The age of integrated media is upon us. It is now possible to do virtually any media-related task on one box. Take for instance the PS3 or Xbox 360. Both systems have placed a heavy emphasis, not just on being great gaming machines, but entertainment hubs as well. Sony and Microsoft want you to use their boxes for all your media needs. You can listen to your favorite music by plugging in your MP3 player, watch DVDs and High Definition DVDs (although for the Xbox this is very limited considering that HD DVD is now a dead format) and download movies and TV shows. These are just some of the many features which these consoles have to offer. Even the Wii, which is marketed more as a gaming machine than anything else, allows you to browse the Internet, look at the news and weather and much more. All of the major consoles are moving away from purely gaming and instead are focusing on providing consumers with all their entertainment needs.
Sony recently announced that it will be upgrading the PS3 to make it Blu-Ray 2.0 compatible, making the PS3 one of the best Blu-Ray players out there. What ever happened to having a console just to play games? Now, game consoles aren’t much different from computers, they can access the Internet, play videos, music, you name it. We are starting to move into an age where only one or two boxes are required in your entertainment set-up. No longer do you have to have a DVD player, CD player and video game console, you can even get away without your satellite or cable box, in theory, in reality this probably wouldn’t be reasonable, but this is the direction we seem to be moving in. So, is all of this a good thing? Should we be excited about the prospect of needing only one box to handle all of our media needs? It certainly is convenient, however, it could also be limiting. By resting all of our media needs on one company, we are sacrificing a certain degree of control. If the company decides to change its policies, we’re stuck, all of our media is tied to that machine. This could lead to monopolistic practices by the companies, since they would be in control of all the means by which consumers receive content.
Luckily, it doesn’t look like this will be the case. The fact is that there are many machines out there that can handle virtually all of your media needs. It’s not as if there is only one box that is on the market that fits this bill. Products such as the PS3, Xbox 360, Apple TV and Windows Media Center all allow consumers to view a variety of media on one device. Therefore, the devices compete with each other. The companies that sell these products must constantly be watching their competitors and changing their services accordingly.
Yes, there will always be consumers who have additional entertainment components, such as surround sound systems, but for many consumers, who aren’t necessarily looking for the ultimate entertainment experience, machines such as the Xbox 360 and PS3 may very well come to serve all of their media needs in the near future , if not already. We are indeed in an age of integration, of choice and of convenience. The way we receive our media content will never be the same.
Filed under: Apple, Microsoft, Nintendo, PS3, Sony, Technology, Video Games, Wii, Xbox 360 Tagged: | Apple TV, Blu-Ray, cable, CD, DVD, HD DVD, media, MP3 player, PS3, satellite, TV, Windows Media Center, Xbox 360, Xbox Live
