The Hybridization Effect

Console. Controller. Game. TV. Back in the glory days of of gaming, this was all you needed. Consoles did one thing, and they generally did it well, (well, save for the Jaguar, 5200, Sega 32x, CDI?) As a kid, I couldn?t wait to get home from school and bomb some Dodongos. It was a simpler time.

Today, video game systems are now able to do all sorts of things we never could have imagined back in the NES days. Streaming video via Netflix or Hulu Plus, playing DVDs and Blu-Rays, or even just surfing the net. It?s almost to a point to where using the term ?video game console? to describe any of the current gen systems is a bit of a misnomer because they aren?t just ?video game consoles.? It?s wild when you think about it. While all this isn?t necessarily a bad thing, it feels like gaming hardware today is trying to do too many things at once.

?m currently employed at a rather large gaming retailer, and have been in the gaming retail business for around 6+ years now at two different companies. I?ve noticed an increasing trend in this generation: when looking for a console, many customers ask for the pros and cons of each system, and the way I find myself describing them focuses less on the games and more on everything else it can do. Generally, this is because I find most customers are more interested in this aspect rather than the games. ?Oh yeah, the PS3 can play Blu-Ray discs, stream Netflix, etc. So if you?ve got a nice HD Entertainment set up, it can be a nice ?media hub? to round everything out.?

ustomers have this ?what else can it do? mentality that could be brought about by the crappy economy, no desire to actually play games (i.e. ?It?s for the kids?) or they just simply expect more from their consumer electronics. The latter feels like it?s been brought about by ?smartphones,? a term that I?ve come to loathe. Cell phones are no longer just phones. They?re gaming, web surfing, media streaming, social networking bricks with touch screens and crappy battery life. Oh, and you can check your e-mail too! This sort of ?hybridization effect? tends to detract from the device?s original function, or just results in no effort to making that function better. I feel like my iPhone 4 has about the same call quality that my old Samsung Alias had, and it was awesome.

o that extent, it could be said that gaming has been hamstrung by hybridization as well. The PS3, for instance, uses Blu-Ray so ?it can also be a Blu-Ray movie player,? but game load times are, at times, annoyingly long (?m looking at you, Mass Effect 2.) When it comes to the Xbox 360, Microsoft is guilty of some of the worst kinds of exploitation for the sake of making more money. In order to use Facebook, Netflix, or a myriad of other features, you have to purchase Xbox Live Gold. So if you only have a 360, you have to pay for Netflix, or whatever subscription based service you want to use, AND pay for a Gold Subscription. It?s outrageous, and this sort of thing is saturating the current gaming market, but that?s another discussion entirely.

o be fair, load times have always plagued any disc based electronics, but I do miss the days of putting in a cartridge, powering on the system and being able to start playing with no loading needed. Examples would be the NES, the Genesis or any myriad of old school, cartridge-based systems. Additionally, with the advent of online gaming, paying for services isn?t anything new, and keeping a stable online service up and available is really expensive. However, I just have to wonder exactly how much of a strain Netflix, Facebook and Twitter really cause on Xbox Live to warrant having to charge for a Gold Subscription in order to use them. It might seem silly to complain about any of these secondary services, but you have to wonder where the line will be drawn.

realize this article has basically been one huge complaint thus far, as though I?m an old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn and take their Facebooks and Tweety Birds with them. Social media is essentially a glorified advertising system disguised as an augmented message board anyway. As a lifelong gamer, however, all these additional components tacked on to my consoles and games over the years bug the crap out of me. I?m all for progress, but it feels like console makers are focusing more on how many different markets they can horn in on and less about making gaming better. It makes sense from a business perspective, but as a gamer, it makes me yearn for a video game console that just plays video games, and does it well.

t?s funny, but as I was writing this article initially, I got a positive sign in the form of Ouya, the Android-based console that?s being financed on Kickstarter. As of the writing of this article, the project has quintupled its funding goal, with around 45,000 consoles already pre-purchased. It?s not quite a pure games console, as it can stream Twitch.tv, but with that it?s definitely a gamer?s machine. No Blu-Ray, No DVD, just games. Okay, and Twitch.tv. Having seen the Kickstarter, I can safely say I want one. Beyond its affordability at $99, it?s also intriguing in that it?s very open to any and all gamers, though it also feels like one of those oddities in gaming history that you always wish you had purchased before it became defunct just to say you have one.

People will still want their Xboxes, Nintendos and PlayStations, and whether or not Ouya will make Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony stand up and take notice is obviously hard to say at this point. The Big Three will no doubt keep moving along and making strides in turning their ?game consoles? into something else entirely, like a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none. I?d like to think that Ouya could represent the return of a missing concept in gaming, that it could be an outlet for gamers who just want a console for games, whether they play them, make them or watch people play them on Twitch.tv. It?s a concept I?ve long thought dead, and I?m happy to see it return in some form.

Source: http://ontologicalgeek.com/the-hybridization-effect/

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