Convergence Culture

A contemporary convergence culture is when new and old culture collide. There are several types of convergence such as media, technological, economic, social, cultural, and global.

As long as new technologies keep flying in and off shelves, there will always be obsolete technologies and their respective followers.

Take for instance a video game you can buy. These are the formats that I can list off the top of my head:

• Cassette Tape (beyond obsolete)
• Cartridge (apart from nintendo mobile systems, obsolete)
• CD (obsolete)
• DVD (facing obsoletion, still used for physical pc platform distribution)
• Digital Downloads (Very current, existing since the Xbox 360/Playstation 3 era)
• Blu-Ray (Current, used on Xbox One/Playstation 4)

Here are the game systems that I am currently aware of which have had a newly produced physical game:

• Xbox One
• Playstation 4
• Wii U
• 3DS

Of course, the game publisher has the discretion of which console they wish to publish a game on. Several publishers such as Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, Microsoft Studios, and Sony Entertainment have entirely abandoned consoles from last generation (Xbox 360/Wii/Playstation 3). Why is this? The games being published are often times too heavy to run on a previous generation system. The last major release I recall seeing on any previous generation system was the Xbox 360 getting Rise of the Tomb Raider (and that was considerably heavy).

Generation exclusivity might also be used as a tool to entice players into a new generation. For instance, when I played Halo 5, I felt like it could fit well on the Xbox 360. It felt about the same graphically and technically, and if Microsoft wanted to, they could have easily ported it to Xbox 360. The only problem with this is the new gameplay mechanics, a nearly double length campaign, and well over 50 GB of additional content (at this point, I believe there is so much content that the current game size is the launch size doubled).

This is just like the decline of video cassettes. At first, when DVDs were considered the new luxury format, releases were relatively rare, but quickly speeding up. People who wanted to keep video cassettes could stay with cassettes, but eventually, video cassettes became phased out due to the increasing popularity of the DVD and the infancy of the Blu-Ray. The DVD is currently undergoing a similar phase, but they are at the beginning of their end. In a way, Blu-Ray can be considered a reincarnation of DVDs. The Blu-Ray can hold far more data than a dvd, has higher quality, is far more scratch resistant, and all Blu-Ray players are reverse compatible with DVD discs (ensuring nobody had to purchase their favorite films again). All of these changes are welcome, but it took me a little while to decide to switch. The primary reason for me converting was due to me getting tired of DVDs repeatedly freezing up and skipping.