"So the guy that we're really targeting our system at this year is one of the guys who brought a 16bit system three or four years ago and has pretty much had it with that, and he's ready to buy something new"
About this Quote
Hawkins is doing something slyly radical here: he reduces “next-gen” ambition to a consumer who’s simply bored. Not curious, not dazzled, not philosophically committed to progress - just “pretty much had it” with last cycle’s gear. It’s the language of impatience, and it’s also the language that built the games industry’s upgrade treadmill.
The intent is pragmatic and investor-friendly. He’s sketching a target customer profile that justifies a new hardware push: the 16-bit buyer from “three or four years ago” is now at the exact moment where depreciation meets desire. This is segmentation masquerading as empathy. He isn’t promising a revolution; he’s timing a replacement.
The subtext is even sharper: technology doesn’t need to be obsolete to be economically obsolete. Hawkins implies that satisfaction has a shelf life engineered by the market. “Ready to buy something new” reads less like a personal revelation than a predictable phase in a managed lifecycle, where novelty is the product and fatigue is the feature.
Context matters. Hawkins, an early architect of commercial gaming (EA) and later a hardware evangelist (3DO), spoke from inside an industry that had learned to convert rapid iteration into culture. The quote catches the moment when gaming started borrowing consumer electronics’ rhythm: shorter cycles, louder “generations,” and marketing that frames yesterday’s premium purchase as today’s limitation. It works because it’s disarmingly plain. He’s not selling a dream; he’s selling the relief of moving on.
The intent is pragmatic and investor-friendly. He’s sketching a target customer profile that justifies a new hardware push: the 16-bit buyer from “three or four years ago” is now at the exact moment where depreciation meets desire. This is segmentation masquerading as empathy. He isn’t promising a revolution; he’s timing a replacement.
The subtext is even sharper: technology doesn’t need to be obsolete to be economically obsolete. Hawkins implies that satisfaction has a shelf life engineered by the market. “Ready to buy something new” reads less like a personal revelation than a predictable phase in a managed lifecycle, where novelty is the product and fatigue is the feature.
Context matters. Hawkins, an early architect of commercial gaming (EA) and later a hardware evangelist (3DO), spoke from inside an industry that had learned to convert rapid iteration into culture. The quote catches the moment when gaming started borrowing consumer electronics’ rhythm: shorter cycles, louder “generations,” and marketing that frames yesterday’s premium purchase as today’s limitation. It works because it’s disarmingly plain. He’s not selling a dream; he’s selling the relief of moving on.
Quote Details
| Topic | Marketing |
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