Former PlayStation Exec Says Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo Must Learn From VHS's Victory Over Betamax if They Want to Truly Expand the Console Audience

Video crippled console income headdress retired each procreation astatine astir 250 million, truthful however volition the console manufacturers interruption done that barrier? By learning a important acquisition from the videotape format war, 1 erstwhile PlayStation enforcement has suggested.

Speaking connected the Pause for Thought and Naomi Kyle YouTube channel, Shawn Layden, erstwhile brag of Sony Interactive Entertainment America (SIEA), said the console video crippled marketplace has deed a limit, and important alteration is needed to grow beyond it.

“We speech astir gaming arsenic being this $250 cardinal industry, which it is, and person hundreds of millions of users, which it does,” helium began. “But of people that includes if you're playing Wordle, you're a gamer. If you're playing Candy Crush, you're a gamer successful that number. But the fig of discrete consoles sold implicit immoderate peculiar procreation caps retired astir 250 million. If you enactment up each the PS1s, Sega Saturns, and N64s, and you spell by generations, it's each astir 250. The 1 clip it popped to astir 300 was the procreation that had the Wii, and radical thought you could bargain Wii Fit and suffer weight. So, we got immoderate non-traditional gaming assemblage to bargain into the gaming manufacture astatine that time. But that was an anomaly and we've inactive benignant of flattened out. So we request to ace that cap, that barrier.”

But how? Layden said the video crippled manufacture should survey the past arsenic it looks to the future, successful peculiar Betamax’s nonaccomplishment to VHS successful the videotape format war.

The videotape format warfare was a precocious 1970s/1980s conflict betwixt Sony's Betamax and JVC's VHS for dominance successful location video recording, with VHS yet winning owed to longer signaling times, broader licensing (more manufacturers), and cardinal partnerships with movie studios, making movies disposable for rental/purchase connected VHS much readily, contempt Betamax often having somewhat amended archetypal quality.

“Betamax mislaid to VHS for 1 crushed only: that VHS licensed its format crossed galore antithetic manufacturers,” Layden explained. “Sony held the unsocial Betamax patent trademark and everything. There was a licence we did with Toshiba towards the extremity of the lifecycle, but it ne'er went wide similar VHS.

Shawn Layden, Xbox brag Phil Spencer, and erstwhile Nintendo of America main Reggie Fils-Aime astatine The Game Awards 2018. Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images.

“People didn't recognize that request of having the aforesaid instrumentality arsenic your neighbor. You tin person an RCA TV and you tin person a Sony TV and you cognize that's each fine. But erstwhile your neighbour has picked VHS and you privation to ticker that portion of that movie, but you person Betamax, each of a sudden… So the manufacture coalesced astir VHS.

“Then aboriginal on, Sony and Phillips created the compact disc consortium. They created the patent and past they licensed it retired to each the different manufacturers. Same happening happened with DVD. Same happening happened with Blu-ray. They said that we'll vie connected the device. So if you get a Bang & Olufsen Blu-ray player, it's going to outgo you much than the Sanyo version, adjacent though they'll some enactment the platform, but they'll person antithetic bells and whistles.”

This, Layden said, is precisely what the video crippled manufacture should do: make a gaming format consortium of sorts.

“I deliberation we request to get successful a satellite wherever we person a gaming format,” helium said. “Maybe it conscionable comes from PC. Maybe we find a mode conscionable to bash it each successful a Linux kernel oregon something. And past we person a consortium astir that. We person licensing programs which let different manufacturers to physique into that space, and past you tin speech astir existent numbers moving. You know, that's however you get to the ubiquity of the toaster. But close now, I deliberation we're trapped successful this containment field.”

Following Layden’s thought present though, it would necessitate Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo to travel unneurotic to hold upon a singular gaming format that means each video games play connected each consoles. Not lone that, but immoderate institution would past beryllium capable to effort its manus astatine making a PlayStation oregon an Xbox, and vie with the first-party console manufacturers successful the market.

How apt is that to happen, though? Maybe there’s a satellite successful which Microsoft does thing similar this with Xbox, fixed its existent multiplatform argumentation for its video games. Sony releases immoderate of its games connected PC (and, with Helldivers 2, yet connected Xbox), but it seems a agelong mode from a broad multiplatform policy. Nintendo is possibly the slightest apt of the 3 to articulation forces with its console rivals. You’ve ever needed a Nintendo console to play The Legend of Zelda (officially), and I can’t spot the adjacent mainline Zelda crippled coming retired connected thing different than the Switch 2 erstwhile the clip is right.

Essentially, it would mean the existent decease of the console exclusive. For now, though, console exclusives stay a thing, Layden insisted. “I don't deliberation each crippled has to beryllium console exclusive. I don't deliberation each crippled should beryllium console exclusive, but I bash judge the information that if you're going to person level companies similar Sony and similar Nintendo mostly — Microsoft is much of the Xbox everyplace anyplace — determination is simply a immense worth to the marque of having beardown exclusives.

“If Mario starts showing up connected PlayStation, that's the apocalypse, right? Cats and dogs surviving together. And the aforesaid goes for Nathan Drake and Uncharted. They marque the level sing.”

Currently, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are inactive precise overmuch successful the concern of making video crippled consoles that play lone games released for those consoles. Sony is plotting the inevitable PlayStation 6, Microsoft has committed to releasing a next-gen Xbox, though it sounds similar a PC/console hybrid, and Nintendo conscionable launched the Switch 2 (perhaps the Switch 3 volition follow).

Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images.

Wesley is Director, News astatine IGN. Find him connected Twitter astatine @wyp100. You tin scope Wesley astatine [email protected] oregon confidentially astatine [email protected].