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Comment by smacktoward | Hacker News Reader

> why do console manufacturers put so much effort into preventing unvetted code from running on their hardware?

Because they want to prevent a repeat of the circumstances that led to the great video game crash of 1983 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_1983).

The first generation of home consoles didn’t have any restrictions on what they could run. The result was a flood of shoddy, low-quality games, which ruined the reputation of those consoles and nearly killed the entire market for home gaming.

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Can this even happen again? Look at PCs. The cost to produce a very low quality game has never been cheaper, and the infrastructure to spread it has never been better. But there isn't really a problem. We now have marketplaces that have some level of curation in them that prevents this from being a major problem. It isn't a perfect system, but there is no threat of it crashing the video game industry.

Social expectations of games, knowledge about games, information sharing about games, and platforms that allow this knowledge to propagate have made it so I can't see this as being any threat at all.

Add in that we are talking homebrew, so its not like the content will have Nintendo's stamp of approval on it nor accessible to the average user, and the line of reasoning seems completely invalid.

Though it wouldn't be the first time a company did something for reasons that were no longer valid.

I think this is pretty spot on.

The market back in the 80s was an experimental fledgling market that was prone to crashing and loss of faith. This was largely solved through licensing however rather than technical drm (Nintendo lockout chips not withstanding).

There was after that, an expectation and an assertion of quality. From the user side of things, this was the Nintendo Seal of Approval. That meant to the buyer that it was at least a working somewhat playable game. We could argue the relative merits of that program but I think largely speaking it did the job.

These days, Gaming is a form of entertainment that is completely mainstream, I would argue that it is immune to abandonment and major crashes much like other forms of entertainment. (Keeping in mind that Video games thrive during recessions due to low dollar per hour of entertainment ratios.) Void some completely destructive force (Major War, that derails most normal avenues of business) it won't crash out anymore than books, TV or Film. (It may modify and change delivery mechanisms, but none of these are going away any time.)

So I don't necessarily agree that protection against low quality efforts is something that is compelling Console security, though its often what is said.

Yeah but PC gamers are a different breed, and typically know what they're doing way more than the console market (generally speaking)..

Consoles are more of a known quantity, and "Sony", "Microsoft" or "Nintendo" on the hardware box represents a seal of quality (up to a point), both with the hardware and the software that will run on it.

This gives uninformed buyers (i.e. grandma - just to stick with a known stereotype) confidence that they're not buying something awful for their grandchild.

Before the pedants jump in, I know this is an over-simplification and there are bad games on consoles, yes yes..

But that's the general idea.. It's like the Apple App Store (minus the sheer volume of available software), it's a walled garden so there's an implied level of review and quality that is supposed to give consumers some confidence about the products, both hardware and software.

Also, less now than before, hardware manufacturers don't make money on the machines, they make money on the licensing for the software.

Console makers aren't interested in making devices that sell at super thin margins and provide zero incremental revenue because they get bought by a homebrew crowd that won't buy into the ecosystem.

In the "old days", there used to be a big genre separation between PC and consoles. Prior to consoles being powerful enough to drive FPS games, they were generally the best way to play arcade ports, Japanese RPGs and communal multiplayer games.

The lines started to really blur (imo) with the Xbox 360, when people really started playing FPS on TVs in very big numbers.

On the other hand, the types of games that kept me buying consoles (fighting games like Street Fighter and Tekken) are now released day and date with consoles. Thanks to the availability of these games and high frequency of huge discounts on Steam, I no longer foresee any reason for myself to ever buy a new console in the future.

Consoles are still great for fans of certain franchises and genres (like Zelda, Mario Kart and Rock Band) that don't make it to PCs, but for everyone else, I'm not so sure.

Even if console gamers are a different breed, I feel like the homebrew crowd is even more different from console gamers than console gamers are from pc gamers.

>Console makers aren't interested in making devices that sell at super thin margins and provide zero incremental revenue because they get bought by a homebrew crowd that won't buy into the ecosystem.

But are they really a threat, and are they a big enough threat to be worth spending the time and money to lock out?

The two most important electronic marketplaces for games today are probably Steam and the iOS App Store (not necessarily in that order).

Neither of these is as wide-open as the first-gen consoles were. Despite this, both are absolutely flooded with crap, to the point where the most common complaint I see from developers about both is how easy it is for a good game to get lost in the noise — if Valve/Apple don’t feature your title on the store’s home page, you basically have no hope of being found.

So I do think this is a valid concern, though perhaps not quite so dire a threat as the platform owners think it is.

I think this might be a valid concern for any app store, or market as a whole. I'm thinking of Akerloff's "Market for Lemons" paper here, about the difficulty of assessing quality in advance.

Games have a sunk cost of time installing and getting started, often including a tutorial and introduction. This applies even if the game has no monetary cost. If a player finds too much of their time is wasted by bad games, they'll become more conservative and not try new games unless strongly recommended by friends.

The big games continue to do OK, but the "long tail" gets a steeper inflection point - the middle tier of games is hollowed out and the rest of the tail becomes trash and knockoffs.

> Can this even happen again? Look at PCs.

PCs are precisely where you should look to see it happening. The torrential influx of shovelware on steam has made it crazy hard to dig for indie games, to the point where I’ve stopped bothering

I don't have much issue finding them on steam.

Sometimes I look through new releases, and if I see something I like, try it out and review it. Yes, this is often filled with lots of bad games. Other times I look through new games on a given category, and only pay attention to the ones positively rated. This gets rid of all the shovel ware.

But most often when I am looking at a new indie game, I have gotten the recommendation from somewhere else. Often friends or reddit.

I can't think of a better system that would allow something like alpha Minecraft of Dwarf Fortress while stopping shovel ware. I've even found some RPG maker games that were great, but can be impossible to tell apart from all the bad ones. Maybe it exists, but centralized curation is not it.

Also, the current system allows those who want centralized curation to have it. You just follow self appointed curators you like. The benefit is that if you stop liking them or want to follow more than one, you are free to. You can't just pretend all the games they don't curate don't exist, which is what happens if there was a centralized curation in place.

You could rely on word-of-mouth recommendations.

For instance, I think you should try "West of Loathing", by Asymmetric.

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