Is the market oversaturated?

You know, there are a lot of gaming systems around these days. Three main consoles, PC, two major handhelds, the streaming stuff in development (like Onlive) and tons of little gadgets like the iPhone that have gaming as a side feature. Do you think there are too many systems currently? Would gamers be better served if there were fewer?

Personally I think its good that there is a large variety of gaming consoles out there. The only issue I have is when a company releases a game you would die for on a console you don't have. Also have I far to many consoles packed away in the store room from earlier on it's not funny. So I try to make the right choice on what console I buy so I don't have regrets and need to get another console again. Currently the only active consoles I have set up are PS3, PS2 slim and a DS that play here and there.

I don't think there's enough on the market right now actually. The market could easily support another console and at least a couple of other handheld/portable systems.

Both of the current handheld system leave plenty of room for improvement. Nintendo made it clear earlier this year that they have no intentions of replacing the DS until at least 2011. And Sony's idea's of future PSP design take the future systems out of handheld gaming territory into the realms of mobile devices like iPhone. All it would take right now to sweep the handheld market would be something with a high-res screen, PC-like specs which at least just barely edge out the PSP, a less costly cartridge format than the DS uses, and a good battery life. Put a system like that on the market and the market is your to control.

Don't get me wrong, I like the DS, but Nintendo has misjudged what the core gamers currently want. We want an updated version of the system with much higher specs and way higher res screens, not the DSi with larger same low-res screens and a stupid camera.

PSP has been floundering now for well over a year. I applaud Sony for daring to release the optical based media handheld that Sega had promised back in the 90's, but the system has so many things I just don't like about it. And the first-gen PSP's were outright flawed.

On the console front, all of the current gen systems have one or more "features" that are more detremental than they are likeable. Wii promotes arm flailing and uses a dumb controller that looks and feels like a TV remote. Xbox 360 and PS3 both use internal HDD's, which at least the Xbox 360 can still function without. In my own opinion though, the PS3 is a gaming oriented computer, not a game system. Blatant requirement of having broadband to play online games cuts out a rather sizeable portion of the market of gamers who either can't afford it or can't get it in their area. And also with the Xbox 360 and PS3, publishers use the HDD and broadband connectivity features of the systems as an excuse to release flawed games to the market before they're ready with the intention of "fixing" the game(s) with patches to be released online. In essence, there's a lot to not like about the currnet generation of gaming consoles.

One could make a lot of comparisons between now and 1983 when the gaming market collapsed. There was serious oversaturation then too. Video games had been a sudden cash cow and everyone wanted in on it. You also had an economy that wasn't doing well. Whenever you hear economic news today they say things like "worst [unemployment/economy] since 1983". Those two factors led to bad times for the gaming industry.

Now, I don't actually expect that to happen again. Yeah there are a lot of systems now, maybe too many, but it's not the most there have ever been. In 1995, all of these systems were being sold:

Sega Genesis / Sega CD / 32X
Super Nintendo
Game Boy
Game Gear
CD-i
Virtual Boy
Neo Geo
3DO
Jaguar / Jaguar CD
Saturn
Sony PlayStation

By 1996 about half still remained. So while it's possible that some systems will vanish in or by 2010, we're still a little ways from the most crowded it's ever been.