Dennis Dyack has always seemed to be one of the progressive thinkers in the video game industry. In a recent interview, those colors have once again shone through. During the interview, he described how he would like to see a sole video game platform on which all software developers release their games. Specifically, he had this to say:
"I think we’re moving towards a homogeneous platform whether people like it or not. At the end of the day, I think it’s in everyone’s best interest that there be one hardware console, whether it be Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo or whether all three of them got together and said, ‘Ok we’re going to agree upon a standard for everyone to make.’ In the movie industry it helped tremendously because as a content creator, all we want to do is make games and entertain people."
He may be right, but we have a long way to go before hardware manufacturers decide to abandon that aspect in favor of a strictly software development approach.
Personally, I feel that the creation and agreement upon a single platform would be the best thing the gaming industry has seen in a very long time. The focus would be on software, and the "exclusive title" (which is all but gone, already) would be extinct. Gamers would have access to every game out there, and the gaming industry would mature into a different sort of industry, where the juvenile mudslinging between companies would disappear, and competition would boil down to making the best possible game in order to produce maximum profit.
