Conver-something
I had a couple interesting conversations with some analysts today that got me thinking about the place convergence has taken in today's technology landscape. It's one of those ubiquitous terms that never really seemed to, well...get where everyone said it would.
Big surprise. This is the tech business.
In this case, I'm thinking about a couple of announcements. Last week's BusinessWeek article about the potential of the PlayStation 3 to cause buyer confusion due to the fact that it does "too much" got the game blogs buzzing, and somewhat justifiably. The craze over media center PCs and other all-in-one devices continues to make the subject a hot one.
So manufacturers are in an arms race when it comes to stacking their devices with additional features. Yesterday Nintendo announced plans to release two goodies for the DS handheld gaming console. First is a customized version of the Opera web browser, the second a TV tuner. Both are hitting Japan first, and if the market likes 'em, well, Mario will be sellin' that sheez everywhere.
But back to the analysts - gaming is the ideal market for these kinds of goodies because many gamers are bleeding edge adopters, quite often because the desire for NEW takes primacy over the desire for QUALITY. That being said, the critical issue remains a fundamental preservation of the richness of the gaming experience. So the poor manufacturers to walk the fine line between enough features and too many (in addition to great software, obviously).
I'm not going to feel too sorry for them - they're the ones getting all the cash. Especially when analyst estimates put Nintendo's worldwide DS shipments at 21 million by the end of '06. The same guys think the company's archrival Sony will have shipped some 24 million PSPs by then. Yeesh. Ca$h cow. Portable gaming carried the market in 2005 , thanks to portable hardware sales posting growth rates of around 95 percent, to offset a small decline in sales of console hardware.
I haven't spent a lot of time talking to people about how they use their portable devices, but I definitely have not heard or read about anyone boasting about how they prefer watching music videos on their iPod over their TV, or browsing the web on their phone instead of a PC. Yes, I know the validity of that question is tempered by the fact that we all realize that cellphones don't compete with TVs, and Nintendo DSs don't compete with Dell PCs, but the it's interesting to watch companies continually search for their perfect device that brings the set of magic features that so many consumers are looking for. Hell - we all love looking at the latest versions of popular products and thinking about which features we like and which we don't.
We can write about how convergence is dead, but it's obviously just changed.
Big surprise. This is the tech business.
In this case, I'm thinking about a couple of announcements. Last week's BusinessWeek article about the potential of the PlayStation 3 to cause buyer confusion due to the fact that it does "too much" got the game blogs buzzing, and somewhat justifiably. The craze over media center PCs and other all-in-one devices continues to make the subject a hot one.
So manufacturers are in an arms race when it comes to stacking their devices with additional features. Yesterday Nintendo announced plans to release two goodies for the DS handheld gaming console. First is a customized version of the Opera web browser, the second a TV tuner. Both are hitting Japan first, and if the market likes 'em, well, Mario will be sellin' that sheez everywhere.
But back to the analysts - gaming is the ideal market for these kinds of goodies because many gamers are bleeding edge adopters, quite often because the desire for NEW takes primacy over the desire for QUALITY. That being said, the critical issue remains a fundamental preservation of the richness of the gaming experience. So the poor manufacturers to walk the fine line between enough features and too many (in addition to great software, obviously).
I'm not going to feel too sorry for them - they're the ones getting all the cash. Especially when analyst estimates put Nintendo's worldwide DS shipments at 21 million by the end of '06. The same guys think the company's archrival Sony will have shipped some 24 million PSPs by then. Yeesh. Ca$h cow. Portable gaming carried the market in 2005 , thanks to portable hardware sales posting growth rates of around 95 percent, to offset a small decline in sales of console hardware.
I haven't spent a lot of time talking to people about how they use their portable devices, but I definitely have not heard or read about anyone boasting about how they prefer watching music videos on their iPod over their TV, or browsing the web on their phone instead of a PC. Yes, I know the validity of that question is tempered by the fact that we all realize that cellphones don't compete with TVs, and Nintendo DSs don't compete with Dell PCs, but the it's interesting to watch companies continually search for their perfect device that brings the set of magic features that so many consumers are looking for. Hell - we all love looking at the latest versions of popular products and thinking about which features we like and which we don't.
We can write about how convergence is dead, but it's obviously just changed.
posted by Ryan at 1:29 AM
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