David Jaffe throws his hat into the â??one consoleâ?? ring

Veteran game designer David Jaffe has spoken out on the ‘one console future’ debate, supporting Denis Dyack’s frequent claims that a single console would benefit both developers and gamers.

In a post on his blog, Jaffe says: “We have it with DVD, we had it with VHS. We have it with televisions. So what do we lose by having it for game consoles?

Sure, you miss out on some features that may otherwise be available if another console was there to compete. And for those few features you lose, don’t you make up for it in so many other ways?”

The benefits, Jaffe says, are that gamers have a huge variety of content available to them and that developers wouldn’t have to spend time and money making their content work on multiple consoles.

As a reply to the common criticism that the single-console argument reduces competition, Jaffe explained that “[with a single console] you get more competition on the software side – which to me is where it counts – because there is more competition to be the best on a single system instead of content creators splintering and never worrying about competing with two of the three groups.”

[UPDATE: Since the publication of his original comments, Jaffe has updated his blog entry to stress that he’s in favour of a uniform console standard, not a single console. He also claims that, despite devoting the original post to coming up with arguments as to why a single format would benefit consumers and developers, he is not ‘advocating’ one side over the other – merely attempting to initiate a dialogue]