The Hybrid Era

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I think it’s safe to say we’ve spent most of our gaming lives on this train barreling towards improvement in gaming. It’s always been about the next big upgrade and the era of something. The 8-bit, the 3D era, the HD era, and the weird place we exist in now that I’ve begun to dub the “Hybrid era.”

The hybrid era consists of the current platforms we have to work with. We have the PlayStation 4 and its many physical forms of pro and slim that play games in slightly different ways. On the other side, we have the Xbox One that has been struggling to keep to the standard Sony has edged them out on for the past four years or so. And in the middle, we have Nintendo, fresh out the gate with something that, to most people, they don’t consider in the same league or playing the same competitive game.

Outside of the consoles in this hybrid era, we also have the lukewarm beginnings of VR that people can’t seem to latch onto, and the ever-advancing race to power in the PC realm. A race that Sony and Microsoft seem keen to join in on as of late.

An interesting mashup of ideas that are slightly similar yet at the same time manage to be completely different from each other. The progress towards power is high with Sony and Microsoft, yet Nintendo seems to prefer to cash in on the games make the hardware mantra. Not to say that Sony isn’t killing it with software either, as evidenced by the vast amount of 2017 games already in contention for game of the year, but I digress.

What I find fascinating about the hybrid era are the common ideas and differences that come together to make unique and exciting content that is no longer available on a single platform. It’s an age that I feel began with the Wii console's introduction.

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I’ve heard the seventh generation of consoles be dubbed the Wii60 era, as everyone played a majority of their games on a 360 console when Microsoft dominated the early years of the generation, and still needed their Nintendo fix with the Wii. If you owned only the Wii, you missed out on some of the most impactful first and third party games in decades. If you didn’t own the Wii, the same could be said for some of Nintendo’s finer first party offerings.

It’s a weird yet new socially accepted concept. The competition used to be all about a one-sided war. You either went all in on Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft. The Wii began the notion of Nintendo being too underpowered for third parties to keep up, so you needed another platform if you still cared enough to want to play those properties. The same concept carried over as the Wii U, PS4 and One rolled out, albeit to a lesser extent.

The Wii U was quite obviously unable to survive on only its first party support, and the competition managed to swallow the market around it. The minority of individuals that did happen to own one, however, still tended to have a PS4 or One to get the full generational experience.

The saying of owning Nintendo to play Nintendo had never been truer, but the hidden point remains that owning Nintendo meant missing out on the full spectrum of games. Some people are content with this to this day, yet others were left feeling empty and left out of the race altogether.

While this may seem to target Nintendo in particular, this isn’t the intention. Because the same shenanigans are being pulled on the console platform completely, and on the PC platform to boot.

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The hybrid era has brought us to this marketing war zone where timed exclusivity and, “better on ours,” ideas are rampant. Some games come to Sony first, or third parties stay on Sony and never make it over to other consoles or PC. PC users find themselves continually being shafted by timed exclusives on the PS4 and Xbox One that they won’t get to see for months if not years, or even at all. I mean, Red Dead Redemption never made its way to PC and the second doesn’t look likely to either. And GTA V took almost a year and a half to make its debut on PC finally!

Xbox One has nearly killed individual franchises, (ala Rise of The Tomb Raider,) thanks to their timed exclusivity to keep the games from the competition for as long as possible to sell hardware.

And what makes all of this marketing is interesting, is how well it’s working. Looking at the signatures of the replies to this article alone will show you some people that have shared platforms now. To most of us, it’s become the only way to feel like we’re getting the full buffet of games and not getting stuck in the corner with the salad bar meal deal.

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I have a PC, a Nintendo Switch and a PS4 for this generation. The Switch is to play the Nintendo games I want to play. The PS4 will let me play the JRPG’s and Sony exclusives I want to play that I’ll never see on Switch or PC. The PC is to play all the third-party games that aren’t locked to Sony or Nintendo’s console to their full potential. Each console serves an overall purpose that contributes to the full hybrid generation I play games on.

I think the argument could be made that Sony has the healthiest balance of all the console platforms at the moment. They have shafted the competition in every possible way to secure incredible exclusives both first and third party. The people who grew up Nintendo could never leave behind the allegiance to Zelda and Mario they grew up with. They also have a hard time leaving behind all the other titles they’ll never see on their console thanks to Nintendo’s lack of power.

You could also argue this mentality of hybrid platforms goes back to the beginning of gaming, but I don’t see it that way. There was a balance of third parties that attempted to contribute to all the platforms up until the seventh generation.

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You can recall the days of seeing the new Need for Speed game on GameCube, Xbox, and PS2. The sports games were all platform. The weird movie tie-in games went to each system. The third parties catered to each property they could to make the most money on each platform.

This led to the fight for strong exclusives and power that separated the generations in ways that forced you to think you needed to go all in on one platform.

The incentive now is to cater to where the money is most likely to be, even if that means alienating separate userbases. An incentive that has forced the hand of many gamers to spread out to experience everything they want to play.

The hybrid era is something I’ve come to accept as normal now. As much as I have love Nintendo, I could never see them actively trying to play the game of the competition. I think they are resigned to doing their own thing, meaning I’ll continue to buy into their platform for their games and seek out the other games on other platforms. Sony and Microsoft will keep butting heads and gobble up anything they can use against the other. PC users can be content with the third parties they do get to play and wait for the, “console exclusive first’s,” to eventually make their way to the platform.

I don’t see this era indeed fading in the future either. The market competition offers no hope for that kind of change. I think we’ll continue to see an uglier battle of divided franchises among platforms that continues to make it difficult to stick to one company. And I find that incredibly ironic in a lot of ways as well.

Because a majority of us aren’t sticking to a single company anymore.
 

DaniPoo

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There are two reasons. The first being that you are wrong to say the PS4 and Xbox One are not already hybrid consoles. They are multimedia devices that blend various forms of entertainment into a single unit in the form of TV/Movies/Music and Gaming.

The second reason is the merging of exclusive console owning into a hybrid of multiple consoles for multiple uses. The PS4 for sony games, nintendo for nintendo and so-forth.

You are thinking of the word too narrowly.

Nah what you are talking about is not exclusive for this generation, the PS1 was a music player, the next generation could play music and DVD's, the generation after that could do all the previous and also stream entertainment, and this generation does the same as last generation.

And backwards compatibilty has been a thing for ages as well.

What makes this generetion any different from the last?

I stand by the opinion that when (and if) Sony and Microsoft decides to adapt the "hybrid console" formfactor as Nintendo called it, with Nintendo's definition of the name, Then we'll have a "hybrid generation".

All console's are expected to do Backwards compatibility and have other entertainment than gaming since a while back, and those consoles that didn't have those features got a lot of critisism. Just look at how some people are bashing the switch for only playing games and nothing else (And that's this generation) And Nintendo call it a hybrid console..
 
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netovsk

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@Foxi4 You're definitely wrong on this. ZombiU PS4/XB1 ports for instance don't have the local versus mode and other features the Wii U game has. Sames goes for other games. What you mean is that they can make a crappy port with dumbed down mechanics or absent mechanics at all and this works fine for a cash grab but not much else.

Now games like Uncharted 4 or Mario Kart 8 could be ported to every other platform just fine.
 

Foxi4

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@Foxi4 You're definitely wrong on this. ZombiU PS4/XB1 ports for instance don't have the local versus mode and other features the Wii U game has. Sames goes for other games. What you mean is that they can make a crappy port with dumbed down mechanics or absent mechanics at all and this works fine for a cash grab but not much else.

Now games like Uncharted 4 or Mario Kart 8 could be ported to every other platform just fine.
I've been around for a long time, I've seen games ported across vastly different platforms and I was okay with that. Games on the SNES and the Mega Drive were often vastly different since the capabilities of the two platforms were, which gave each port specific flavour. Just because something is different doesn't mean it's bad - if a game uses the strong points of the systems to its advantage, great - it should be praised for that. No More Heroes was designed for the Wii from the ground up, and yet it transitioned to the PS3 with PS Move support *and* an HD graphics make-over - great, can't complain.
 

DarkWork0

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I'm still playing games on all my stuff: NES, SNES, GB, GBASP, DSIXL, 3DS, 3DSXL, N3DSXL, WII, WIIU, SWITCH, GG, XBOX, PC, PS1, PS2, PSP, PS3, PS4, MOBILE. Just depends on what kind of game I'm going to play.
 

netovsk

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@Foxi4 You're trying to make a point comparing slightly different graphics and sound to ways of input and interaction like motion controls, dual screens and touch screen. Yeah Zelda Skyward Sword on anything other than Wiimote / PS Move / Joycon would be fail.


Whatever, nevermind.
 

Foxi4

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@Foxi4 You're trying to make a point comparing slightly different graphics and sound to ways of input and interaction like motion controls, dual screens and touch screen. Yeah Zelda Skyward Sword on anything other than Wiimote / PS Move / Joycon would be fail.


Whatever, nevermind.
There's a myriad of motion controllers out there besides the Wii remote and PS Move, almost every VR setup includes Hydras, Oculus controllers or some other flavour of a remote, and whatever couldn't be implemented could be very easily patched. For all intents and purposes the motion controls aspect of the game is universally reviled anyway, I distinctly remember people begging hackers to release some kind of a patch to enable GC controllers instead, but with Skyward that'd be a little more complicated than it was with TP. We've aimed with mice and analog sticks for decades, I don't see why the game couldn't be retouched to just feature a standard Zelda moveset without any loss of gameplay value. Emulators are a thing that exists, and even a gimmick feature like double screens can just be displayed on one screen, it's really not a big deal at all.
 

netovsk

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@Foxi4 this is not how the market works, no wonder kinect, ps eye, ps move and almost every non standard peripheral flopped. Not to mention bad ports which would be Skyward Sword case for instance. But maybe this would work for you, who knows?

Cheers.
 

jt_1258

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You honestly just need a Sony and Nintendo Console despite the history that has happened between these two companies.
tbh the only reason I need a sony system is for a sao and miku, which the vita has so I may just go cheap with that
 

Lord M

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Never mind (at least for me)
I'll still sticked to old games (ps2/ wii and below) because there are the meaning of true 'videogaming' essence.
 

HaloEffect17

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Let's be honest... If you have a Virtual Boy, you don't need to buy any other console or PC. :D

No, but seriously though, I've always subscribed to Nintendo systems in the past and only recently migrated to other companies' consoles about 5 or 6 years ago when I started picking up older generation consoles for cheap such as PS2 and Original Xbox. Since then, I've always found that the best experience at least for me was to have a hybrid of Nintendo and Xbox consoles, which I have for the current generation.
 

Pomegrenade

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I have a PS4, PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, Wii U, and a 3DS, as well as a PC.
(Technically the PlayStations are my dad's but I can play on em if I want)
I only actually play on the Nintendo consoles simply because I'm not into AAA shooters and racing games...
Other than Splatoon and Mario Kart.
Yeeees, Nintendo fanboys unite! (wait why isn't the DS on the list @chavosaur )
 
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codezer0

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PS4 exclusive list is longer than any console at 3 years in. It's actually kinda crazy rivals PS2 days.

How can one game in 2017 without a PS4? i don't get it. That's not a shot at any other platform it's just a fact the list it insane.
Uh, on a PC?

A lot of the most marketed titles on the ps4 do not appeal to me. I was hoping to see a new katamari game, but that hasn't happened on any recent console. So much of the visible library are rehashes of games that were on the ps3. If Sony would have made them backward compatible with ps3 games, I'd have far fewer objections to the console. But they won't even try to resolve that. And the ps3 in my experience has not been reliable at all; so I have no faith in being able to play anything in my library for it much longer. Especially since I needed a full bc version of the console, and Sony won't even try remaking that unit again.

I've simply had much better reliability on consoles I bought on the Microsoft side. I can't count original Xbox systems since I didn't have a new one, ever. But buying those to fix them up second hand has been rewarding, since it's let me go back and replay some gems I've missed. Or at least play them more correctly than on the backward compatibility mode on the 360.
 

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