Following similar sentiments expressed by Electronic Arts executive Gerhard Florin, Silicon Knights boss Denis Dyack has said he believes the development of a unified gaming platform in the future is inevitable.
“Imagine a unified platform – one console for all gamers – that would bring a massive paradigm shift to the games industry, where games would become better in quality, cheaper and more widely available. Sound good? It can happen. Better yet, it’s inevitable. It will happen,” Dyack wrote in an article for Official Xbox Magazine.
He said the market is split, causing videogame sales to suffer as a result and making it difficult for developers and publishers to choose a platform for development, since each of the three primary hardware manufacturers may hold equal market share. A unified console will emerge, Dyack believes, not because anyone wants it to happen but simply because the market cannot sustain itself under current conditions. “The economics of the proprietary models seem to point toward spending more money and receiving fewer returns with each generation, with no clear winner,” he wrote.
Dyack said he expects a unified format will emerge from “a consortium of game makers,” and that manufacturers could then build systems to support that format. He foresees retail price drops and increases in hardware quality as a result, “as the model of perfect competition emerges in the hardware marketplace.” Games would also become cheaper, he said, because publishers would have access to the entire market with every release.
“A one-console future is a future I think we can’t avoid,” he said, “and thankfully, it’s a future where everyone would win.”
Silicon Knights, founded by Dyack in 1992, is currently at work on Too Human, an action-RPG for the Xbox 360 due for release in 2008.
