2. Things are going to turn out fine
Nope, not this time. Unless you’re some kind of Tyler Durden anarchist who wants to watch the world burn, in which case, yeah.
It won’t be immediate. Plenty of people will buy these shitty systems, and they’ll overlook the obvious anti-consumer bait-and-switch bullshit, because “get with the times”, you know? We’ll buy one console just to spite the other, and either way we’ll justify the purchase and support the big publishers. We’ll learn to love Satan, just as John Ricettello promises. Because we’re not smart people. We’re cultists and slaves and we don’t mind cruelty. When things get really bad we’ll make memes on Reddit about it and keep shuffling along.
But the resistance will be real. PC gaming will look better than ever, possibly move into the living room, and prove that indie developers (with the help of crowdsourcing) can scratch the collective itch much better than the publisher-friendly consoles. Hell, maybe microconsoles and Android will even get big, and maybe Linux will too. All of this will make publishers angry, desperate, and very cruel. There will be no simple, clean contest between the “Big Three” this time. The revolutionary customer-friendly alternatives will continue to build the three things we need to be awesome: love, community, and money. CEOs will burn with envy and make some very bad decisions for you, dear console-buying friend. More importantly, the tech world will pay attention to the whole scene, and the narrative of the gaming industry will be re-contextualized not as “Microsoft versus Sony” but as “Big Old Giants” versus “Brave Young Fighters”. As retail continues to dwindle, the race will become more clearly in focus: Who has best digital platform/business model? And who do you think will win that?
Yes, it will be the good guys, for a while at least. But it won’t be pretty. The death of the Big Old Giants will have a ripple effect. Companies will be shut down, people will be laid off, mergers and takeovers, and the war to destroy Internet freedom will multiply tenfold. Kickstarter will probably get shut down or bought out by EA or something. Whatever happens, the bottom line is that in our ultra-pressurized media, a winner shall be declared, and no matter which side wins, it won’t be just “fine” in the traditional sense of the word.
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