I am reading through Super Play magazines lately. It was a British magazine devoted to the Super NES. One thing I found odd is that the magazine didn't discriminate in regard to advertisers. I often open the first page to see a Jaguar or 3DO advertisement. Anyway, these ads reminded me of how much diversity there was in console gaming during that period.

In a single page of this magazine, I see ads advertising the following consoles:

You can thank the ever expansive cost of creating AAA games for the decline in First Party Development and the lack of exclusivity. Blockbusters just cost too much and take too many people to not release it on every platform possible. Also, modern consoles are basically PCs that you hook directly to your TV, so I doubt we'll ever see drastically different systems competing with each-other again.

I think we've kind of hit a plateau. Back in they day, it was all about graphics and sound. 8-bit, 16-bit, etc...

Now, with firmware/software updates on the fly, online only games, etc...the console life cycle has almost doubled. All the big players pushed through and the failures were left in the dust. It takes big money to back a console these days.

I think the 16-bit days were the glory days (for me), there were more games that weren't on every system than in future generations. You really did have to have all of the systems to play all of the great games. This gen I had all 3, but I only ended up with 1st party games on the Wii, everything else on the 360 and a handful of games on the PS3, which mainly was my blu-ray player.

I feel like next gen is going to be more of the same, with the Wii U being my 1st party player(if I ever get one), and the PS4/PC(I already have an incredible set up) being my gaming rig.

well, IMO its WIIPS360, no matter what you want to say. and this is because companies want money, and there is no money in being exclusive. You make more buy putting your game on everything, which basically turns the console war into controller preference.

Sure, but then you have the holdouts, your Marios, Gears, and for me it was MGS4.

5 years ago that was fine.
but look now, Mario is nothing but a sell out with hundreds of games. Halo/Gears are down to Spin-offs with the main series done. MGS has resorted to becoming the standard lame action game with the new Raiden one.
5 years ago was fine, that was a way to get you to buy their console over another one. but now, all these exclusives are tired and done to death.
I guarantee with halo done Xbox is done, especially when they try to be 'always online'.
As Gamers we don't need more of the tired old same for $50-$60 a pop. we need new and fresh and exciting. This new gen here wont come down to Mario/Halo/Metal Gear. Nintendo is here first, with a head start, we'll be getting games when the others are just on launch line-ups. PS4 will be everyone's second console for the mature games. and Xbox will be dead on arrival having already shot themselves in the foot.
These 'holdouts' will make no difference to anything imo.

Modern gaming sucks, end of story.

There's a couple of incorrect things with your thread here. Firstly, not all of those consoles were available, or even healthy, at the same time. The Nintendo 64 was released in 1996, by then, the Jaguar, 3DO, Neo Geo and CD-i were all dead in the mainstream market. LaserActive wasn't really it's own console. It was a laser disc player that supported Genesis, Sega CD and Turbo Grafx-16 games, as well as LD-based games which were just ports. Also, if you're including the Sega CD as it's own console, then you need to add the 32X and Jaguar CD. Hell, might as well toss in the Virtual Boy, it was out in 1995. By the time the PlayStation arrived, the home console market had morphed back into a 3 horse race... And then it became a 1 and a half horse race as PlayStation steamrolled the competition, with Nintendo limping along behind.

The other thing to mention is, people have been speculating that the 8th generation will see a console flood again. The PS4, Xbox 720, Wii U, Onlive, OUYA, Steam Box, Oculus Rift and various other pieces of hardware are all expected to compete around the same time, provided there's no cancellations. If you've been nostalgic about the 90s console infestation, there will probably be one last flood before everything moves to online only, where gaming will die.

Also, it's important to remember that it wasn't just the 90s that saw a lot of hardware in a similar time frame. The early 80s was just as bad. There were so many consoles released during that time, one can barely remember them all.

Nintendo had a head start but squandered it by re-releasing a Wii with a touchpad. Parents are confused by it, third parties don't care to do much more than slap a map or menu on the touchpad. Modern engines (UE4, the next frostbite engine) won't run on it, leaving the Wii U to be a Nintendo game console again. Which is fine, when I want to play a fun Nintendo property I'll buy one.

I'll agree with Halo, 4 was alright, but I remember the years between 1 and 2, and then 2 and 3. MGR was righteous, I have beat it 5 times so far, although you could argue that the game would be awesome no matter the property.

The Wii-U is dead in the water to me, nextbox might as well be with all of the anti-consumer rumors swirling around it, leaving me to just look at the PS4 if I'm going to even get a console in this next generation.

Exactly what I was going to write, with the addition that the current/next generation will add phones hooked to your TV (ouya, gamestick, etc).

Onlive, OUYA, Oculus Rift.

imo, no one give a shit about any of these and they will all not sell/fail.

Yeah, that is kind of a skewed perspective there. Most of those consoles failed to catch on and gain any kind of foothold in the console market. The console market has almost always been a 2 horse race which expanded to a 3 horse race in the last gen or two.

End of third party exclusives? I'd say that is a win for the consumer, means you don't have to worry about certain developers playing favorites or having to buy a whole new console just for 1 or 2 games you can't get elsewhere. Of course the first of second party will remain exclusive, but the other 90% of the third party stuff you should be able to play on your platform of choice.

At least now with the current homogeneity you don't have to worry so much about a console going belly up in a year or two and not being able to find games for it. Even though it was cool to read about the changing technology and all the different systems back then, I would've hated plunking down money over and over again just to be left high and dry.

Onlive is dead, Ouya had my interest until I heard about the horrendous controller lag (could be fixed in an update?), Oculus Rift seems like the future if everything I read is correct, but how often is that.

x2 Phones are already killing the handhelds.

This is the first I've heard of "nobody giving a shit" about the Oculus Rift.

And it isn't a console.  It is a display.

Seriously. At this point with all of the posturing going on between MS and Sony, and Nintendo being content in last generation, Oculus Rift is the thing I'm most excited for.

I was going to say, who really has dumped money in to any of those? Nobody....nobody ever will, either.

Modern gaming also doesn't suck, if you really believe that you shouldn't own any system ever. It just has strengths in different areas. Single player in this gen gets mainly shafted by most, but multiplayer options just destroy anything ever. It gives games so much more replayability, and is just a fun way to play games. I enjoy both, but still...I sink much more in to multiplayer.

Pc multiplayer games beat anything consoles have done, and did it better a long ass time ago. Console multiayer games are nothing special at all.

Having 3 main systems is a good thing imo. It allows me to look at the exclusives for each and decide from there.

Wii u has great exclusives, but its too much money to spend on a handful of games, especially when bigger titles won't be brought to the system.

Xbox is a joke at best to me. I dunno how adults can defend Microsoft and be a serious gamer. Sure I miss viva pinata and left for dead but there hasn't been an Xbox exclusive worth my time in years.

Brings us to Sony. PlayStation gets all the main games and has awesome exclusives. No brainer for me. Unless its $600 I'll be getting a ps4 on launch day.

/Thread.

The best thing about Microsoft is Live. Don't pay full price for it, and it's a great service. That said, if I had live's features on a PS3, I'd drop MS for good, but XBLA and Live are enough for me to do most of my modern gaming on that platform.

Learn to love the indie and mid-size dev movement.

Lots of great stuff out there, it is just done on a shoestring like the good old days.

Oh without a doubt, I thought we were speaking within the confines of the big boy industry giants. For those, I have no care or concern; independent art all the way!