(This article is written by GP, one of our newest writers on Padinga.)
Recently we’ve been plagued by articles from magazines like Forbes, Money, and Fortune saying that Sony is hurting (which is slightly true, but not in the way they mean) and that Microsoft will never release another console because there’s no money or future in it. Pundits want to tell us that consoles are on the way out and that gadgets like smart phones and tablets are going to rule the gaming world someday.
To that I stick out my tongue and say “Pbbbbbbbbbt!” Pundits get money by analyzing trends and making guesses based on the way things are going in the market versus how they have in the past. That’s great; in fact, in some ways it’s actually needed. But these pundits are not good at guessing the future of a wildcard like Video Gaming. Want proof? Let’s take a little look through history.
Pundits said back in the early 80’s that gaming would never survive, and they partially saw this come true with the big crash of 1983. But something loomed on the horizon, and home gaming was saved by the Famicom, also known in the US as the Nintendo Entertainment System. Skip ahead to 1989. Pundits saw that video game sales were dropping, and that the glorious NES was losing steam. This was actually true, to an extent. What was really happening is that technology was jumping ahead of itself. What did this bring? Handheld gaming. And not that cheap TMNT LCD game you have from Konami. I’m talking the Gameboy. The public got a healthy dose of new technology that ran on 4 AA batteries that you could take in a car (OMG!). It was only 4-bit and ate up batteries faster than your little sister’s Powerwheels Barbie Convertible. The NES had lack luster releases, and the pundits ate it up. Enter 1991, Nintendo’s attempt to keep hope alive, the SNES.
At first, the SNES didn’t have many releases (sound familiar?), and was brushed off by pundits as a soon to be doomed failure. Around the same time, and even slightly before… Sega had released the follow up to it’s less-popular-than-the-NES Master System, the Sega Genesis. Not only was gaming back, but there was competition, and oh my oh my, did the gamer ever benefit from it.
People, video gaming as a whole is going to be just fine. Is hard media on it’s way out? Yes. But that’s only technology moving forward, not the PS4 getting scared off. Yes, Ipad and Ipod and your cell phone are going to influence gaming, and they are going to pull some dollars away from Console sales. But see them for what they really are: Competition. And that’s healthy for anyone wanting progress. This is all coming from a gamer, who’s about to go a play a tournament on Hot Shots golf. Not some pundit who plays Pebble Beach (the Pebble Beach).
Peas out,
–GP
