Denis Dyack Says Unified Gaming Platform "Inevitable"

Following similar sentiments expressed by Electronic Arts executive Gerhard Florin, Silicon Knights boss Denis Dyack has said he believes the development of a unified gaming platform in the future is inevitable.

"Imagine a unified platform - one console for all gamers - that would bring a massive paradigm shift to the games industry, where games would become better in quality, cheaper and more widely available. Sound good? It can happen. Better yet, it's inevitable. It will happen," Dyack wrote in an article for Official Xbox Magazine.

He said the market is split, causing videogame sales to suffer as a result and making it difficult for developers and publishers to choose a platform for development, since each of the three primary hardware manufacturers may hold equal market share. A unified console will emerge, Dyack believes, not because anyone wants it to happen but simply because the market cannot sustain itself under current conditions. "The economics of the proprietary models seem to point toward spending more money and receiving fewer returns with each generation, with no clear winner," he wrote.

Dyack said he expects a unified format will emerge from "a consortium of game makers," and that manufacturers could then build systems to support that format. He foresees retail price drops and increases in hardware quality as a result, "as the model of perfect competition emerges in the hardware marketplace." Games would also become cheaper, he said, because publishers would have access to the entire market with every release.

"A one-console future is a future I think we can't avoid," he said, "and thankfully, it's a future where everyone would win."

Silicon Knights, founded by Dyack in 1992, is currently at work on Too Human, an action-RPG for the Xbox 360 due for release in 2008.

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Would a unified platform have got Too Human out in a decent time frame and kept them from going to court over the Unreal engine?

Again, this ignores every bit of history of the games business. You want unified? Build for Windows.

Yes, a unified gaming console is the future.

Just like how there's only one brand of DVD player that everybody buys. And one make of car everybody drives. And the same reason every Personal Computer is a Dell running Windows Vista.

Give me a break, Dyack.

I think there's a bit of wishful thinking from Dyack here, but actually a unified platform of sorts may yet appear... it just won't be hardware.

In fact in a small way we already have one in the form of Adobe's Flash. Sure, you can't write state-of-the-art games on it, but over the last ten years it's gone from a technology used for making web pages that annoy people to being a unified computing platform. And there's an increasing move to use it for "desktop" apps, breaking away from the idea that it's only for browsers.

There is no qualitative difference between this and a universal gaming platform. How many years (decades?) we are away from being able to write fast games with high quality 3D graphics on such a platform I wouldn't care to speculate, but to me it seems clear to me that this kind of software-based approach is the way a true unified gaming platform will emerge.

Let's see, a hardware platform where game developers can make games on one unified system, with the possibility of different manufacturers making the same console.

Isn't...isn't this...a COMPUTER?!?!?! OMFG!?!? NO WAY!!!

This guy is an idiot.

If you buy into his BS you're an idiot too.

There would be only one positive situation out of such a compromise: if the devs would unit in syndicates.
But I still can't see how can one even think it's healthy or safe to have one unified platform.

"One Ring To Rule Them All..."

Dudes, I think there may be some misconceptions at work here. EA is the evil empire and Dyack may very well be a schmuck, but their point is neither completely invalid nor unworkable. I don't think they're saying they want everyone to build exactly the same console, which of course ain't never gonna fly; what I think they're getting at is the need for a unified platform wherein everyone builds their own hardware, but it's all completely cross-compatible. There are multiple brands of DVD players, but they all play the same DVDs; there are multiple types of cars but they all fill up at the same pumps; there are multiple brands of personal computers but they all run Windows. (Mac geeks, put a sock in it.) Those examples you gave are actually perfect examples of why this could work, not why it won't.

While Macs don't run Windows by default, any Mac produced since the Intel switch can run Windows natively, so that actually supports your proposition as well. I might boot my PSWii60 into NintendOS to play Super Mario Universe, but simultaneously be running a virtualized instance of Microsoft Windows Live Home Console Edition that will seamlessly come to the foreground when I put a game developed using Microsoft's dev kits into the console.

What he's talking about is an OS layer, and if consoles were just dumbed down computers (which, admittedly, the Xbox is, so that's probably where he's getting this idea) then yeah, it makes sense that sooner or later the developers would agree and insist on a standard "format".

Of course, this runs smackgob into the reality that is the Wii. I don't care what your standard OS layer is, Wii Sports ain't gonna fly on an Xbox controller, and Metal Gear Solid Umpteen will only run in slide-show mode on your Wii.

And then you get the problem that is Microsoft. Look at the evidence of Mass Effect. Microsoft is possibly the biggest player in this industry and they've got a vested interest, and history, of making sure that "cross compatible" isn't (Anybody remember DR-DOS? There's a reason why you don't, folks) Couple that with Nintendo's brick-like mobility on games with an ESRB higher than M and any developer consortium that says "Hey guys, could you just agree on a standard and we'll program for that instead" is going to be told exactly which lake to jump into and how big a concrete block to hold while doing it.

Obviously he is referring to the Phantom.

Microsoft is already building a unified console platform, I think. Already it's much easier to do a PC-360 dual release than any other type of dual release. Microsoft's long-term goal seems to be to achieve inter-operability between the living room (Xbox) and the office (PC) hardware. And once you've unified XBox and PC, it's a short step for others to manufacture PC-like consoles that have licensed inter-operability.

In contrast, Sony's PS3 is extremely hard to program for, with totally proprietary architecture that doesn't help you release your game on any other platform. A developer who developers for PS3 is developing down a one-way street. And Sony seems to think this is a good thing.

So I believe one has to read between the lines here. This is not EA and Silicon Knights voicing a fantasy of a unified console platform. This is EA and SK telling Microsoft and warning Sony that when Microsoft makes its move towards a unified console platform, it will have their support.

A couple people mentioned operating systems, which is nice. It also sounds very PC-like as well. This brings up the one issue that developers run into with PC's: having to optimize for a wide variety of systems. So, would you truly have a unified platform? Is the PC itself really a unified platform, when how well the game runs on your system depends on how much money you have to drop onto your system?

There is no unified gaming platform, and even if you make an OS that can run the PSWii60 setup, hardware is going to always be a problem. Nintendo may use the OS, but will their hardware be up to snuff to run Microsoft's games?

At least, that's the impression that I get when people mention a unified platform. One O.S., a much more open and less specialized SDK, and the companies still free to compete with hardware....that varies and brings all the issues that causes a lot of PC games years in development (do you truly believe Half-Life 2 would've taken as long as it did if they weren't focusing on optimizing the game for a variety of systems? I don't). The only way to avoid this is one OS AND one set of hardware, which leaves the developers as software only...which just won't fly, as Nintendo and Microsoft clearly have different intentions in mind in the innovation of gaming.

I think my point has been missed...

NO - THIS DOES NOT REQUIRE A PORTABLE OS!

This problem can (in theory) be solved with software at a higher level than the OS level. This is important, because writing a portable OS is extremely hard. (And yes, I do know something about it since I was a Kernel and Graphics developer for Tao Group for almost ten years, working on their portable OS.)