Video Game Consoles Are 'Fundamentally Doomed,' Says Lord British 374
zacharye writes "Microsoft sold nearly one million Xbox 360s last week alone, but we're nearing the end of the road for video game consoles according to one industry visionary. Richard Garriott, known for having created the fantasy role-playing franchise Ultima, says converged devices such as computers, smartphones and tablets will soon render dedicated game consoles obsolete: '... the power that you can carry with you in a portable is really swamping what we've thought of as a console.'"
What he talks about (Score:5, Informative)
And I agree with him. The technical limitations does make developers concentrate on the fun side of things. But that is also true for indie titles. Indie developers don't have the budget to make the best looking games, so they have to concentrate on making them fun. But I have to admit, large companies have started to notice too. They do have their big name franchises like Call of Duty and Battlefield, which are very fun in their own ways, but you have to admit that even large companies have put out very fun games lately.
Of course, Valve was again one of the first western companies who saw this and did it right with Team Fortress 2. They put out the game for free and let people buy weapons and miscelannelous items from the store. Yet, the weapons people can buy are not overpowered and can be got via drops, trading or crafting too. In some cases the stock weapons new players get are actually the best ones. The other ones only vary your gameplay style, so it's up to you which you use, but none is really better than another. And the game is absolutely fun and hilarious online, as it has great comedic aspect too.
As much as Slashdotters hate everything-Facebook, I do like some games there. It's getting really really better lately, and is only going to do so as companies are starting to fight to gain users. This is only good, as it means better quality games which aren't out there just to make quick cash. They have to put out quality to get any new players. The social aspect in Facebook games is great. I have several South Korean girls I play Sims Social with and have had interesting chats with them on the side (and they're cute too, ofc
I also played Civilization World, which is Facebook version of Civilization series. You get assigned to some server with up to 200 players (if some of your friend is already playing, you usually end up on same). If you don't join others you're independant nation, but if you do and it's recommended, you're one city of the civilization you join. You improve your own city, take battles by assigning your troops along with other players troops from your civ, and just work together. Even if it was still a little bit buggy, I had a late fun night playing with some US guy when all others had already went to sleep and we had to defend our civilization together. As the battles take time (so that players have time to come put more troops even if they're not in the game all the time), it got hectic and a gamble of which weather (and effects) we would get to defend against much larger nation.
So yes, game consoles might be going away, but not the way it's implied.
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Flash is dead; long live AIR (Score:3)
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Adobe are not abandoning flash on the web. It's abandoning flash on mobile.
Show me where it says Adobe are abandoning flash on the web browser? From my understanding of the situation, they're pushing it as the new Shockwave in all but name, what with the whole Hardware 3D graphics engine they've put in the latest version.
The reason they're discontinuing on the mobile platform is so they can stick to computers that have dedicated graphics cards and therefore have a better chance of making it work well cross-
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They've also given Flex to Apache [adobe.com].
It won't be tomorrow, but it seems pretty certain that Flash has an expiration date even for Adobe.
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He talks about how tablets and smart phones are soon so powerful that they can render the same quality graphics that consoles can
Of course this is also slightly limited though. They can render the same quality as the *current generation* of consoles, which are actually 5-year old tech. The next generation of consoles (not here yet) will produce much better quality graphics and it'll be another 5 years for chipsets to shrink in size, heat and power usage to see a handheld device catch up.
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and the reason we're still using 5 year old consoles is because the horsepower in them is still plenty and not being fully exploited.
No. The reason we're still using 5-year-old consoles is because it costs the console makers billions of dollars to design, produce, distribute and market a new console, which means it takes years of strong sales before they even recoup their investment on these expensive, dedicated devices.
The problem looming up ahead for the console makers is that they're a niche market comp
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He's wrong, plain and simple.
You will never have the same capabilities in a handheld on tight power budget that you can have plugged in to the wall.
There will always be something that the games designers want to do that is beyond the capabilities of whatever hardware you are running on. I'm sure of this. While my 17 years in game programming falls quite a bit short of Garriot's, I don't think the Ultima series was particularly taxing of the hardware the same way large open world 3D rendered games are.
Perh
Re:What he talks about (Score:5, Informative)
While my 17 years in game programming falls quite a bit short of Garriot's, I don't think the Ultima series was particularly taxing of the hardware the same way large open world 3D rendered games are.
Oh, it was. Ultima 6 was designed to run in 256 colours, in about 1990 IIRC. They had to provide dithered fallback modes for EGA, CGA and the others for it to work on the other hardware.
Ultima 7 was developed on something like a 386-33, but the target platform was a 386sx-16, if I remember the Ultima Dragons newsgroup correctly. The big problem they had was that the program was 16-bit, but needed to be able to access far more than the usual 640k in order to work correctly. After an enormous amount of optimisation, they got about 1 fps if they used swap, 4fps if they used XMS, 6fps via EMS and a whopping 16fps by using the flat-realmode hack on the 386. It was only that which allowed the game to ship, and it made the game pretty much impossible to run under Windows 95 and later until DOSbox came along.
Pagan (Ultima 8) used DPMI16 and 386 assembled optimisations to make it playable on the hardware du jour. This again caused major problems because the 16-bit protected mode interface only preserved the lower 16 bits of the registers, so when an interrupt occurred it would sometimes destroy the contents of EAX, ESI, EDI etc and crash the game randomly. This was fixed by hacking the DPMI kernel with some bizarre hack known as "Spanky" IIRC. "Protected mode kernel hacking" is listed in the credits of the game.
Ascension (U9) was released about a year too soon and was filled with software rendering and other weird things. It would only work at all on GLIDE at first and it had to be patched from 1.00 -> 1.03 -> 1.07 -> 1.18 before it really worked via Direct3D. I remember that though it worked nicely on a 400MHz machine with a 3DFX card, a far more powerful DirectX card would give you a slideshow until 1GHz machines came out.
Re:What he talks about (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, just for completeness, some citations for Ultima 7 and 8, courtesy of Google Groups if anyone wants to know:
Ultima 7, voodoo memory manager [google.com]
Ultima 8, Phar Lap dos extender post by Jason Ely [google.com]
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I think the name of the site was Slashdot
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You have to remember just how limited the hardware was back then. A good video card only offered a frame buffer with ZERO hardware acceleration. Everything was done in software, and the software ran on a machine that was so incredibly slow that only the tightest, hand-optimised assembly programming using all sorts of tricks had any hope of rendering even the simplest fake 3d or good quality 2d. Then on the sound side there was hardware support, but every card was different, and you had to provide a driver
Re:What he talks about (Score:4, Insightful)
Why are people still listening to this guy? The most relevant things he's done in the last decade are tie himself to doomed MMO projects and buy himself a ticket on a spaceship.
TL;DR Version (Score:3)
http://xkcd.com/484/ [xkcd.com]
And I agree, I may have a fast PC to Crysis or whatever, but if I can, for example, play a Nintendo DS game on it's larger screen via an emulator, and if it's entertaining enough for me, why look else where?
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This really says more about the quality of console graphics the the advancement of mobile phones and tablet graphics.
I've got an Acer Iconia, despite having a smaller ppi then my 22" Samsung monitor (1680x1050) but the graphics are the equivalent of 2002/03 era games. Even unmodified Half Life 2 looks better let alone some
Re:What he talks about (Score:5, Insightful)
The "anyone who has an opinion different to mine is obviously a shill" thing on slashdot is getting tiresome.
It *is* possible for people to like things that the /, groupmind dislikes without them being paid to do so.
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GNOME 3 is a major example of this. It's currently my favorite modern desktop next to Windows 7 and I love every innovation they have... But every time that GNOME 3 is brought up everybody just lashes on it for being "unusable" and "trash" and "changing for the sake of change". Sure there are some things about it that could use improvement, but do you really have to shout over and over how much you dislike it? Just man up and move on! I don't need to hear mindless bashing every time I open an article and re
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Wouldn't that make you an MPAA shill? :-)
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Right, and in normal situations you would say that. If you automatically jump to "this person is taking a clearly wrong position, he must be being paid by an evil corporation to promote it" then something is wrong.
Re:What he talks about (Score:5, Funny)
You leave the GoR out of this! He's not one of ours!
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
The obsession with high quality graphics is a large part of what's wrong these days on both platforms. Stop kidding yourself.
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you are right that high quality graphics alone don't equal good gameplay but half gig of total memory that xbox360 and ps3 have is pathetic by today's standards no matter how you slice it. It actually harmed many games with great concepts because the memory constraints made them simplified and linear.
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Elite
Morrowind
Final Fantasy
Duke Nukem 3D
While I agree that consoles are holding back Graphics, you have your head up your arse if you think that the hardware is making games linear.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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I've played Alic in both versions and the current is much like wandering a world. The first, wandering a child's story book. I purchased the current version simply to look at the graphics.
It's almost irritating to have to 'fight' my way through, I'd rather just wander. I have a very powerful machine for my art graphics and I'd rather it didn't just feed me comic book pages.
Re:Good (Score:4, Funny)
I have to disagree.
Nethack is *much* better on an interlaced display: when you hack NTSC to 60 frames of 262 lines instead of true 525, you get blank lines between the dots,why just ruin the experience and immersion into the game . .
hawk
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I feel its the opossite. Ive played more PC games than consoles, but even for a game as Skyrim, I m playing it in an XBOX, i m having a good time
Why? Because playing it in my pc would mean a spend of at least US$ 400 in a new video card, plus new processor, ram, etc (was a over-the-top PC about 3 years ago) A total of at least US$ 1500, and adjust my room to connect my PC to my full screen tv.
Instead I decided to drop pc game playing, selling my desktop and buying a notebook (which basically means: good by
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pay for the upgrades with money you save thanks to cheaper pc versions. Avg console game is what, 10-20 bucks more expensive?
Also who said you need 400 bucks for gfx card? 150 dollar ones are plenty fine and wipe the floor with 6 year old console hardware.
Besides, you may even stop upgrading your pc altogether, consoles in general hold multiplatform games back due to limited specs and the whole thing pretty much plateaued. Yes there are ultra-high-whatever quality settings in pc versions but even medium is
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Your top end PC from 3 years back certainly could have run it.
400$ video card? More like a 150$ one. Throw in an old Core 2 duo (why buy an i7 to play console ports ?), 4Gb of memory for a few bucks and Skyrim would be plenty happy.
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I don't think this is true. I bought a video card for under $100 about 2-3 years ago, and it can play Skyrim just fine on high settings (with minimal lag). I might not be able to crank every setting up to the highest it can go, but I can easily play it on high settings. I was surprised at how far merely upgrading certain PC parts can get you.
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I'd much rather sit back on my couch while playing games than sitting in my office behind a desk playing PC games. While yes, PCs can be upgraded faster, graphics are usually better, etc., that doesn't make up for the comfort of couch-gaming.
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Re:Good (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to mention that the best thing about consoles is that everybody is playing on the same machine. You don't have to worry about whether you have a good enough machine and how good the framerate will be on your machine when buying console games.
Yeah, life is swell as a lowest common denominator. Hassle free, outdated fun. Only you DO get framerate drops on modern games, don't you? Also texture popups, cramped environments, minimal detail, and shoddy AI. Consoles aren't just holding games back - they are actually making games WORSE as developers leave more and more game on the cutting room floor just to get the latest wizbang engine to run on half a fucking gig of shared memory. Awesome.
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Yeah, life is swell as a lowest common denominator.
It's actually the greatest common denominator. It doesn't have the same propaganda value, though, does it?
Only you DO get framerate drops on modern games, don't you? Also texture popups, cramped environments, minimal detail, and shoddy AI.
I've played Grand Theft Auto 4 on the PS3 and was impressed with the detail, environment, and fluid character movements. I don't know about the AI, it's not chess. The "smart" AI in shooter games isn't computationally expensive.
The thing is, there's been diminishing returns for a long time now in gaming tech. Go ahead and compare games between eras, and the difference between something like a PS2 and a
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I'd much rather sit on my couch and play a PC game than go out and buy a console.
Yes, my home PC has a couch infront of it.
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My media center PC is more than up to the task of playing whatever games I want. Sure, it can't run the latest and greatest at full resolutin, but I'm not a hard core gamer so the duel core Athlion and GeForce 9600GT does just fine. I've just ordered a new MB and six core Phenom for my desktop, so my MCPC will be getting my old quad core desktop motherboard and 8 GB ram (6 more gigs than it now has).
You want to play games on your big screen? It's much easier to hang a PC on it and do it that way. Sure,
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You don't have to move the computer, just use the tv as a second monitor via hdmi. As far as controllers, almost all of them are usb these days. So you're limited to the number of usb ports available. Now the TV can stream anything you can access online, might as well cancel cable and save the money. Even at 50$ per month savings, you could build (or upgrade?) a pc in six months.
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Nobody has an HTPC (Score:3, Informative)
man its so hard to buy a gamepad
Actually, it is hard. First, most game controllers sold for use with PCs are either Microsoft, Logitech, or Gravis, and those brands have had decidedly subpar directional pads over the years compared to, say, Nintendo or Sony.
and hook your tv to the computer these days
Actually, it is hard. Most major-label PC games are not made with modes designed for PCs connected to televisions because apart from a tiny market of HTPC geeks, nobody wants to connect a PC connected to a television. (See previous comments: 1 [slashdot.org] 2 [slashdot.org] 3 [slashdot.org] 4 [slashdot.org] 5 [slashdot.org]) A lot of gamers have trouble even
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The wired Xbox 360 gamepad can be hooked up directly to most any modern PC. Most console-to-Windows ports even support this right out of the box. The PlayStation 3 pad is only marginally more difficult to set up. Even the Wii remote can be made to work with a Bluetooth connection and only a minimal bit of jiggery-pokery. If the directional pads are subpar, it's a problem that afflicts consoles in exactly the same way.
Jiggery-pokery if you're not a geek (Score:2)
Microsoft [gamepads] have had decidedly subpar directional pads
The wired Xbox 360 gamepad can be hooked up directly to most any modern PC.
I know. I have one. I have used it with a Windows PC and a Linux PC. And its D-pad sucks on the PC just as much as it does on the 360.
The PlayStation 3 pad is only marginally more difficult to set up. Even the Wii remote can be made to work with a Bluetooth connection and only a minimal bit of jiggery-pokery.
I have four questions about this:
Most people don't know this (Score:3)
Most LCDTVs today have a dedicated VGA port and and audio in that make the process neigh idiotic to accomplish.
I understand this. You understand this. Most people reading this comment understand this. In fact, for a while, I was using an HDTV as my primary computer monitor. But outside of geeks like us, almost nobody is willing to carry a PC tower into the living room and then carry it back to the computer desk once finished playing the game.
Most new video cards of moderate power have the ability to output through HDMI or s-video, either through adapter or dedicated port.
I am aware of this, and I own such an adapter [sewelldirect.com]. But these adapters are sold only online, not in stores, and most people don't know they exist.
Using your PC as a console today is far easier than it was just 5 years ago.
I know this.
Nintendo is unfriendly to the smallest developers (Score:4, Insightful)
I suppose I could instead buy a separate machine for my TV. Doing that I could even design/get it specifically designed for a livingroom environment. Hey- wait a minute.
The difference between such a PC and a console is that a living room PC would have solo productions like Bob's Game and indie games developed by a 2- or 3-man family business. But then next to nobody wants to play a game developed by a micro-ISV in a small city; instead, as CronoCloud has pointed out in a previous comment [slashdot.org], they want to play games developed by people who have had to move to a different state for their video game development apprenticeship.
Microsoft is friendlier than Nintendo (Score:3)
From my understanding it is not terribly expensive to develop an indie game for xbox.
Xbox Live Indie Games overhead is comparable to that of iPhone or iPad, and in fact Apple appears to have copied the iOS Developer Program's price structure from that of XNA Creators Club (now App Hub). But Nintendo's overhead costs are much higher than that, and I can provide citations if you want.
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Careful what you wish for... any day now we'll start seeing crap smartphone ports.
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Too late. Gameloft already does that.
Four mice and four keyboards (Score:3)
"A friendly reminder that a keyboard and mouse is the controller setup that brings the most enjoyment of games to those who care about optimizing their game-playing performance. Thanks!"
Good luck plugging four mice and four keyboards into one PC for a 4-player fragfest like people used to do with N64 gamepads in the Goldeneye 007 days.
a jack of all trades (Score:2)
Not Doomed.. Just evolving (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see the game console going away.. It's just going to evolve into more of multimedia device. Really it already has..
My game consoles spend more time streaming Netflix then playing games these days.
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My game consoles spend more time streaming Netflix then playing games these days.
Well, there goes the 'sell below cost and recoup the money on game licensing fees' business model.
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Xbox Live Gold (Score:2)
Well, there goes the 'sell below cost and recoup the money on game licensing fees' business model.
Hence the requirement for a valid $60 per year subscription to Xbox Live Gold to use Netflix on an Xbox 360.
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My game consoles spend more time streaming Netflix then playing games these days.
Well, there goes the 'sell below cost and recoup the money on game licensing fees' business model.
Yep, I've spent about $700 on PS3 hardware (2 consoles, 2 extra controllers, camera) and maybe $150 on game titles since I got the first one in 2007. Too bad that the hardware is such crap too - early unit howled like a vacuum cleaner and consumed 300W+ all the time, new unit is quieter and cooler and the disc drive crapped out almost immediately.
Still, I like my $100 in hard drive based games (GT5 and a pile of kids' games and demos), and Netflix streaming keeps it in the living room. When the 2nd unit d
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OTOH, the current generation of consoles are old. None of them approach, let alone define, the state of the art. Do you really think they're still being sold below cost?
The current generation of consoles are old and nowhere near the capability of a modern PC. How long do you think people will keep buying them before console manufacturers have to invest billions of dollars in developing the next generation?
Capability of players per machine (Score:3)
The current generation of consoles are old and nowhere near the capability of a modern PC.
Yet a lot of console games still support two, and in some cases four, players per machine while most PC games (with a handful of exceptions [pineight.com]) support only one despite the fact that PC-compatible TVs have been affordable for the past half decade. Part of this capability comes from a mental set [wikipedia.org] among gamers against connecting a PC to an HDTV, and part comes from publishers wanting to sell multiple copies to a single household [cracked.com].
Oh yes, they're... (Score:2)
I GET IT!
He is right. And here is reason : (Score:5, Interesting)
so, we can easily say that cpus are already over a point where we could consider them a limiting factor for good looking games. the only remaining factor becomes, gpu.
granted, my 6950 is a last generation, top offering card. and even if cpu power had become way too much over the needs of games and graphics cards to become irrelevant after a certain tier, its not possible to play down the mandatory element, the graphics card yet.
but, there are already major strides in this area - amd has already succeeded in fusing cpu and gpu in the form of 'apu', and these apus do low power usage and provide good performance in entry-mid level laptop and netbook market. granted, they are not enough to provide top performance as we see it in pcs yet, but more apus will be coming. this means, we are moving towards a future in which the two indispensable elements of gaming, the cpu and gpu, will be both merged in one unit with top grade components. (next gen apus are to come with 7xxx cores)
so then, indeed lord british is right. you already merged, and optimized cpus and gpus in a form that it will be possible to game in a notebook. the only thing you need for this to become a reality in smartphones, is only more miniaturization and increased efficiency of this concept. and it is, as you know, a given in tech world. and im not even talking about the processors that are developing from the mobile computing vector.
there are already versions of 3d games that play on smartphones. in future, we will indeed be able to plug a device to tv or a monitor and just play.
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and, im in beta, and yes, i have played swtor accross 3 monitors, one 28 inch and two 22 inch, with a SINGLE 6950 card, and i got 40 fps out of it at the minimum. my reports are in swtor test forum as of this moment.
'phenom 965 is a dog' -> i dont even know whatever the fuck that does mean, but i dont think you are saying som
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The 6950 is vastly inferior to the 6970, especially at higher resolutions where VRAM makes a big difference. Yes, the 6990 is just 2 6970 GPUs. That's why the I said the 6970 was the flagship.
I called you out on your bullshit. Just admit it.
You didn't even try to explain away the crap where you said a 6950 was a last gen part, or where you have 3 1680x1080 monitors.
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Did you have to choose such a retarded topic to get into a pissing match about? You two guys post here all the time. Mostly stuff worth reading---this doesn't qualify even as a good flamewar. Give it a rest.
A console is 10 phones working together. (Score:2)
Dumbing down OSs threatens general purpose PC... (Score:2, Interesting)
Apple are dumbing down the Mac, moving it away from being a high end professional computer, turning it into an overgrown iPad. Microsoft are turning Windows into an oversized Windows Phone OS. PCs are turning into consoles, and it is the serious personal computer that is threatened with extinction.
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Okay, side question. (Score:2)
When the hell did a computer become a 'converged device'?
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When the hell did a computer become a 'converged device'?
I prefer the phrase 'non-crippled device' myself.
content (Score:2)
If you can get people to pay as much for console games as for tablet/mobile games, maybe, otherwise you're just not getting the return to make 'blockbuster' titles like GTA/GoW/Uncharted etc. (or is that already considered 'hardcore gaming'?)
Technology is not the issue here, it's just cash. If a game costs millions to produce, you're not gambling on a market where you need sell 100M but on a market where 1M units will make you break even. Consoles are not technological wonders, they are content platforms.
WTF.. Why do we let retards like this post... (Score:4, Insightful)
A 7"/10" tablet or a 4" phone screen will NEVER replace a gaming console. There are many many factors that make this an insane and retarded statement.
1) Game controller. Yes the kinect is interesting. Yes gyros can provide an intersting experience as well. But can you do a 16 hour gaming session waving your arms around like that (both kinect style or wii style with a large tablet). The standard game controller is a perfect interface for most games, and an OK stand in for others (FPS games should be with a mouse).
2) As mentioned above: Screen size.
3) Social gaming (in close physical proximity). A big screen is ideal for this. Tablets (or worse phones) are just too small to share.
4) Touch screens suck for the vast majority of stuff. Motion control is just behind it in usability. With touch screens a large number of games are not playable because your hand is blocking critical space on the screen.
There are more.. but there's beer in the NOC and I'm thirsty.
Re:WTF.. Why do we let retards like this post... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Game controllers can be (and are) bluetooth connected accessories
2) You can already HDMI out from some phones and drive 1080p
3) HDMI out to an 80" plasma, if you've got the bucks
4) see 1) re: touchscreens don't need to be used.
He doesnt say 'screen' fool. (Score:2)
He's an expert... (Score:2)
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What's next (Score:2)
Tablets killed the console killed the desktop killed the video killed the radio...
Lord British (Score:2)
Has become a bitter vet... I guess when you get bought out by EA whose idea of innovation is gobbling up studios and churning out Football manager 2008^H2009^H2010^H2011^H2012 ad nauseam, I guess you think that gaming has no future. I've heard this all before - wait, Chris Roberts used to say this 20 years ago. Ah, Chris Roberts also worked at Origin. I see a connection...
The future is always different, but always bet against the guy who says there is no future.
Convergence (Score:3)
Mobile phones are just another platform to experience gaming. Mobile platforms are becoming more like gaming consoles. With technologies like wireless display (WiDi), etc you may be able to run a virtual xbox 360 straight from a mobile device on to the display of your choice. Good times!
I don't want my phone to do that (Score:3)
And on top of that, phones are doing so many things now that battery life is starting to fall again. If we throw more games at them, battery life will only get worse. Some of us want to
The real difference is the controls (Score:2)
The main difference between the various PC and console platforms is the controls. If you back at the 1990s you can see fundamental differences in game design between consoles (played with one or more gamepads on a sofa) and PCs (played with a keyboard, mouse, and possibly joystick at a desk). Unfortunately, you can't really design for one set of controls if you're making a cross-platform game. It used to be that PCs and console had totally different genres. Now we're adding smartphones to the mix. I wonder
It's not about power (Score:5, Insightful)
Phones and tablets are beginning to approach the level of power of a PC. But they won't replace game consoles either. Why? Because, as with PC's, it's not about the processor or GPU power.
The game console has some strategic advantages over PC's and tablets: 1) it's cheaper than a PC or tablet, 2) it is specifically made for playing games, and 3) it sits next to the TV, permanently connected and ready to play. Just turn it on and go. No need to set up a connection each time you want to play. No need to go fetch the tablet to hook it up to the TV. It's already there.
Simply put, a multi-purpose device will never be quite as good at gaming as a dedicated gaming device.
Doomed? (Score:3)
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I don' t have a PC any more. Between my iPad, my phone, my network storage device, and my Xbox 360, I didn't really need it any more. When it died, I chucked it and haven't looked back.
Re:Here we go full circle (Score:5, Informative)
I stopped playing PC games around Vice City. It was just easier to get the same titles on a console that you knew was going to run.
I didn't like spending the equivalent of a new console every year or two on a video card.
New console every two years (Score:2)
I didn't like spending the equivalent of a new console every year or two on a video card.
The first of the three current-generation video game consoles, the Xbox 360, was first sold six years ago. This means if you own all three consoles, you've already been spending the equivalent of a new console every two years since 2005, plus the extra $10 or more per game that a lot of developers charge for their game to cover the console maker's fee. Are PC games nowadays really so demanding that you can't run them on a couple-years-old video card even if you turn the detail down?
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I'm still amazed at how many games my circa 2008 PC can run at or near highest settings. There are exceptions, of course, but the fact that most modern games are written for consoles first and only then ported to PC means that there hasn't been a great deal of requirements creep since the start of the current console generation.
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I never understand the video card thing, I bought a geforce2 GTS in like 2001, it was 2007 before I really HAD to upgrade it for pixel shaders, and the 2 since then (one for me one for the wife) both cost under 100 bucks and can run all current games in HD since current games are based for consoles with 2005 era hardware... so yea 3 video cards for me in a decade at less than 100 bucks each, means I still haven't reached the cost of an XBOX360 elite today, combined with the PS2 I used to own, over the same
Which PS2 emulator? (Score:2)
and as a bonus, I can still play my entire game collection over the last 25 years, on one box, which also does many more functions.
Twenty-five years? That reaches back to 1986 and includes 1992-1995, the days of 16-bit games designed for Windows 3.1. I'm aware that DOSBox runs a lot of games designed for MS-DOS and games designed for DOS extenders (DOS4GW and then CWSDPMI), and Windows 7 can run a lot of games designed for Windows 95 and later. But that still leaves Windows 3.1, whose apps don't work in 64-bit Windows. How do you ordinarily run games designed for Windows 3.1? And you mentioned owning a PlayStation 2; which PS2 emulator
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How do you ordinarily run games designed for Windows 3.1?
I've heard that Windows 3.11 will run inside DOSbox, if you have the install media for it. I haven't tried this myself yet, though.
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But to be fair, isn't it possible to put an SSD into the console to replace its HD?
Read the title of the thread you're replying to.
Re:Consoles will not die (Score:5, Insightful)
What is going away is the console that can only play a game, which is being replaced by devices that have apps as well as games. This is already happening in the current generation of consoles.
I've had one of those for thirty years. We call it 'a computer'.
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yea ok, everyone is going to have the exact same phone with the same apps, and if you have not noticed motion control is clunky and only really works for a few games no matter how hard companies are trying to shove it down our throats as the whole thing has been around for decades and has never made it past "isnt that cute"
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Sure, motion controls are all the rage now, but trust me, the number of hours spent in total using motion based controls vs a gamepad or KB and mouse to control a video game is 1 vs 100, and I'm being VERY generous with that estimate. Motion controls, and controlling anything on a touch screen is nowhere NEARLY as precise as a controller, which is nowhere nearly as precise as a mouse and keyboard.
To illustrate: You have generic multiplayer FPS/RPG/RTS game X. Who wins in a three way battle,
Wii is far more locked down than iPad (Score:2)
[Consoles like Wii are] locked down, yes, but so is the iPad.
There's a difference. Nintendo requires each developer to have a dedicated secure office and a track record on another platform, and it also requires all games to be rated by ESRB (minimum $800 per title) instead of self-assessed. For a micro-ISV, these requirements alone dwarf the circa $1600 entry fee (Mac+iPad+first year of iOS Developer Program) for iPad software development.
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If you need to put your console under a desk to support the mouse and keyboard then you end up using a PC (a crippled one, where you can't install software freely).