Would the gaming industry be better off if consoles never existed?

[passerby]

Almost half of the codexers are consoletards, nice.

 

[nobre]

The gaming industry is better off with consoles.

Gamers are better off without consoles.

 

[Max Stats]

I wouldn't go that far, simply preventing the existence of the Xbox would be enough.

Xbox is closer to a PC than a console.

 

[Edward The Mediocre]

Well first off, the video game console, the odyssey, came out before PCs and even before the first video arcade game, pong. Second, when most people think of classic PC gaming they're typically thinking of games that game out in the 90s, not the 80s, with the exception of adventure games and rpgs like ultima. PCs were generally terrible at platformers and other fast paced games compared to consoles because they couldn't handle scrolling and had to rely to flip screens. I mean you can still have a good platformer without scrolling but it limits the potential what you can put in the game because of it. So overall I think while games would retain their difficulty, I think that we would of not gotten as many games or their gems from genres that PCs originally sucked at.

 

[JarlFrank]

We wouldn't have gotten Gears of War.

Instead, we'd get more Quake clones instead, and military shooters would be better too because nobody would have to adjust them to shitty console control schemes.

Elder Scrolls wouldn't have become dumbed down with the console-focused Oblivion, instead focusing on the PC audience which liked the complexity and mods.

An entire genre, the cover shooter, wouldn't exist.

Yeah, definitely better.

 

[StrongBelwas]

We'd have gotten a few more years of Incline and the Decline probably wouldn't have kicked in as viciously as it did but eventually the same need to pander to dumbfucks to stay in business would have happened, the cause would just be computers becoming more usable by the masses instead of consoles.

 

[Edward The Mediocre]

We wouldn't have gotten Gears of War.

Instead, we'd get more Quake clones instead, and military shooters would be better too because nobody would have to adjust them to shitty console control schemes.

Elder Scrolls wouldn't have become dumbed down with the console-focused Oblivion, instead focusing on the PC audience which liked the complexity and mods.

An entire genre, the cover shooter, wouldn't exist.

Yeah, definitely better.

And less platformers because of intial limitations, plus less fighters, and probably no devil may cry or bayonetta games sinces those games suck on a keyboard. I'm not saying it's worth games as a whole going down the shitter for those genres but we need to be aware of what would we have lost as well as gained.

 

[deama]

We wouldn't have gotten Gears of War.

Instead, we'd get more Quake clones instead, and military shooters would be better too because nobody would have to adjust them to shitty console control schemes.

Elder Scrolls wouldn't have become dumbed down with the console-focused Oblivion, instead focusing on the PC audience which liked the complexity and mods.

An entire genre, the cover shooter, wouldn't exist.

Yeah, definitely better.

And less platformers because of intial limitations, plus less fighters, and probably no devil may cry or bayonetta games sinces those games suck on a keyboard. I'm not saying it's worth games as a whole going down the shitter for those genres but we need to be aware of what would we have lost as well as gained.

We wouldn't get DMC or beyonetta specifically, but we would get those fighter type games nevertherless; instead though they would be made with KB + M in mind.

Anyway, I enjoyed DMC games more with a keyboard than a controller.

 

[DeepOcean]

If the industry didn't have the massive expansion it had, we wouldn't have products pandering to mass audiences, investors only after money and the rest be damned and all that stuff. Massive amounts of dollars as budgets is rat poison for creativity and creative freedom, and a drop in quality on general as those massive corporations tend to be almost as bureaucratic as a government department.

The bane of modern craptalism is hyperfinancialization of manipulated interest rates and manipulated stock markets that allow those massive financial groups to take massive amounts of loans at no cost destroying competition and this coupled with intellectual propriety laws where a faceless company can usurp the work of creative people under the threat of not financing them and we have hell. At least, the gaming industry was safe from this but when Microsoft got involved on the console market and brought with it all this crap from other industries now we have fucking bankers deciding how games should be made. We have fucking banker bean counters deciding how a creative industry should work, is it a wonder creativity died?

I'm not trying to claim you can make a game without serious consideration on the production side of the business but the production should be on the service of creation and not the other way around.

 

[sullynathan]

We wouldn't have gotten Gears of War.

Instead, we'd get more Quake clones instead, and military shooters would be better too because nobody would have to adjust them to shitty console control schemes.

Elder Scrolls wouldn't have become dumbed down with the console-focused Oblivion, instead focusing on the PC audience which liked the complexity and mods.

An entire genre, the cover shooter, wouldn't exist.

Yeah, definitely better.

And less platformers because of intial limitations, plus less fighters, and probably no devil may cry or bayonetta games sinces those games suck on a keyboard. I'm not saying it's worth games as a whole going down the shitter for those genres but we need to be aware of what would we have lost as well as gained.

We wouldn't get DMC or beyonetta specifically, but we would get those fighter type games nevertherless; instead though they would be made with KB + M in mind.

Anyway, I enjoyed DMC games more with a keyboard than a controller.

I don't think we'd get these games at all. You can't find anything properly like DMC or Bayonetta on PC, and the later games that exist are shit compared to DMC.

 

[Edward The Mediocre]

Anyway, I enjoyed DMC games more with a keyboard than a controller.

How the fuck does that work? The pc port was a fucking nightmare for me, and typically I prefer kb+m when given the choice.

 

[PulsatingBrain]

Anyway, I enjoyed DMC games more with a keyboard than a controller.

How the fuck does that work? The pc port was a fucking nightmare for me, and typically I prefer kb+m when given the choice.

The port of Devil May Cry 4 was actually great. I hear 3 was terrible though.

 

[deama]

Anyway, I enjoyed DMC games more with a keyboard than a controller.

How the fuck does that work? The pc port was a fucking nightmare for me, and typically I prefer kb+m when given the choice.

DMC 4 was good with KB + M. I don't remember DMC3, but what I do remember is me playing it with a controller for a couple of hours, then switching to a keyboard and enjoying it more.

We wouldn't have gotten Gears of War.

Instead, we'd get more Quake clones instead, and military shooters would be better too because nobody would have to adjust them to shitty console control schemes.

Elder Scrolls wouldn't have become dumbed down with the console-focused Oblivion, instead focusing on the PC audience which liked the complexity and mods.

An entire genre, the cover shooter, wouldn't exist.

Yeah, definitely better.

And less platformers because of intial limitations, plus less fighters, and probably no devil may cry or bayonetta games sinces those games suck on a keyboard. I'm not saying it's worth games as a whole going down the shitter for those genres but we need to be aware of what would we have lost as well as gained.

We wouldn't get DMC or beyonetta specifically, but we would get those fighter type games nevertherless; instead though they would be made with KB + M in mind.

Anyway, I enjoyed DMC games more with a keyboard than a controller.

I don't think we'd get these games at all. You can't find anything properly like DMC or Bayonetta on PC, and the later games that exist are shit compared to DMC.

Well, yeah, you can't find them on PC because they don't look like DMC or Beyonetta. The PC equivalent is stuff like severance blade of darkness, jedi outcast, or chivalry.
Games like DMC or Beyonetta rely on combo tricks because of the limited nature of controllers; but with a mouse and keyboard you have a lot more complexity, meaning that the player can make their own "combos".

 

[sullynathan]

Well, yeah, you can't find them on PC because they don't look like DMC or Beyonetta. The PC equivalent is stuff like severance blade of darkness, jedi outcast, or chivalry.
Games like DMC or Beyonetta rely on combo tricks because of the limited nature of controllers; but with a mouse and keyboard you have a lot more complexity, meaning that the player can make their own "combos".

Chivalry, Severence and Jedi Outcast don't even have the depth of of a DMC or Bayonetta. Severance is a button masher and Chivalry is on consoles too.

 

[laclongquan]

Eh, let me trump your cards with Front Mission, Valkyrie Profile, and Valkyria Chronicles.

 

[deuxhero]

They'd be better off if iPhones never existed.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Could you elaborate more on that if you have the time?

Sorry for the late reply, weekend hasn't exactly allowed me to sit down and think. I also didn't take much time in reading the rest of the thread, as most replies seem to be based on the posters cherry-picking a point in history where consoles magically disappear, and thereby allowing them to come up with any justification they need to prove their point.

So I'm gonna do exactly like they did, except I'm gonna cut straight to the source, to Ralph Baer's Magnavox Odyssey in 1972. This is the first computer that is clearly relased with a few key points in mind:

# Easy to setup up and use compared to computers (of 1972).
# Cheap price.
# Easily available (can you find it at your local store?)
# Entertainment is primary purpose (no "workhorse" functionality).
# Was aimed at the public.

These are the things that make a console compared to a computer.

The Odyssey single-handedly started the video game industry and started what is called the "first generation of video game consoles". One of the games available, a top-down perspective ping-pong game, became the basis for Atari's Pong game, which created a whole slew of Pong-consoles and gave Atari the financial backbone to make the Atari 2600. The entire video game industry as we know it, is based on this foundation.

Meaning that if the Magnavox Odyssey is erased from history, video game history changes drastically as we've just removed the foundation.

We can't even begin to imagine how history would have progressed with such a drastic change, so I'm going to permit myself to assume, to keep this somewhat short, to say that history would have continued as normal in all other regards. We could probably cook up all kinds of cool stories about how eventually someone else would have done exactly as Baer did and released a scaled-down computer aimed soley at recreational purposes, and at any point since 1972. Again, I'm not going to do so except to mention it, this will always be a factor.

So we're left with a world where the foundation of the video game industry is not what we know it. So what's the next step above? That would be the Atari 2600 and the Apple I, both released roughly round the same time and both featuring microprocessors, a breakthrough development for computers in general. Except in a non-Odyssey world Atari would not have the money nor reason to make a home console, so there is no Atari to speak about. But both microprocessor and Apple are still around and they're still working on their little machine. I'd say the lack of the Odyssey would have little impact on the release of the Apple I, but it may have an impact upon the Apple II as the target audience is invariably smaller. Because how many people got introduced to computers via consoles like the Magnavox and Pong deririatives, and wanted something bigger and better and got into home computers as a result? With no consoles this group doesn't exist, leaving only those whom got onboard with computers from the start. So any launch at this point in time will have a smaller reception, meaning smaller market and less imperative to speed-rush a follow-up model, especially since there's no real competition. So let's assume that the Apple II did eventually get released, but not until 1980. And let's assume that the Apple II was received as favorably as it did, only on a smaller scale due to the aforementioned reasons.

So now we're in 1980, we have one (somewhat) successful home computer, and the competition is starting to pick up. So machines like the TRS-80, the IBM PC and such are all on the horizon, but nowhere near release. Let's say they get released in late 1982. So hardware is already being released at a slower rate than we know, but what about the games? Well, barring any possible game releases on the Apple I, 1980 is where the video game industry starts, 8 years later than it did. So the game industry had to play catch-up right from the start. The only favorable situation for the gaming industry here is that they have more powerful computers and no dedicated (and simplified) controller to speak of, therefore there are no deliberate bottlenecks to speak of for game development. Adventure games, RPGs and rogue-likes are already established genres thanks to University mainframes, but there will be a dearth of action games for a long time, especially since one other field of gaming will also be slow on the uptake (if it appears at all), and that is the arcade coin-op. Atari's version of Pong was an arcade title first and foremost, and without that vital first step arcades are in a bit of a jam.

So based on this, and looking forward, we see quite an interesting landscape developing in relation to video game development: At least two-thirds of the gaming market is absent and history is at least 8 years behind the times. Any further development from this point will take place at a much slower pace than it really did. And this is where I stop just talking about game development. With computers taking a longer time to grow and manifest, society would have a better time adapting to them. Every generation of computer development would have lasted longer, meaning every change upon society that each generation inflicted would have taken more time to come about. The 8-bit era would probably have lasted well into the 90s, dial-up modems would probably still have been a thing as short as 10 years ago, and the Internet would be still in its early days in the Current Year. And society would be better for it, because we would be more familiar with each iteration. Because one of the biggest problems with modern-day society is the breakneck-speed that we're going on.

Have any of you heard about "The Generation Gap"? It's a concept that describes the age gap needed between two people before they are incapable of understanding the lifestyle of one another. When this concept was first termed the Generation Gap was 35-40 years. This was best shown in the culture clash between the generation that fought in WWII and the peace-loving hippies of the late 1960s. Here's a chilling fact to consider: Since then the Generation Gap has shrunk. With every passing year since then it has gotten smaller. The last time I heard how the Generation Gap was doing was in 2013. Do you know how wide it was then?

Seven years. Let that sink in for a minute.

If 2006-you would get a chance to talk to 2013-you, you'd have a hard time understanding the changes that have taken place. Likewise 2013-you would have a hard time understanding how you could ever have lived like this...except you remember it quite well, don't you? It was only seven years ago! Anyone care to guess how wide the Generation Gap is now, in 2017? Six years? Less? Don't you think this is ridiculous?!?

And this increased speed of human society is all due to computers. Without them we'd be living in a much simpler time. Much slower as well yes, but also much simpler. Possibly much better too.

But with all this in light, I stand by my vote of "No, I don't think the gaming industry would be better off if consoles never existed." Even though I'm not a consoletard and have, in fact, been a stern believer in the Glorious PC Master Race for 20 years now. But I believe society would be better off is consoles never existed.

 

[Ezekiel]

We wouldn't have gotten Gears of War.

Instead, we'd get more Quake clones instead, and military shooters would be better too because nobody would have to adjust them to shitty console control schemes.

Elder Scrolls wouldn't have become dumbed down with the console-focused Oblivion, instead focusing on the PC audience which liked the complexity and mods.

An entire genre, the cover shooter, wouldn't exist.

Yeah, definitely better.

And less platformers because of intial limitations, plus less fighters, and probably no devil may cry or bayonetta games sinces those games suck on a keyboard. I'm not saying it's worth games as a whole going down the shitter for those genres but we need to be aware of what would we have lost as well as gained.

We wouldn't get DMC or beyonetta specifically, but we would get those fighter type games nevertherless; instead though they would be made with KB + M in mind.

Anyway, I enjoyed DMC games more with a keyboard than a controller.

Yeah, beat 'em ups and hack and slashers are possible on a keyboard and mouse. We never see any with high production values made specifically for PC. I posted an idea for a simple Streets of Rage-style one a while ago.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/which-genres-do-you-want-to-make-a-comeback.117445/

I play DMC4 and Bayonetta with a controller because they're console games and I'm not confident in their PC controls. I've recently tried playing Dark Souls II with a mouse and keyboard, but the customization was too tedious, with separate menus for mouse controls and keyboard controls and the Escape key exiting me out of the options completely instead of taking me back to the previous option, removing all my changes. But I'm sure a third person action RPG like that could play just fine if designed only for a mouse and keyboard.

 

[agentorange]

no

 

[deama]

But with all this in light, I stand by my vote of "No, I don't think the gaming industry would be better off if consoles never existed." Even though I'm not a consoletard and have, in fact, been a stern believer in the Glorious PC Master Race for 20 years now. But I believe society would be better off is consoles never existed.

The whole concept you posted is pretty interesting, thanks.
But I have a question, if society was better off in this alternative future, would that increase the quality of games? I know the technology would be lacking, but would the developers put more effort into their products? Or perhaps because of more time devoted into each generational leap in technology, would developers have enough time to establish conventions in order to make better games?

Well, yeah, you can't find them on PC because they don't look like DMC or Beyonetta. The PC equivalent is stuff like severance blade of darkness, jedi outcast, or chivalry.
Games like DMC or Beyonetta rely on combo tricks because of the limited nature of controllers; but with a mouse and keyboard you have a lot more complexity, meaning that the player can make their own "combos".

Chivalry, Severence and Jedi Outcast don't even have the depth of of a DMC or Bayonetta. Severance is a button masher and Chivalry is on consoles too.

The depth at first glance seems to be lacking, but that's because those games do a better job at introducing the player into the game. E.g. with jedi outcast, sure, you can just go around flaying your lightsaber and with some luck you'll manage; but eventually to get good, you'll have to start thinking more about your movements, how to effeciently use your powers etc. With DMC your introduced to a decent variety of combos from the get go, and probably not all of them will be used. At any rate, try playing severance at a harder difficulty lol.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

But I have a question, if society was better off in this alternative future, would that increase the quality of games? I know the technology would be lacking, but would the developers put more effort into their products? Or perhaps because of more time devoted into each generational leap in technology, would developers have enough time to establish conventions in order to make better games?

The answer to all your questions would be: "Eventually."

Eventually the quality of games would increase.
Eventually devs would put more effort into their products because they realize they can't sell garbage games at overrated prices.
Eventually devs would realize and establish conventions about what makes better games, and would compare them to each new generation of computing hardware, and eventually change them to match new conventions (hopefully in a better manner then what we've seen lately).

 

[Icymad]

If we need to blame some piece of hardware for something, the only thing that can be blamed on consoles is stagnating the graphics realism race (main culprits are Xbox 360, PS3 and the money printing machine called Nintendo Wii).

 

[sullynathan]

try player severance at a harder difficulty lol.

I don't want to stun lock enemies and hit them 30 times before they die

 

[deama]

But I have a question, if society was better off in this alternative future, would that increase the quality of games? I know the technology would be lacking, but would the developers put more effort into their products? Or perhaps because of more time devoted into each generational leap in technology, would developers have enough time to establish conventions in order to make better games?

The answer to all your questions would be: "Eventually."

Eventually the quality of games would increase.
Eventually devs would put more effort into their products because they realize they can't sell garbage games at overrated prices.
Eventually devs would realize and establish conventions about what makes better games, and would compare them to each new generation of computing hardware, and eventually change them to match new conventions (hopefully in a better manner then what we've seen lately).

But this "Eventually" phrase can be applied to our timeline as well?

So, if it was 2017 but in the alternate timeline:"consoles never and will never exist", would the already existing games there be of a higher quality than the games we have in our current(2017) timeline? E.g If we picked 1000 of the bestest games from our timeline and compared them to the 1000 bestest games from the"consoles never and will never exist" timeline, would they be of a higher quality?

try player severance at a harder difficulty lol.

I don't want to stun lock enemies and hit them 30 times before they die

What about DMC? Isn't it worse there?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

But this "Eventually" phrase can be applied to our timeline as well?

Look at the current state of affairs in gaming. Can you point to a "Way Out" that offers the same benefits as the one I brought up?

It would literally take bloody murder to bring it about, meaning that the answer is "unlikely". That's the sad deal of affairs here.

Disclaimer: Not saying that my fictional timeline cannot include a similar, unlikely scenario, only that it would take longer to manifest.