More than two years since Microsoft's erstwhile gaming evangelist, J
Allard, announced that the next generation of consoles would arrive
at the head of a technology and media transition he termed the "HD
Era", you might be forgiven for thinking that the transition is a
done deal.
HDTV sets fill the windows of electronics retailers around the
world, enticing customers with their sleek, shiny looks. Consumers
on web forums debate the relative merits not of HD versus SD
screens, but of different HD resolutions. And the press is sold on
the concept, throwing around formerly alien phrases like HDMI, HDCP
and 1080p with wild abandon.
The HD transition, you might think, is in full swing. What seemed
like a risky gamble two years ago - betting the farm on the idea
that consumers would be prepared to upgrade their TV equipment - has
been gradually turned around to look like a well-informed choice.
2007, we are told, is the Year of High Definition - the year that
Xbox 360 and PS3, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, 720p and 1080p, will become
the basic standards for the content we eyeball on a daily basis.
It's a lovely piece of spin, and I'm sure that PR bosses around the
globe have been burning the midnight oil on that one - but the real
picture, I suspect, is very different. For a vast number of
consumers - almost certainly a majority - HD remains an almost
meaningless buzzword, a confusing high-end technology whose purpose,
requirements and cost have been badly communicated.
The real-world example of a friend whose apartment I visited last
week is a useful eye-opener. He's in his mid-20s, professional and
fairly affluent - a perfect example, actually, of the casual gamer
demographic most games firms are so keen on winning over.
He's also the proud owner of a 46-inch Samsung high definition TV,
which takes pride of place in his living room. It wasn't cheap; he's
perfectly happy to spend on his home entertainment kit. As a
consumer, he is slap bang in the middle of the road along which the
HD juggernaut is supposedly steaming.
Here's the catch. In the five months since acquiring his delightful,
shiny Samsung HDTV, he has not watched one single second of high
definition content on the set - and he had absolutely no idea that
this was the case. He knew that he had a "HD" television; he knew,
quite specifically, that they have sharper pictures, and thus he
wanted a "HD" set. What he didn't know, and what the HD lobby
completely failed to educate him about, was that having acquired a
HD set, he also needed HD content and HD players and receivers for
the experience to actually work.
The conversation with him on this matter was almost farcical - and
this was only an attempt to explain the need for a fully HD
throughput from start to finish to actually take advantage of his
kit, never mind messing around with geeky technical nonsense like
720p or 1080p.
The press and the hardcore consumers can pretend all they like that
multiple HD resolutions are a perfectly simple matter; to the
average consumer still struggling to get his head around what's "HD"
and what isn't (mentioning that even a HD TV and a HD-DVD player
connected up with an old-fashioned SCART cable won't actually give
you a HD picture got a particularly long-suffering look), such
points are utter gibberish.
This was, of course, an isolated incident - but a quick trawl of
electronics retailers reveals that these scenes are repeated across
the country, countless times each day. Consumers, frankly, don't
know what HD is aside from being "a bit sharper". They plug their
new HDTVs into existing, non-upscaling DVD players and standard
definition game consoles, using old analogue video cables, and think
that everything is working (albeit disappointing) because the
picture looks a bit sharper than it did on their old CRT
televisions.
Industry insiders, AV nuts and hardcore gamers can roll their eyes
all they like at such behaviour; this is the reality of public
uptake of HD right now, and it's not doing anyone trying to sell a
product on the promise of high-definition wonder-visuals any good.
Of course, it's no surprise that consumers are so confused when the
companies behind the HD lobby can't seem to get their message
straight either. Sony threw a spanner into the works with the
decision to start calling 1080p "True HD", and more than one
electronics store employee I spoke to had tales to relate of
consumers who had already bought a 720p television, coming into the
store angry and annoyed at the idea of having to upgrade to 1080p so
they would have "real" high definition... Despite not having a
Blu-Ray player or any other kind of device actually capable of
outputting HD, let alone 1080p HD.
Sony aren't solely to blame, though. Microsoft can't get its message
straight either; it vacillates wildly from claiming that HD isn't
really that important (mostly when downplaying the market for high
definition movie discs) to claiming that it's absolutely vital
(mostly when talking about high definition games, presumably keenly
aware that most consumers still aren't convinced that their trusty
PS2 needs an upgrade).
The HD disc format war doesn't help; consumer uncertainty over the
desperately ill-conceived HDCP standards doesn't do much for the
education of the masses about the joys of HD either. Under such
confused circumstances, it's no surprise that Nintendo has found the
lack of HD support in the Wii - lambasted as a disastrous decision
by its critics - to be no barrier at all to selling consoles.
The HD juggernaut will, of course, roll onwards relentlessly. There
is no doubt that standard definition will be replaced by high
definition in time - but at present, serious questions need to be
asked over how much time we're actually talking about.
Until consumers at large are much, much more educated about HD - and
much more comfortable in their understanding of the benefits of the
technology - then standard definition will continue to be incredibly
common, even in homes which own a HD set. At a time when the
videogames industry wants to sell its new range of products on the
strength of stunning HD visuals, that's a worrying and unhealthy
possibility.
After all, we all know how damaging a console hardware transition
can be to the bottom lines of everyone involved. The prospect of
adding a mismanaged display technology transition to the mix is not
a pretty one; and if the roll-out of HD technology continues to be
botched in this way, the public perception of the value of next-gen
videogames will be one of the main victims.
The HD lobby needs to start scoring better grades in communication -
or risk losing the fickle enthusiasm of consumers, and dragging this
transition out for years longer than it needs to take.
(gamesindustry.biz)
Mstation Games Review
Fri, 06 Apr 2007
