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.'"
Re:Good (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
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.
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.
Re:Good (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What he talks about (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Perhaps in five years or so average quality games might be hardware agnostic but AAA games will always demand the most.