What Would Matt Do

In case you haven’t seen it (and if not, what rock do you live under?), here’s the Elite. Looks purty, no? It also looks like it could be the first smack to the face of the console industry.

Why? Because Microsoft just updated the hardware on their console. So, now if you want to run the latest version of the 360, you need to shell out $479. That’s right, it costs more than previous versions. This isn’t the same as previous revisions of the XBox, the 360, the PS2, etc that all worked exactly the same as their brethren, this is a console with new internal features. Ok, not a huge deal. The Elite comes with HDMI, 120 GB HD and it’s black. Great, not a big deal. As a friend put, those are ipod features. Things that are cool, but not requirement to upgrade from the current 360 you own (unless you own a core system…then you must really hate MS at this point). So, even though the Elite is much cooler (it’s black!), you don’t really need it.

Unless, and here’s the really bad part, future games require more HD space (imagine 360 WoW). Then you’ll be sitting with a 360 that can’t play all the games released for the 360 because you don’t have the right hardware. Welcome to the PC, fuckers. This is the potential problem.

See, consoles are supposed to be anti-PC in the fact they are a platform that supports all games released for it. You make a game for the 360, it works. No worrying about video cards, amounts of memory, etc, because you know exactly what the hardware will be that you’re releasing for. That is the best of part of the console, games just work (for the most part…lets not even get into the current trend of more and more bugs in console games). If you buy a 360 game at the store, you take it home, you have no worries about your system being compatible, it just works.

So what happens when the PS3 releases it’s next version with a faster processor or the next 360 comes with a better video card? We’ll have different versions, we’ll have games that have support all types of system and worst of all, we’ll end up with games that require a specific version of the system. To be fair, this hasn’t happened yet. The Elite doesn’t do this, but it sure as hell opens the door. We are now one misstep from MS or Sony to losing the best part of consoles.

So while I’m looking at the Elite, going that’s pretty damn cool, I’m not too happy about it. First, I’m a 360 owner currently. I’m pretty happy with it, but I would love to have a HDMI connection. Not to mention the extra HD space so I can have more than a few demos and HD TV shows on it at once. Second, this seems like a warning shot. A shot across the bow, if you will.

I worry that this is the beginning of the end. That Microsoft just started the real console wars. That in the future we’ll see three or four (or more!) versions of same console from each manufacture and developers will not only have to account for that, they will end up developing games that only run on specific versions.

I predict in this generation or the next, we’ll see not only versions of the same console that have different components inside (beyond the ipod goodies), we’ll see games that require specific versions. And that’s the beginning of the end. Look what it did to PC gaming…

And to be fair, I could easily be over reacting, but what’s to stop Sony, for instance, at the end of the PS3 cycle, with an install base of 20+ million users of releasing a suped up version of the PS3 with newer components/features to prolong the life of the system? Nothing. As a matter of fact, it would make them a LOT of money. They’d be able to make a PS2 Slim like edition that wasn’t just visually better, but ran all of the now older PS3 games better and allowed them eek out another couple of years from the PS3 cycle AND get millions of users to rebuy. I can’t see any corporation turning that down.

What Would Matt Do: Hope I’m wrong.