Trying to ignore the imminent bloodshed about to take place as the industry’s grandfather Nintendo, and the kid that everybody wants to be mates with prepare for war is no easy task. To the victor: the glories of the lucrative handheld market, and the loser? The possible loss of an integral percentage of revenue and, in Nintendo’s case, what will probably be a catastrophic blow greatly sapping not only their hardware resources, but also the company’s overall financial resources.

            Now that’s said, the point of this article is to try and overlook all the palmtop rivalry, and discuss how the big three are viewed, and how they view themselves within the home console market, and what hints for the future we can draw from this.

            The rapid growth of the industry since the mid-nineties was no mistake. After inter-company communications broke down between Sony and Nintendo when developing the Playstation add-on for the SNES, Sony’s blood was boiling, and a determined new face was borne upon the industry, an industry in which they had no previous experience. Development on the Playstation was quickly switched to a solitary unit and the marketing men began developing an image for what appears to be Sony’s follow-up to the 1980’s WalkMan. The idea worked, obviously, as the WalkMan had provided the perfect marketing model for “trendy” electronical equipment, and the PlayStation sold through the roof – knocking Sega’s Saturn console for six within the first year of release. However, I doubt even Sony had predicted how the market would change, and its obvious Nintendo didn’t have a clue…

            With Sony utilising the branding techniques they’d learnt from competing in similar entertainment industries, it seemed only right that Nintendo should endeavour to do the same. However, Nintendo seem to respect themselves too much to follow another company’s lead, especially in the market they practically single-handedly created. Nintendo stood strong with their original development philosophy, and began voicing it to the world, much of which we are still hearing today. “I have gained stronger belief that the old trick of success – the combination of high-spec game consoles and advanced graphics – no longer works…” stated Nintendo’s much more vocal, but less overbearing-lord-like new head Satoru Iwata at a recent Nintendo Investor’s conference in Tokyo. Clearly, Nintendo are still missing the point. It is true that there are those amongst us that aren’t particularly impressed by flashy graphics, and prefer substance, but we are the few. High-spec gadgetry and top notch graphics sell games. It’s been written in time, year-on-year. Would you care to suggest another reason for the repeatedly amazingly high sales of the annual Fifa updates? Or the ludicrous sales achieved by the obviously half-finished Enter The Matrix?

            And this is where we see Microsoft enter the market. From their immense superiority in the Personal Computer field, Microsoft know what the techies want, and they know what the basic consumer wants. Along comes the Xbox – high-tech, incredibly powerful and easy to use, a PC in a box… and this seems to be Microsoft’s complete philosophy. From what we know of Microsoft’s next system, known as XboxNEXT internally, Microsoft intend on stretching this versatility even further. The possibility to run Windows and MS Office programs has already been announced, but when the internal hard-drive is currently doubted to appear with the console, some issues are raised as to exactly how? Could we see the extension of this to the point of pre-installed Microsoft software? In my mind, this would call for a range of XboxNEXT’s akin to that of PC’s, where you pay more in order to attain all the software, or less for a simple games machine…

            Drawing further into Microsoft’s self-portrait, we can see that although they rarely admit it, they are intimidated by Sony’s lead. Recently Microsoft have stated that despite the rumours, their next system will not be named Xbox2. The reason? Microsoft fear that consumers may automatically assume the systems inferiority to the PlayStation’s “3” affix! We know consumers are dumb, and don’t often listen to good advice, but I’ve never heard of such an inferiority complex appearing so forwardly in business before!

            When you look at how Microsoft is approaching the market, it’s easier to see how Sony and Nintendo’s machines fit in. With the power-hungry bewilder-beast Xbox taking the high-tech route, we see Sony’s PlayStation2 (and not forgetting their ill-ed PSX) fitting nicely into the multimedia entertainment section – DVD playback out-of-the-box, high-quality CD sound digitally compatible with “separate” systems, open-networking, USB accessories… Sony bought everything they knew to the system, and it worked. Lastly, Nintendo did what they know. And what do Nintendo know? Games. Nintendo make games. So Nintendo made their games console, completing the set of fourth-generation home consoles each pulling the market in their own direction.

            Now, you may be thinking “Well, that’s it then. We already know what’s coming next, and how it’s going to end…” but you’d be wrong. It is true, that with the next generation of systems we are likely to see this divide dive much deeper into the industry, but exactly how is anyone’s guess. We still know very little about what Microsoft and, even more so, Nintendo are doing, although Sony’s plans appear quite obvious currently, with a theoretical PlayStation3 having been patented in 2003. And the main problem we encounter, even once the facts are in our hands, is that each territory is very different from the next.

            Having travelled stateside last year, I can tell you that this “kiddie” image Nintendo seem to have developed in the UK is non-existent. The GameCube, although still receiving less adult-orientated releases than the competition, has its quota present and correct. Also, I cannot remember a time since the GameCube’s launch in the US where sales were anything less than fair, and never have I heard of a chain threatening to remove the system from its shelves. The Japanese however, have not taken kindly to the American influence seen in the Xbox, which has received practically non-existent sales since day one, and I’m positive the only reason Microsoft is still pursuing in the East is to keep some foundations in place for the launch of the XboxNEXT.

            So although it may be easy to draw conclusions as to what each company wishes their machine to do within the industry, it’s much more difficult to predict what the outcome of this will be. Yes, you can predict that Sony will probably win the next round as well, but what effect will all this have on the industry? Currently we are seeing rapid growth in Europe, stabilising in the US and a slump in the East, how will this change?