Will There Be Only One Console in the Future?

When Denis Dyack argued in favor of a "One Console Future" during the 2007 Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany, it was the first time many gamers had heard of the term. The public reaction was less than welcoming, with cries of monopoly and stagnant evolution at the forefront of counter-arguments. Nearly four years later, consoles are as divided as ever, but we're seeing some strides that suggest Dyack may have actually been right all along.

The concept of a standardized gaming platform isn't unprecedented. The 3DO was launched in 1993 by industry veteran Trip Hawkins, engineered to become a new console standard. Instead of handling all manufacturing in-house like Nintendo or Sega, other companies could buy a license to make a 3DO. Panasonic-made 3DO consoles were the most common, though we saw models from smaller companies like GoldStar and Sanyo.

The 3DO's attempt to standardize consoles meant that different companies like GoldStar and Panasonic could make machines that played the same games.

"In hindsight I don't think it was all that practical," Hawkins told 1UP. "I don't think you should expect any company to go through all the R&D costs to develop a new console and give it away in that fashion."

As an effort to create a standardized hardware platform, the 3DO kept its licensing fee low. Those costs were then passed onto the consumer in the form of a price tag, $699, that seems high even by today's standards. "If you're Sony and you're putting $2 in and you come back with $9 in licensing, you're doing a lot better than the 3DO at $3 a unit," said Hawkins. "It didn't have an ability to create a profit for its hardware partners [through software sales], so the pricing had to be higher."

That price, paired with the looming threat of Sony's own console launch, drove the 3DO to extinction. "[3DO] basically had $100 million in capital and Sony came along with $2 billion," he recalls.

But now, Hawkins suggests we may be seeing the budding of an industry standard coming from an unexpected source. "It's very difficult for any one company to create a de facto standard, and that's true in every media field," said Hawkins. "Now it's called the World Wide Web, it's called a browser. It's the one that's open and the one that almost all citizens of the world are becoming familiar with. PCs used to be the most expensive machines, and the browser is now the processor spreading from PCs to phones to tablets. The browser has the potential to be ubiquitous as a worldwide standard."

As for graphical fidelity? That may not be a problem for much longer. "You can always improve a standard. You look at the web; it was primitive in the beginning. Now we have Flash, better processor speeds -- everything is constantly getting better." An idea like Quake Live may have seemed impossible only 10 years ago.

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