Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
Quit whining. A Microsoft monopoly isn't always a bad thing -- especially if it kicks off a renaissance in gaming creativity.
Aug 29, 2000 | An age-old theological debate has finally been resolved: Evil really does have a valuable place in the world.
Because last July, Beelzebub himself -- Bill Gates -- announced that Microsoft will spend half a billion dollars on marketing and sales for its new Xbox game console. Following that decree, he released 1,000 developer kits to game designers.
Two months earlier, Gates sent shock waves through the gaming community when it was revealed that he had ordered his minions to buy premier computer game studio Bungie Software, creator of the beloved Marathon and Myth series and one of the last independent studios to publish its own titles. Game-loving hobbits and elves could only shudder -- the dark shadow of software's Sauron was inexorably expanding its reach.
Indeed, the Chicago company thus sent in exodus to the rain-swept campus of Redmond, Wash., was but the latest to make the unholy alliance, joining Relic, Gas Powered Games, Ensemble Studios (creator of Age of Empires) and highly admired Wing Commander designer Chris Roberts, among others.
But it was good. It was very, very good. Gamers should rejoice.
I make this confession at great cost. I've resisted saying it for nearly six months. I didn't even bother attending Gates' unveiling of the Xbox, with its built-in DVD player and internal hard drive (a console first) at the Game Developers Conference in March. No, I was there to see Peter Molyneux, a genuine genius, not Gates, a lucre-obsessed, mediocre coder who'd lucked into some insanely fortuitous timing and software acquisitions to become the richest dandruff victim in human existence. What did I care about this game console of his, some ill-conceived also-ran muscling into an already crowded market?
I even said as much three months later, between my fifth plate of lousy sushi and my sixth Sapporo, on the eve of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, slushily expounding to a cadre of pained-looking game industry executives, "Everyone who wants to own a console already owns one, and if they get a new one, it'll probably be Sony's PlayStation 2, which can play their old PlayStation games. And the PC gamers won't buy the Xbox because by the time it comes out -- who's going to wait until fall 2001, anyway? -- top-line PCs will be two, three times faster. So who the hell is left to get an Xbox, unless Gates starts giving them away?"
The scales have now fallen from my eyes. In ways that seem all too painfully obvious, there is no option but to accept the coming of the Xbox, which is likely to devastate the market for cutting-edge PC games, not to mention its competitors, and gain a near monopoly on the console market, as surely as Microsoft has with the desktop operating system.
This, however, is an unalloyed good. The power of the Xbox will unleash a renaissance of creativity and risk taking. Meanwhile, it will liberate gamers from the PC and the crack-addict lure of endless new peripherals and CPUs. All computer gamers, then, should welcome Gates' entrance into the market and start saving their money, not for a top-end PC, but for a $200 or $300 Xbox (when it arrives sometime next year) and a high-resolution TV -- all the while cordially reaching out to convince other gamers who might not yet be converted. Spread the gospel: This monopoly will be good for you.
In other words: Embrace and extend. And enjoy.
Get Salon in your mailbox!