Scroll to the bottom for the update, where Jaffe clarifies his position.

David Jaffe, the creator of God of War, has waded into the argument on whether a single hardware platform is a good idea. He, for one, thinks it is.

His main argument is against what he sees as the primary point thrown around in favour of multiple platforms – that having just one would stifle vital competition. “One game publisher would be bad. One giant game developer would be bad. I get how those things would hurt gamers. But why would one unified hardware platform?” he says on his blog.

The thrust of his argument goes as follows:



Assuming we accept Jaffe's argument, there's still the little matter of who would produce the single hardware platform. One company? A group of companies? “Or is it like television sets where you have multiple consoles that run the same software but with their own unique features?” Jaffe asks.

His response goes like so: “A lot of people will say: well, the game companies would never agree to this or that or the other. And to me, that is part of the problem our business has overall. Competition is great. But I think the leaders of the biggest groups should come together from time to time- like the big Mafia families do in the movies- and make some decisions together for the overall health of the business.”

Well, it's a nice thought. But can you really see Reggie Fils Aime over cocoa at a mountain retreat, with Robbie Bach and Kaz Hirai all hanging out?

It seems more likely that if we get a single games platform, it will be the result of one company creaming the rest. Let us know your thoughts in the Forum.

Update: Jaffe has clarified his position in an update on his blog. He writes: "I am arguing for a single standard not a single console."

He goes on to say, "And just because the 'big 3' would never stand for it, as some of you say, I wonder what the big 3 would do if EA, Capcom, Valve, Ubi, Blizzard, Activision,etc. formed a consortium and made a console/standard of their own and agreed to only publish on that standard."

He also writes (in the third-person, for some reason): "Jaffe is not 'arguing for' or 'proposing' anything." Well, the above part of the update featured the words "I am arguing", so we're not too sure about that one. We take his point, however - he is not advocating a single standard, he is just raising arguments in its favour.

^{Source: Jaffe's Game Design}