A few weeks ago, at Develop Conference, Denis Dyack spoke about the need and inevitability of a single platform for games. For those not in the know, Denis Dyack is the head of Canadian based Silicon Knights, creators of Eternal Darkness and Too Human. The general idea of his speech is that there are so many games being released, and for so many platforms, that even good games will get lost and forgotten in the mass of marketing and constant releases.

While many may scoff at Dyack’s thoughts, especially considering how poorly Too Human sold and how poorly Denis handled the heavy critical stress, the man certainly has a point. In fact, in an effort to prevent games from being lost in the shuffle, developers are quickly beginning to avoid the holiday release schedule, pushing titles back into 2010. If the fight for attention strains the big name publishers this much, imagine what it must be like for the smaller studios that don’t have the piles of cash required for marketing.

Yet while Dyack has a point, he also makes a lot of mistakes in his analogy. He compares video games to the movie industry, where Hollywood allegedly has one platform that they release on and one format that they sell. This completely ignores the difference between theaters and home entertainment, and even further ignores the difference between seeing a film in IMAX versus a traditional projector, or going home to where you will either use a regular DVD or a Blu-Ray. Not long ago there was a big competition between Sony’s disc format and the now obsolete HD-DVD as well, and even before that were failed formats such as laserdisc and Betamax.

The major difference is that there are few cases of exclusivity that consumers see, particularly because technology is adapted slowly. The first Blu-Ray playing devices were released in June of 2006, yet currently most consumers of film entertainment do not own such a player. Films are still released on standard DVD in addition to the Blu-Ray format. Compare this to the release of the Xbox 360 in Fall of 2005, where most owners of the original Xbox have already replaced their old machine, not to mention what little time it took for games to stop being developed for Microsoft’s first console. The only system from the previous generation still manufacturing games is the Playstation 2, and most of its recent titles are comparable to the B-Movie budget flicks that go straight to DVD. That or a cheap $5 rehash of a film that barely has a cult following to begin with. Cross-platform titles intended for more advanced systems or for the Wii tend to look and perform most poorly on the Playstation 2, with few diamonds emerging from the rough.

From the start Dyack’s comparison fails, as the game and film industries are simply too different. If anything, video games have more in common with television, a format where channels try and compete with other prime-time line-ups to gain the most viewers through exclusive content. Like the NES and Genesis games of yesteryear, old television shows become lost forever in the abyss of time unless a niche station chooses to pick them up. Shows from five years ago lie in vaults forgotten by the masses, remembered only through YouTube or DVD sales or to later be picked up and rerun by a station such as TBS or TNT. This model bares many more similarities to video games than film, as viewers are forced to pick and choose between which channel or television show they prefer during this time-slot over another.

Leaving all analogies and similarities aside, there is one significant trait the consoles of this generation have presented and that Dyack is ignoring. That is the importance of competition itself.

The previous generation of consoles was the first one to end with three major players continuing on to “the next level”. A large population of gamers and critics had expected Microsoft to fail, yet with properties such as Halo, Fable and Xbox Live the company proved to have a good grasp on the industry after all. Sony, with a consistent lead in market-share, would naturally continue into the next generation with head held high. Nintendo may have been behind in units sold for its second generation in a row, but they still managed to make a profit. They moved on with a focus to change their strategy completely as opposed to upgrading their current one.

That itself is the key. For any of the console developers to have been successful this generation, they all needed to apply a strategy that would set them apart from their two competitors. Nintendo chose to be unique instead of trying to beat the other major players at their own game, and now their DS and Wii devices continue to change how people play games while expanding the audience. Microsoft took their online service and evolved it ten-fold, providing a service that many critics still consider to be beyond what either Sony or Nintendo have provided. In addition, Microsoft has also focused on tools based on easy development for games studios, both big time and small time. Sony, meanwhile, chose to focus on unique hardware such as the Cell Processor and Blu-Ray player, each of which had hurt the price and sales of the Playstation 3 at the start yet are beginning to pay off. The PS3 was considered a cheap Blu-Ray player by many consumers and thus allowed for the defeat of HD-DVD, and recent game titles developed specifically for the Cell Processor are beginning to look all the more impressive. Little Big Planet has even introduced a new marketing point for Sony, opening the doors to Mod Nation Racers and many other games focused on the player crafting their own experience to share with friends.

If games existed on a single platform, all of this innovation and evolution of games and devices would cease to exist. No one would be watching Netflix on their home console, let alone awaiting an update that would allow them to watch films with friends online. There would be no attempts to catch up to Nintendo’s success with the Wii remote, providing everyone with new methods of playing games. Developers wouldn’t have new platforms to experiment with. That is, unless someone decided to build one, but then there wouldn’t be a single device to be playing games on. You’d be right back to multi-platform exclusivity and competition.

While having several major consoles fighting for the top is a frustrating process to many gamers, and in particular expensive, it ultimately pays off based on the innovation and change that results from the competition. The change needs to be in how studios and developers handle this challenge. After all, television studios have begun to offer viewing of their shows online, Digital Video Recorders allow consumers to watch whatever they want on their own time, and DVD’s allow the renting or purchasing of shows that their audiences enjoy. If development is becoming too expensive, then maybe it is time to consider toning down the budget to focus on simply making a fun experience.

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