Comic #55 : "History is written by the victors"

I'm really please with this comic as I think it's got the best artwork in any of the comics I have done to date. Not that the art is meant to be impressive - I'm not really using the tools, nor do I possess the skill or practice needed to churn out amazing artwork, but I do aim to steadily increase the quality.

The joke isn't meant to be "soon Apple will be making everything" - although I did through in the extra Apple gear as an additional joke. The point is meant to be that with all the controversy over the PS4 and Xbox One launches (particularly with regards to the Xbox One's DRM/Used Games policies that have now been scrapped) Sony and Microsoft are becoming dinosaurs in their industry.

It seems to be assumed that there will always be consoles and they will always been made by these companies. The neatly forgets that, in the 8th generation, Sony are on the their 4th console and Microsoft on their 3rd. No one lasts forever.

Consoles are changing, and while the technology for better graphics will always be created, the ceiling for graphics was never technological. It was economical.

That's not to say that the costs of producing Triple A titles couldn't be massively reduced. But the fact is - as much as some gamers like to dismiss iOS and Android games as being "phone games" - the hardware now coming out for these devices is just as capable as the Xbox 360 and PS3. If Apple produced an iOS-box, there is a huge library of quality titles that would require little work from developers to recode to be controlled by a gamepad.

Microsoft's DRM strategy was wrong not because digitally owned titles won't work in the games industry, it was because they refused to offer choice. Apple got away with its locked down ecosystem because it created a new ecosystem. If it had had a competitor it would not have succeeded. However, Apple's low barrier of entry has ensured games titles stay low. Freemium business models attract little controversy there because for the most part they are attached to free games, or to games where you can buy additional content - ie more chapters to game etc etc...

Sony and Microsoft are not doing this. They are selling full price titles with expensive DLC, and the DLC - prime example Mass Effect 3 - adds a big part to the core story rather than supplementing it.

Steam works, because for a start - unlike Microsoft's Xbox system - there were competing services for the same ecosystem. But also because it ran alongside the traditional "buy a disc you own" method. That forced Steam to make sure its service was better and more attractive to gamers. Microsoft were not presenting that choice.

Microsoft could have actually done that, if they wanted. They could have offered digital licenses and physical disc versions of their games. They could have made the digital service more attractive by adding all the perks that they talked about to make it more attractive to consumers. If it was as good as they claimed it was, if it was a better product, people would have bought it.

Strange that they did not take that option.

Oh, and I am an Xbox 360 owner, and until my Ouya arrives it is the only console I own. So don't take it as a fanboy rant from a PS3 owner.