The end is near people. The end of it all. Well, at least for mainstream America. Apex, makers of those super-cheap DVD players is officially entering themselves into the realm of videogames with their very own console.
Now, beyond the horrific name (reads like Ape-extreme to me), it's quite obvious that this is a direct replay of the first major gaming crash back in 1983. Companies have all seen how much money can be made and everyone wants a piece of it. Look at the current market: PS2, X-Box, Gamecube, Game Boy Advance (2 versions!), N-Gage, Tapwave, and the PS One (yes, it's still going). No, not all of these are major contenders, but when the next generatin of consoles comes around things are going to get real ugly.
Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are certainly going to be back. Apex is there, and the Phantom is good to go as it was shown at the recent CES. Don't forget the GBA which will likely get the usual upgrade withing a year or two. The only question that remains is how many of these the market can support at once. If history tells us anything.....not many. Starting with the 8-bit era, Nintendo and Sega battled for a while until Nintendo's marketing won people over. Sega, NEC, and Nintendo fought it out in the 16-bit era with NEC's Turbografx fading into obscurity, even though they were first with some new technology (CD-ROM adapter). The 32-bit era dawned with 4 competitors: The Jaguar, 3DO, Saturn, and Playstation. Guess what system dominated?
Whats even worse is that mainstream America completely ignored the Saturn, arguably the console with the bext games of the era. The hardcore crowd was left in the dark and the majority of the outstanding games for Sega's short lived console stayed in Japan due to lagging sales of the console. Same thing happened to Sega again a few years later with the hardcore gamers preffered "Next-gen" console, the Dreamcast. Everyone waited for the PS2. No one seemed to care that the Dreamcast had some of the most outstanding games of this generation.
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Article comments
1 - jadester
you may be right, but:
1)the phantom is simply a slightly-stripped-down pc. It likely won't be a major contender
2)the N-Gage is, well, crap. Plus, Nintendo has an iron grip on the handheld market (the GBA is simply the latest incarnation of the GB, which if you remember has been around for longer than a decade). Proof of this is in how, a few years ago, SNK's bid to enter the handheld market failed spectacularly, bankrupting them in the process, despite the fact that at the time, the NeoGeo Pocket Colour was better than any Gameboy
3)Microsoft and Sony will most likely be able to strong-arm any contenders back into third place. Whether Nintendo can come up with something that keeps/regains some ground for them, remains to be seen (i hope they can but that's just me). I think there *will* be a scrabble over which console gets to be the third most popular (excluding handhelds here)
4)The Jaguar was marketed as a 64-bit system, i believe. Although it was only one of its chips (the graphics one?) that was actually "64-bit". It is a great bargain for a classic piece of console history atm though, i got a new one from Game's "newly-discovered stock" a coupla years ago for just £9.99. Brutal Sports Football is a cool game, as is Attack Of The Mutant Penguins
Although, having skimmed over the details of the new Apex-made console, it does sound like a serious contender. Why? with an unlocked OS, mods are possible. The likes of Sony and MS seem to vastly underestimate the lure of mods to both casual gamers (who like being able to get programs that allow them to do new, cool stuff on their console) and hackers/coders, who love to play around with new systems (you know there's emulators for the Dreamcast and Playstation?)
2 - Craig Lyndall
Nintendo is going to be the next Sega if you ask me. They have been able to hold relatively strong because of their dominance in the handheld market. To a lesser degree they have been able to hold some ground in the console market because of the characters that they own like Mario and Zelda. Were it not for those two characters, I feel like Nintendo would have been turned into a software company a long time ago, like Sega did more recently.
As for Sega, I have been burned by them so many times now that it is painful to recount. The fact that I am basically a non-gamer at this point in my life makes it a little easier so here goes. I had a Sega Genesis. The expansion for that was the Sega CD which I willingly purchased for 300 bucks I think. Thankfully I didn't get burned by 32X which was a cartridge expansion of some sort. Then I had the Saturn which crashed and burned. Finally I had the Dreamcast, which had some of the best games and best controls if you ask me. I was never disappointed in any of the Sega products, just how short-lived they all were. After Sega CD and Saturn, Sega should have known to advertise better or something because Dreamcast was an outstanding system.
Like I said I am almost a non-gamer at this point. I play maybe a couple PC games per year when inspiration strikes me, but I don't even buy 5 games a year anymore.
3 - TDavid
Nintendo makes some of the funnest games, but they are pegged for being a "kiddy machine", for whatever that is worth.
Sony's PS2 has established a seemingly impenetrable lock on the adult sector in console videogaming. And then there is a hardcore PC gaming audience (Everquest, The Sims and the like) which XBox has been trying to target through their XBox Live but having only minor success.
This new Apex system seems to have many interesting possibilities with the tie-in to the vast existing library of PC games. I saw the video on it and it looks pretty cool. The fact that special games won't have to be produced for it makes it attractive. We'll likely buy one.
I've been with almost every gaming upgrade/new release bandwagon since the mid 80's except for a few systems (the Neo Geo pocket color, Atari Lynx and N-Gage, to name a few) and I subscribe to EGM to keep up with the news on the console videogame market. We buy a couple games a month, which is way down from five years ago when it was around 10+ games per month and we were renting heavily too. We don't rent much any more, making buying decisions pretty much off EGM reviews/previews and other website recommendations. Why? A lot of things that this article and other commenters said: the games just aren't that fun any more.
My favorite console system ever for emulating the pure arcade experience was the Neo Geo. That game system was the arcade, which made it superior to anything at its time and even ahead of its time. The games were very expensive though -- often the cost of what some systems are ($200 USD or more) these days -- and available mostly by mail order only. Some of the games were in Japanese only, but even though I don't understand Japanese I could still appreciate the graphics and sound.
I was one of the first suckers to buy the 3D0 (screw you, Trip Hawkins!) at $650 USD and coming with Crash & Burn. Hey, at the time I thought that system was going to rock but it bombed hard when there wasn't too much 3rd party game support. That's what kills most of these game systems: lack of 3rd party game support.
Nintendo took a hit when they lost Rare to Microsoft but Rare's first game with M$ bombed. The Rare/Nintendo breakup was too bad because I think it would have been sweet to see Rare do a Donkey Kong Country for the Nintendo Gamecube. Rumour is that Nintendo is going to have another Mario out in 2004. Sunshine wasn't that great IMO.
Atari Jaguar had some outstanding games, but again, lackluster 3rd party support. Jeff Minter who programmed Tempest 2000 and Defender 2000 for the Jag was on my radio show in 2002 and he is one of the old school game programmers who enjoys making fun, 'in the zone' games. Don't count guys like him out for the next wave of gaming when it gets back to the basics of making fun games instead of having an unhealthy obsession with polygons, 3D, cell shading and rendering.
In the long run no gamer really gives a damn about how fantastic the game looks when it isn't fun to play.
On the positive side, time has yielded some great deals on these current consoles like Midway Treasures which has like 20 arcade emulated games for $19.99 USD (long live games like Defender, Pac Man, Joust and Robotron). That is one cool thing about continuing evolution of gaming, that if one holds out long enough, someday they can get a pretty good deal on the great games of the past.
Patience seems to be the key to bargaing videogaming. And to keep an eye on eBay too. One can pick up some extremely good deals on game systems and packages from eBay. Awhile back we picked up an Atari 7800, 31 games, 4 joypads and some other cables and stuff for $30 USD. You'll see deals like this all the time for 'classic' systems which have some fun games to play. Just have to check out the seller like with any other eBay sale.
4 - Matt Paprocki
1)the phantom is simply a slightly-stripped-down pc. It likely won't be a major contender
Aren't all console nowadays? The Phantom offers games only via download. There are no carts, CD's, or any other format. It's an intruiging concept. Do I think it will succeed? No. But, it is an example of what type of crap is coming to the market.
2)the N-Gage is, well, crap. Plus, Nintendo has an iron grip on the handheld market. Proof of this is in how, a few years ago, SNK's bid to enter the handheld market failed spectacularly, bankrupting them in the process, despite the fact that at the time, the NeoGeo Pocket Colour was better than any Gameboy
That is one area in which Sony will hopefully beat Nintendo with the PSP (which I forgot to mention embarrisingly). Though it's recent pricing rumors are making people nervous. Oh, and the NGP was hardly the reason for SNK's bankruptcy. Did it help? No. SNK's lifeblood was the long standing AES home console which took a nose dive once 3-D became the "in" thing. Thankfully, Playmore, the company that bought them out, is still pumping out games. SVC Chaos is great.
3)Microsoft and Sony will most likely be able to strong-arm any contenders back into third place. Whether Nintendo can come up with something that keeps/regains some ground for them, remains to be seen (i hope they can but that's just me). I think there *will* be a scrabble over which console gets to be the third most popular (excluding handhelds here)
Agreed.
4)The Jaguar was marketed as a 64-bit system, i believe. Although it was only one of its chips (the graphics one?) that was actually "64-bit".
In theory, but it still falls into the same era. Play Brutal Sports Football and tell me if it's 64-bit. There wasn't a game on the console that couldn't be done better elsewhere. Are their fun games? Sure! Check out Iron Soldier. Oh, and AOTMP is worth some decent bucks. Hang on to it. (Note that again I left out a console: The N64. Oops.)
Although, having skimmed over the details of the new Apex-made console, it does sound like a serious contender. Why? with an unlocked OS, mods are possible. The likes of Sony and MS seem to vastly underestimate the lure of mods to both casual gamers (who like being able to get programs that allow them to do new, cool stuff on their console) and hackers/coders, who love to play around with new systems (you know there's emulators for the Dreamcast and Playstation?)
Ask alot of people and they'll tell you the simplicity of modding a Dreamcast was it's downfall. Playing burned games was far too easy. It's not the "fun stuff" that people want, it's free games plain and simple. Emulators are an entirely different topic that I'm not going to touch on (but MAME does rock on the DC). It'll be interesting what people pull of this upcoming generation.
5 - PsychoWiLL
The crash will happen sooner or later. Whether it will happen because of market saturation, or because of casual gamers becoming Nostalgic (Or they begin comparing new games to old ones.), a crash in the market is imminent.
The way things are going, Nintendo is the only one doing things right.
Also, they let Rare go for several reasons. For instance, they could barley make their development quotas, and this cost Nintendo money and the 'Oh, there goes Nintendo with the delays again' label.
This comes from Rare's very lax work environment.