Dough - Game Consoles

Sliced Bread

BBC

Health & Fitness

4.6 • 634 Ratings

🗓️ 6 March 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Game consoles have come a long way since the 1970s but could their days now be numbered?

The entrepreneur, Sam White, returns with a new series of Dough - the BBC Radio 4 show which looks at the business behind profitable everyday products and where the smart money might take them next.

In each episode, Sam, and the futurist, Tom Cheesewright, are joined by product manufacturers and industry experts whose inside knowledge gives a new appreciation for the everyday things that we often take for granted.

Together they look back on a product?s earliest (sometimes ridiculous!) iterations, discuss how a product has evolved and the trends which have driven its profitability.

In this episode on video game consoles, the pair hear from expert guests including:

Seamus Blackley - the original creator of Microsoft's Xbox

Keza MacDonald - video games editor at the Guardian

James McWhirter - a senior analyst specialising in video games for the research firm, Omdia.

They trade opinions on the game console's 'game-changing' innovations and its most pointless, or least effective, ones too, before Tom steps in, drawing on his expertise as a futurist, to imagine where consoles might end up in the decades to come.

Dough is produced by Jon Douglas and is a BBC Audio North production for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.

Sliced Bread returns for a new batch of investigations in the spring when Greg Foot will investigate more of the latest so-called wonder products to find out whether they really are the best thing since sliced bread.

In the meantime, Dough is available in the Sliced Bread feed on BBC Sounds

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, podcast fan.
0:03.0	Consider this your invite to the UK's biggest podcasting party.
0:06.7	We're heading to Sheffield from the 4th to the 6th of July
0:09.0	for the BBC Sounds Fringe at the Crossed Wires Festival.
0:12.8	We'll be joined by some of the biggest names in podcasting,
0:15.3	including Sarah Cox, Charlie Hedges, Russell Kane,
0:18.4	and some bloke called Greg James doing his Radio 4 show called Rewinder.
0:23.2	You can watch live shows of your favourite podcasts, and the best part is free.
0:28.0	To book your free tickets, go to crossedwires.org slash fringe.
0:34.4	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:40.4	You're about to listen to the latest series of Doe.
0:45.0	Episodes will be released weekly on Thursdays wherever you get your podcasts.
0:50.1	But if you live in the UK, you can get the episodes seven days early on BBC Sounds.
0:57.7	Make sure you subscribe to get new episodes of Doe as soon as they become available and listen first on BBC Sounds.
1:12.4	Hello and welcome to a new series of Doe, the show from BBC Radio 4 which examines the business behind profitable everyday products and where the smart money might take them next. I'm the entrepreneur,
1:17.1	Sam White. With me is the futurist Tom Cheesewright. Tom, take a bow.
1:21.4	Hello, Sam. I'll avoid the bow on my head, but my microphone, but I'll give you some jazz hands instead. Over the next 25 minutes or so, I'll be chatting with industry experts to get
1:26.9	more insight and hopefully
1:28.4	a new appreciation for another product we tend to take for granted. At the end of it all, Tom will
1:33.3	draw on all his knowledge to tell us what he thinks this particular thing might be like in
1:37.7	the future. The thing I'm on about is the games console. I'm particularly looking forward
1:43.0	to this one. So Tom, should we get on with it?
	...

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