10 Images That Encapsulate Gaming's Biggest Problems

7. Forced Hardware Innovation

There are few creatures on this Earth that nosedive into the ground and bury themselves alive, but one such is the Xbox One. Much has been said about just how spectacularly naff Microsoft have handled themselves over the past months since launch, but the main issue that became glaringly obvious as soon as they mentioned it, was the idea of forcing innovation on a winning formula. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" has never been so applicable in the history of its being, especially when the "it" in question is the go-to gaming console of choice for tens of thousands of devoted, screaming, die-hard Sony-bashers. The reason we're in such a strange state of flux at the minute with the new consoles is Microsoft were first out of the gate, only to attempt to pioneer some 'must-have' technology around commanding television channels with your voice - and fall flat on their face. Sony then easily picked up the pieces and delivered exactly what people wanted to hear - that nothing was changing at all, although the way the cards fell leaves us in a weird purgatorial state. The PS4 and revamped Xbox One (sans voice capabilities) are essentially just slightly gussied-up PS3s and Xbox 360s, which would be totally fine if they didn't cost the same as the latter consoles which ushered in a new revolution of gameplay and graphics when they launched. Budgets for games are now sky-high, new IPs are only just being announced now, some six months after launch - albeit with release dates another year away - and with the hardware itself already able to deliver gaming experiences that can't get any better on the software side, it leaves the big companies with nowhere to go outside of pulling at threads and hoping for the best.