Thursday, February 28, 2008
Ownership rights to Game platforms
The WII, Xbox 360 and playstation 3, all are next generation systems and all are a bit pricey (except for Wii which is only $250). Now these systems all have interesting and im sure high powered computers in them but hey are also very closed in terms of allowing people to find out what makes them tick and how to manipulate them. The wiii differs somewhat on this issue however because it is really a "clever bluetooth device". (and a bit easier to get into) They have already been used as a remote controller for a vacuum cleaner and a platform to replicate the thousand dollar whiteboard tech that has recently come out (and that you constantly see CNN using to track votes). Now i can see from the producers point of view that they dont want to allow others to discover their trade secrets but at the same time the people who want to discover the inner workings are not trying to create their own platform rather they are trying to make improvements to it and isnt that something that would in fact benefit the producers because it they would be able to boast that it has many uses beyond its primary functions of gaming
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but what you're really talking about are the standards for wireless console controllers, not the ownership rights over the consoles themselves.
The peripheral business can be quite lucrative to console manufacturers, who typically lose money on the actual console sales, but make up for it in royalty payments from game publishers (which constitutes the majority of gross profit for console manufacturers), as well as first-party peripheral sales. By selling first-party branded controllers, memory units and other console peripherals far above manufacturing cost, console manufacturers make a fairly heft profit.
Before consoles used wireless controllers, it was fairly trivial to reverse-engineer a controller by figuring out the electrical pulses triggered by pushing each button, then building copies and selling them for far less than the "official" controllers. Console manufacturers despise this practice, and have tried unsuccessfully for years to lock third party peripheral manufacturers out from their systems.
With the most recent generation of consoles, the PS3, the XBOX360, and the Wii, most controllers are wireless. While the PS3 and the XBOX360 allow modular controllers (i.e. for the Guitar Hero genre of games) with the inclusion of standard USB ports, they have chosen to make regular controllers function only over proprietary wireless protocols. This means it is far more difficult for third party manufacturers to reverse-engineer the protocol to make their own controllers. The controllers have special hardware to send and receive the "messages", as does the console itself, as well as a special "language" (protocol) that is incredibly difficult to decipher and build upon. In addition, because of constant internet connectivity on these consoles, console manufacturers have the ability to lock out third-party peripherals via a simple simple software update.
Nintendo has taken another path with the Wii, choosing to use standard bluetooth hardware and protocols for it's wireless "Wii-motes". It's innovative, powerful, and open design has allowed the device to be used for all sorts of innovative purposes beyond just the Wii. Developers, such as Stanford PhD candidate Johnny Lee, have taken Wii remote programming to a new level, and their work is being used to refine best practices for game developers using the device on the Wii.
As to the openness of video game platforms as a whole, it's truly a rarity. Video game consoles have typically been built off of proprietary hardware, custom built for the specific console. The one exception to this is the original XBOX, which was built from off-the-shelf PC hardware. This decision, initially intended to keep costs down, allowed hardware hackers, like Andrew "Bunnie" Huang to go under the hood of the system, figure out what things go, and how to open the system to user-driven innovation.
Typically manufacturers try to lock out users from putting their own code on consoles by verifying that all software is official, however, hackers typically build special modules that they attach to the insides of consoles to circumvent this. While on most modern consoles, that solely enables the user to play copied games, on the original XBOX, it led to the development of the XBMC Project (Xbox Media Center), transforming it into one of the most powerful set-top-boxes ever built. When shown one of these user-modified XBOX applications, Bill Gates, Microsoft's Chairman, directed the development team for the XBOX360 to build tools that not only allowed some customizability akin to the modified XBOXes, but also to develop small software, seen in the XBOX LIVE Arcade feature now present on XBOX360.
However, this sort of innovation that ran free on the XBOX platform cut into Microsoft's bottom line. Recall, they were losing money on every console sold, and made their costs back on the royalties from games sold. In addition to allowing user-written software, these modchips allow the users to play copied games. The bottom line is that console manufacturers want some innovation, but on their terms, and are afraid to build systems that are completely open, for the fear that innovations may cannibalize their business model.
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