful in the next round, yet overall market penetration will still be dragged down by a basic lack of platform momentum.
Conclusion
And so end my meandering thoughts on the topic of convergence. The important takeaways:
  • A product design strategy relies on a focused product targeted at a strong user need.
  • A platform strategy relies on creating a broad and flexible foundation that accelerates the development of successful products. Where products are about fulfillment of needs, platforms are always about potential.
  • The cultural DNA required to pursue each strategy is very different. Product design involves making hard choices for the customer. Platform design involves throwing in the kitchen sink for the developer.
  • Product design requires a strong centralized system of decision making. This creates amazing successes, but limits the scalability of the platform.
  • A platform focus creates a business model that scales impressively based off the contribution of numerous 3rd party developers. The real trick is getting it off the ground in the first place since the initial value proposition is mere fluff without products to back it up.
So when you heard Microsoft and Sony marketoids blathering on about super technology and cool things you can do with the convergence of all media, you are right to dismiss it as hot air. They are simply filling time until a developer creates a great product that uses their platform.

At that point, their tune will change. Suddenly the message will be all about the newly minted product successes. It is the same pattern that occurred with GTA, Halo and Final Fantasy. They will then use the success of the golden child to drive further adoption of their platform. In turn, their platform success will encourage more developers to take risks and build great new products. Over time, if enough killer products come out, the platform will snowball and gain momentum.

Nintendo, on the other hand, will come out of the gate with a concisely defined product offering that a target audience will love. The most successful teams will be internal Nintendo development teams and closely held 2nd parties who are well indoctrinated in the process of creating unique solutions around specialized hardware and software.

There are certainly many unknowns. Nintendo could realize their product design bias and beef up their 3rd party support structure to counter the weakness inherent in their cultural predisposition. Sony could rediscover its product design background and launch with strong games tailored to the strengths of their target platform, thus avoiding the early lull that hits most platform focused products.

We can’t predict the future, but at least we’ll have a reasonable vocabulary to discussing what happens.

Take care
Danc.

References


26 comments:

  1. What I don't like about convergence, besides that this devices most times are not as good as two single solutions, is that, if you don't need one device anymore, you loose the second also.

    When the Voodoo3 graphics card with tv tuner came out, I thought about buying it, but I did not, for the same reason I did never buy a Ati All in Wonder. I buy a new graphic card every two years, if I would have bought one with a TV Tuner I would have also lost the tuner after 2 years. Thats why I bought a seperate tv card once and use it since many years. I think this argument is also very true for the PSX.

    And as far as DVD Players are concerned, a PS2 and Xbox for example can play dvds but not audio dvds not svcds not mp3 cds so they have not realy been a full replace for a stand alone dvd player.

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  2. Batteries!

    That's what I hate about convergence.
    If I have a mobile phone/MP3 player and I overdo listening to music . . . oops! No more phone calls.

    This can be generalised as convergent products competing for the same resources in my opinion.

    What if I want to play a game while my girlfriend wants to watch a DVD, if all I have for both functions is an Xbox? Hmm.

    I bought a DVD player for my car last week (an upgrade from an MP3/CD player). Great! It plays DVDs, CDs, VCDs, MP3 CDs, MP3 DVDs . . .

    The driving reasons to upgrade were so my GF can watch movies on long drives, and so we can fit 4.7Gb of music onto one disk rather than 650Mb. Nice.

    Except, the interface relies STRONGLY on being able to see the LCD screen, which I can't look at while driving. It's nearly impossible to select the folder you want from the remote without looking at the screen (though you can flick through tracks in the current folder easily enough). You have to stop the music, press left, select the folder with up/down, press enter to start playing. Woops, wrong folder? Do it all again.

    Conversely, my old MP3/CD player had a great interface. Volume up/down, track up/down, folder up/down. Done. Easy to switch folders, easy to find your songs. Can't play DVDs though.

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  3. I think that Nintendo isn't entirely product-oriented this time around. They're marketing the Revolution (to developers) as a machine that can do anything, to try to get some third parties on board. It seems to be working, given all the stories in the gaming press you hear about how third-party developers are impresesd.

    It's almost as if they're trying to concurrently design their marketing campaign - it's a product and a platform! In one box!

    Wrap your mind around that.

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  4. Excuse me, I mistyped. I meant "It's almost as if they're trying to convergently design their marketing campaign...." (emphasis mine)

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  5. Out of interest are there any books on Product Design that you would rate as a good read for game designers?

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  6. The reason the consoles are become convergence devices is simple. It's because it worked for the PS2 which is the #1 console.

    The timing of the PS2 release relative to the where the DVD market was at the time was flawless. DVDs were at the point where they had been accepted as the VHS replacement, but not enough people had players yet. People in the market for DVD players saw the PS2 not costing much more than a DVD player. Buying a PS2 instead of a DVD player was a no brainer, especially if you had a PS1 already.

    If you look at the new consoles, 360 in particular, there aren't so many amazing release games. In fact, there really isn't that much reason to buy one. That's part of what hurt the Cube is that it had no amazing release games until Smash Bros. came out weeks later. There was no reason to buy one because it couldn't do anything. Even if you buy no games the Xbox 360 can do something if you buy it. In fact, it appears that the small downloadable games are more popular than the expensive purchased games.

    So, because the PS2 rocked the house by also being a DVD player both the PS3 and the Xbox 360 are trying the same thing again by being PVRs and such. The difference is that the timing is not as perfect as the PS2 was. But I assure you the success or failure of the PS3 will match that of blu-ray.

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  7. apreche I agree with what you say. But not with your last sentence. Before DVD came out I only heard positiv things about it. But I know no one who is looking forward to BlueRay. The 50gb does not seem to be so necessary and is the only plus. The other things that I read are all this HDCP/HDMI copyright things, that will restrict the user. And that the industry says BR-Players will be expansive because the customer has to pay all the research for the DRM that he does not even want ;) And then, there are this evil ideas of PS3 games locked to a single hardware so you can't sell them anymore.

    I am an early adopter and a lot of my friends are early adopters. We got DVD drives for our pc years before it became mass market. But with BR we are not sure if it will be worth to buy it or better to just stay with DVDs. And if even technical interested early adopters are not excited who else will be?

    But playstation is a strong brand and the PS3 will have a lot of good games. I can imagine that the Playstation3 itself and the games are a success but BluRay will fail.

    Mario

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  8. I agree with Mark - the way the Revolution controller has been presented certainly seems to me to be a 'platform' according to your definition. Similarly with the DS, the emphasis has been "there are a lot of options here and we aren't going to try and define what options are best right now, we want everyone in the design community to figure it out together".

    Great read, fascinating perspective as usual, thanks.

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  9. I don't know of any product design books that are specifically applicable to game design, but there are some that contain concepts that can be applied if you twist your brain enough. Any time you synthesize two disciplines (or more...I'm heavily influenced by agile programming methodologies and entrepreneurship studies), it is a bit of a liberal arts endeavor. Get the concepts into your head, let them mix around a bit and come up with a unified theory of everything. :-)

    One of my favorite books is the wonderfully unreadable, but highly educational "Winning at New Products" by Robert G. Cooper. It's a bit of a process, marketing, product launch primer with some good fundamentals supported by statistics.

    take care
    Danc.

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  10. Aye, the DS certainly seems to be taking a bit more of a platform perspective.

    There was still a system making first party game. Often Nintendo designs its hardware around the needs of a particular launch title. I'm curious if this was the case with the DS. It may appear like a random collection of features, yet it happens to map onto early Nintendo offerings quite nicely. I'd like to imagine that Nintendogs came afterwards and is the result of superior game design processes, but I'm not sure if we'll ever know. It would be a sign that Nintendo is taking the platform aspects more seriously.

    What is interesting here is that every company needs to look at the launch of their console as both a product and a platform. Even Nintendo with its historically heavy emphasis on 1st party titles knows that it needs to get 3rd parties on board to build momemtum. Even Sony and Microsoft know that on those first days they are have to sell the benefits of the box to some users. Non-existent future games only appeals to a rarified segment of this market. :-)

    The question always ends up being the balance between these two somewhat competing notions. The fact that there is a strong culture associated with both philosophies often makes these decisions driven as much by world view as it does by logical business strategy.

    take care
    Danc.

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  11. For a great discussion on why convergent devices themselves often fail, there's a great old Ernest Adams article here.

    For instance: "The primary requirement of a PDA is that you be able to hold it in one hand and write on it with another...A phone, on the other hand, exists to serve the ear. Its primary requirement is that you be able to hold it up to your ear and talk to it, without nearby people being able to hear what the other side is saying...A PDA makes an awkward, barely acceptable phone."

    The issues danc brings up exist for a good reason: the functions these devices try to combine often aren't really compatible. But often, they seem superficially similar and are lumped together because of that.

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  12. It takes a serious enthusiast to shell out $300+ on home entertainment (even if it is an all-in-one device). Spin it as much as you'd like; the public still views the XBox brand as a game system first, and it will view the 360 likewise.

    If Microsoft believes the future is built on attracting casual gamers... are these not the very people who would balk at paying serious cash for a console, no matter what else it did? I still don't see Microsoft's strategy here.

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  13. The perfect product/software/thing does what it is supposed to do and the beauty in it is when is just doesn't anything else.

    I like to buy components for my HiFi because I know what I want but I need convergence as an interface ("standards for connecting components") to make things work.

    Great article and I will recommend it to everyone who's interested in a good read.

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  14. I disagree somewhat about the cell phone/camera convergence. I think the addition of a distribution platform (the phone) added to the utility of the camera. People talk on the phone (i.e. send audio data) so being able to send a photo reinforced the phone's function pretty well.

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  15. In the post you talk a lot about innovation and I was thinking that you would be interested in this site:

    http://www.igf.com/

    It is the Independent Games Festival website. The latest coverage is of the prizes awarded to games based upon certain aspects that include innovation in game design, innovation in visual art, and innovation in audio.

    I've played a couple of the games in said categories and I am impressed by the things I have seen. Being a game developer I think you would share my appreciation for them.

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  16. Excellent article.
    The product vs. platform comparison makes alot of sense. I always had this vague understanding of the difference between the nintendo strategy and the MS/Sony strategy but it was really nice to have it so eloquently worded in your piece.

    I swear, your articles are just what a brain needs to wash away all the useless banter one comes across on gaming/media sites these days.

    Thanks again

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  17. (just a quick comment before I actually read the entry, you might want to put the page cut earlier, the entry is engulfing the main page ;D)

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  18. Woops, a Firefox only issue. I must have a misplaced HTML tag somewhere in the mix.

    I'm curious when people will get their act together and support a common browser standard.

    take care
    Danc.

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  19. I think the problem with a discussion article like this Dan, is that there are a lot of inter-related aspects that large companies are interested in.

    The fact that the platform isnt exactly the best box for whatever function is likely secondary to the fact that they see that thier market (the consumers home) is being touched by a competitor and that in order to own that space, they must have products competing in that space.

    So fundamentally, Microsoft got into games because games own our entertainment time. Similarly they see the prosperity of Sony via the PS1 and they consider the profits to be made and the movement of Sony into Microsoft's potential marketplace.

    I agree that as a product, these things are generally inferior to specifically designed artifacts. I also agree the value and positioning is compromised because of that.

    But the meta-market effect of them not being in the position to deliver a product to meet the competition would be a worse move.

    They are all basically just trying to replace the PC as the home entertainment device after all.

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  20. Hey Danc, this is a boring topic... Stop cuddling with Aya and entertain me!

    --Ray

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  21. Hi Danc,

    One commenter pointed out that PC is the most accessible platform for indie developers. I'd like to hear what you think about a console (portable or not) that could cater to indie developers. Is it just plainly impossible for a platform focused company to succeed in the console market without charging exorbitant fees for licensing and increasing their apparent platform value by only allowing 'established' developers?

    Just an indie game designer dreaming of a closed platform to develop towards. ;)

    Highest Regards,
    -Harold

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  22. Aye, console manufacturers have shown the benefits of a managed platform over an open platform owned and promoted by no one. The PC market is wonderfully open and gets many of coolest innovations first. Several critical new game segments were seeded first on the PC: Downloadable games, casual games, and online games.

    What PC games lack is any sort of coordinated marketing strategy. A larger console manufacturer, due to the centralized power inherent in the business model, has impressive abilities to define the platform to the customer and promote key products. With the N64, Nintendo could say "Buy an N64 because of Super Mario 64"

    With PC, there is no central spokesperson. It is literally a device for everyone by everyone. A true convergence device promoted piecemeal. What PC gaming lacks is the lightning rod...someone who launches the marketing campaign that says "This is why you need to game on a PC." The clarity of product positioning and promotion doesn't exist and when you combine that with a more difficult to use product, it is really no wonder that PC retail sales are posting lower numbers than ever before.

    I'm intrigued by Xbox Arcade. It isn't completely open, but it is a step closer to providing indies with a strong distribution platform.

    Ultimately there has to be a business rational. If someone creates and promotes an open platform, what do they get out of it?

    take care
    Danc.

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  23. Warm fuzzies?

    Oh. That's not a business rational?

    They could maybe do some sort of profit sharing. That way the cost of developing to the platform would be proportional to the size/skills/selling power of your development team.

    There could also be licensing restrictions on the hardware. If the platform is truly open, and every piece of kit is a dev kit, buying it for 'playback only' could be less expensive (i.e. in the current range of other consoles) and buying it for development could be more expensive. But not prohibitively so, I'm imagining in the range of a current monster PC setup. $2k-ish.

    Now that I type that out that's probably what already goes on, except obviously the non-dev kit is locked with something harder than a EULA.

    Warm fuzzies it is then. ;)

    Talk to you soon,
    -Harold

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  24. Your argument re: mobile devices is laughably wrong. There are a lot of things people ("users") would like to be able to do whenever and wherever they are: email, IM, watch TV, take photos and videos, play games, listen to music, converse, etc. There are only so many physical gizmos they can carry on their persons conveniently. Hence, all those functions will converge into one device. You can call it a phone or a PDA or a handheld game device, it doesn't matter. Presumably everyone reading this blog is technically savvy to understand that what it really is is a computer. When it comes to the living room, the argument in favor of a convergence device *may* be wishful thinking on the part of microsoft/sony etc, because in the living room the user wants the best possible experience and has the physical space to accomodate the devices necessary to provide it. But in terms of what we carry around with us personally smaller is better and less is more, and that means convergence is inevitable.

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  25. Yes, just like all the multipurpose wrist watches you see everyone wearing.

    Oh, wait.

    Convergence does happen...when there is a net gain in productivity and ease of use. When a device passes the threshold of 'too much complexity' you see what happens in a lot of phones right now. Most folks use it for communication and steadfastly ignore the rest of the functionality.

    If you look at studies of cell phone usage, most features are played with and then forgotten.

    A great product is not a sum of its features. This is a lesson that all product designers need to learn. It is about picking the right features for the most important tasks and allowing the user to access those features in a highly efficient fashion. It applies to software and computers just as much as it applies to consumer goods.

    take care
    Danc.

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  26. GREETINGS FROM THE FUTURE!!!! [future... future... future...]

    Seriously, I just discovered your blog a couple of months ago and have been slowly catching up with your archives. This piece makes you look like frickin' Nostradamus. I mean, you are *scary* accurate.

    I don't expect you to notice this comment, but if you do, I hope it puts a smile on your face ;-)

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