is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
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This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on the intersection of gaming and technology, follow Sean Hollister. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.
How it started
They used to be called the “console wars,” and to the victor went the spoils. When Sony’s PlayStation and PlayStation 2 dominated the Sega, Nintendo, and Microsoft competition, selling over a hundred million boxes into our living rooms — each! — they created a profitable virtuous cycle. More consoles meant selling more games, which meant attracting more developers to make even more games, which meant big dollar signs for Sony.
The box will continue to be the tip of the spear, but it’s no longer the point.
But to get those dollar signs spinning and keep them spinning, console makers greased the wheels. The console wars were initially fought with exclusive games, tempting you to buy the only system that could play Final Fantasy VII, or Super Mario 64, or Halo.
Later, the “wars” enlisted your friends, too. Microsoft turned the tables in 2005 with the Xbox 360, which made both local and online multiplayer easier than on PlayStation, just in time for the explosion of online gaming and four-player couch titles. Were you really going to buy the “wrong” console and miss out on games with your pals? What if they insisted on PlayStation? The world’s internet forums erupted in debate about the merits of each brand and technical capabilities of each console.
But a funny thing happened after Sony introduced the PlayStation 3, the most powerful hardware yet. Angry devs made it known that Sony’s exotic Cell architecture was exceedingly and annoyingly difficult for game development. Valve cofounder Gabe Newell famously called it “a waste of everybody’s time.”
No game console manufacturer wanted to risk repeating the mistake. By 2012, Sony and Microsoft had chosen AMD x86 chips for their next hardware, giving them the same architecture as Windows PCs, and they’ve never looked back. Combined with the rise of premade multiplatform game engines like Unreal and Unity, it became easier for developers to bring their games to more platforms simultaneously.
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