Do y'all think Consoles are the Future?

[dorsetknob]

Well funnily enough, sooner or later both PC and consoles will be killed off and replaced by our phones,

Don't think so
7 to 10" Screen on average high end phone even if phone can cast to a bigger Screen ie TV with no inbuilt lag
They would Struggle with high end games
and in the End its about high end games
Every consol hardware upgrade improves the Graphics standard ( as do PC Graphics Cards)
Power consumption is another factor
some phones need recharging after 8 hours moderate usage so they ain't going to cope with high end hours of gaming

 

[SaltyFish]

Don't think so
7 to 10" Screen on average high end phone even if phone can cast to a bigger Screen ie TV with no inbuilt lag
They would Struggle with high end games
and in the End its about high end games
Every consol hardware upgrade improves the Graphics standard ( as do PC Graphics Cards)
Power consumption is another factor
some phones need recharging after 8 hours moderate usage so they ain't going to cope with high end hours of gaming

And "high end games" is what? Fancy effects that can make a $700 GPU sweat? I hate developers use pretty graphics as a form of turd polishing. I hate consumers (gamers) even more for buying into it. In olden times, developers had to be careful and creative when making games due to hardware limitations. Now they don't have to worry about that anymore. And poor optimisation is the result of that. They can run rampant with sequel-itis and rehashes if they just add a fresh coat of paint over it. At some point, all those AAA 3D first-person RPGs and fan-service JRPGs start blurring together.

Don't get me wrong. Hardware power is nice. It lets us have stuff like arcade-perfect ports (remember how this used to be an issue?). But after a certain point, all that power doesn't contribute to a better game or at best it suffers from massive diminishing returns. Simple AI in video games back then was a limitation of limited CPU cycles. Now that we have CPUs that can perform several orders of magnitude more calculations per second, do we have better AI in games? All that RAM (yay for 64-bit programs) sits mostly used when developers would've killed for even a fraction of it a decade ago. GPU is the only thing that seems to have continued increased utilisation and it's for what? Higher resolutions, more anti-aliasing, soft shadows, reflections, and higher frame rates? Granted, that last one may have noticeable impact for online 3D twitch-based games, but the rest do not for most games. Yeah, it helps with immersion but again up to a certain point. For example, going from no shadows to simple shadows is probably the biggest leap. Moving further up to more accurate shadows become much smaller leaps. And I doubt going from 1600x1200 to 2560x1440 makes something like Diablo III a much better game. You can see more, but it's more of a luxury. It's also stuck in a loop; get a better monitor -> need a better GPU to take advantage of it, get a better GPU -> need a better monitor to take advantage of it. Both which ignore that unless developers make higher resolution textures to accompany that, the resolution bump doesn't result in as much image quality gain.

So I'm not worried about "high end games". I'm more worried about quality. Phones have their limitations and considering the market penetration, it's an attractive platform to develop for. My gripe so far is that there's a lot of shovelware and blatant get-rich-quick schemes. You can make good games for phones. There's no technical specifications holding it back (a low-end phone today is more powerful than a PS1); it's just that no one wants to. Certain genres will prove less suitable/more challenging (*cough*RTS*cough*) and that's where the PC will continue to shine. Precisely commanding huge individually detailed armies is not easily doable on a phone. First-person RPGs on the other hand? Totally doable.

And power consumption is not a major issue, even with "high end hours of gaming" (12+ hours/day?). If people don't carry batteries, they can plug it into a wall outlet and continue playing. It's not much different from people playing their Game Boys with an AC adapter in the 1990s. Or a laptop for that matter.

 

[theFOoL]

If you WATCH this you'll see you don't need just a Powerful System to play Games Today...

 

[Totally]

If you WATCH this you'll see you don't need just a Powerful System to play Games Today...

He's just discovered that IGPs are the pretty much the same or perform the same as super cheapo graphics cards, what are we supposed to see? He's not even posting framerates.

 

[jboydgolfer]

•IMO•
even if the PC side is a small or even minute percentage of the entire gaming market, that tiny Percentage is Valuable, and therefore exploited for its ability to generate sales. Im not going to use exact numbers, but rather numbers as a analogy to facilitate my point...

imagine Consoles were 85% of the gaming market. PS/Xbox together, as well as any other im unaware of.
then PC, mobile, Cell phone, tablet , etc was all lumped together in the other 15%.(just to make it simple)

even though that 15% is minute , and the portion of it that is PC only Even more minute, a minute amount of a Shitload, is still quite a bit.

for example, imagine the entire gaming market (analogy) was worth 50 Billion/Year.
so consoles would make up for 40 Billion/Year
& the rest would make up 10 Billion/year.
Even if PC was only 1% of that 10 Billion (which it isnt) you'd be looking at a Annual PC gaming revenue of 100 million dollars.
Short of Communism becoming FAR more popular, i dont see ANY entrepreneur ignoring 100Million/Year

in other words, No PC isnt going anywhere for the time being....atleast not going anywhere due to the climate variables You have mentioned.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Annual PC gaming revenue of 100 million dollars.

I know you were making an example only, but there have been years when just 2 games out of hundreds released have made 100 million. Games making 30 to 60 million is not unknown. It's a moneymaking operation nearly as big as movies.

*Just added that for extra info for those who literally may not know how big gaming really is.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

In reality, PCs and consoles both have their pros and cons. Which is better is ultimately preference. I dont think either one is necessarily the future. I do know, in contrary to popular belief since about 2008-9, that PC gaming is very much alive and well.

 

[MrGenius]

No. Why? What? I don't even understand the question. Will consoles be all there is in the future? Of course not. Don't be ridiculous. They are pretty good though lately. I've played a little PS4 recently and I was like "damn yo...how does this thing put out graphics that look just as good, with frame rates just as smooth, as my gaming PC...WTF?" But still...I ain't about to sell out and go buy one. I'm better than that peasant-ass shit.

 

[Frick]

Without having read any replies the answer is very obviously yes.

- Nintendo is completely nuts. Selling a crappy equivalent of a chinese knock-off of the Shield tablet, and distributing games on proprietary SD cards (seems like PSP experience was already forgotten)

Yeah, that was clearly a mistake. No wait, it's a massive success.

 

[Vya Domus]

And "high end games" is what? Fancy effects that can make a $700 GPU sweat? I hate developers use pretty graphics as a form of turd polishing. I hate consumers (gamers) even more for buying into it. In olden times, developers had to be careful and creative when making games due to hardware limitations. Now they don't have to worry about that anymore. And poor optimisation is the result of that. They can run rampant with sequel-itis and rehashes if they just add a fresh coat of paint over it. At some point, all those AAA 3D first-person RPGs and fan-service JRPGs start blurring together.

Don't get me wrong. Hardware power is nice. It lets us have stuff like arcade-perfect ports (remember how this used to be an issue?). But after a certain point, all that power doesn't contribute to a better game or at best it suffers from massive diminishing returns. Simple AI in video games back then was a limitation of limited CPU cycles. Now that we have CPUs that can perform several orders of magnitude more calculations per second, do we have better AI in games? All that RAM (yay for 64-bit programs) sits mostly used when developers would've killed for even a fraction of it a decade ago. GPU is the only thing that seems to have continued increased utilisation and it's for what? Higher resolutions, more anti-aliasing, soft shadows, reflections, and higher frame rates? Granted, that last one may have noticeable impact for online 3D twitch-based games, but the rest do not for most games. Yeah, it helps with immersion but again up to a certain point. For example, going from no shadows to simple shadows is probably the biggest leap. Moving further up to more accurate shadows become much smaller leaps. And I doubt going from 1600x1200 to 2560x1440 makes something like Diablo III a much better game. You can see more, but it's more of a luxury. It's also stuck in a loop; get a better monitor -> need a better GPU to take advantage of it, get a better GPU -> need a better monitor to take advantage of it. Both which ignore that unless developers make higher resolution textures to accompany that, the resolution bump doesn't result in as much image quality gain.

I am sorry to say this but you're coming off as a little bit condescending and it looks like you don't know what it is like to work in that environment . Developers are working harder than ever , they do have to worry about hardware limitations. They are doing what they can in the span of 1 or 2 years which is the typical developing cycle and sometimes it's amazing what they can deliverer and what you call "unpolished" . Lets not kid ourselves games today are way more complex and difficult to code. Your most beloved gameplay features were once a technical nightmare to implement , how can you say none of it matters ? Atmosphere ( the thing you call a fresh coat of paint) is the biggest feature to be include these generations and it's more important that you realize. I always resent this attitude , it goes to show that people in fact don't appreciate the work that is put in the games they play. You should blame the publishers , they are at fault for everything you don't like. Not the developers.

Without having read any replies the answer is very obviously yes.Yeah, that was clearly a mistake. No wait, it's a massive success.

You think so ? It's just at the beginning of it's life cycle. How many publishers have jumped on this platform and announced big games coming to the Switch ? Not many. This thing you call "success" it's not sustainable and Nintendo will soon face that harsh reality.

 

[Tomgang]

Is console gaming the future? my answer to that.

And if any one comes and say that to my face while giving me a PS4, this is what i will do to it.

Oh and i have not just buy at EVGA GTX 1080 TI and on its way to just let console take over. Hell no. PC gaming is the future and will all ways will be. Al ready severel years a go it whas clammed that desktop pc will be dead and gone and with that pc gaming as well and yet to this day desktop pc is still going strong. console gaming is not the future.

 

[Frick]

You think so ? It's just at the beginning of it's life cycle. How many publishers have jumped on this platform and announced big games coming to the Switch ? Not many. This thing you call "success" it's not sustainable and Nintendo will soon face that harsh reality.

It is sustainable. Millions of consoles have been sold so far, I guess the devs were caught off guard. It's doing better in Japan than PS4 did.

 

[Vayra86]

I know you were making an example only, but there have been years when just 2 games out of hundreds released have made 100 million. Games making 30 to 60 million is not unknown. It's a moneymaking operation nearly as big as movies.

*Just added that for extra info for those who literally may not know how big gaming really is.

Gaming revenue has long surpassed the money that goes round in the movie content industry for some years now, I believe.

Edit- on a side note has anyone got into console emulation on PC?

Yes, PCSX2 is a thing here. Still rocking that emulator from time to time, get to play obscure Sony stuff like Okami, Shin Megami Tensei (Persona) etc. On a dualshock 3. Heaven

And about Nintendo, that company just avoids any sensible business case and makes its own, only to come out on top in the end anyway. As long as they have Pokémon and a few dozen other indestructible IP's, nobody gives a shit what device they put it in. They've been re-releasing the same crappy handheld for how long now? There are more DS versions than I can count. Meanwhile Sony keeps tugging that boat they call PS Vita and it just won't move.

 

[silentbogo]

Without having read any replies the answer is very obviously yes.

Yeah, that was clearly a mistake. No wait, it's a massive success.

Console-units sold - definitely, games sold - not so much.

There was one nuance: the same approach caused a huge boom of pirated games, because it was more convenient (e.g. not even the question of money). I think out of all of my friends w/ PSP at the time, 100% of them used modified firmware and dumped all of their ROMs on it.
I will confess, I also had a custom firmware and went as far as replacing an ODD on my PSP2000 with dual-SD card storage mod for a total of 16GB storage(2x8GB), and the only legal game copies I owned were God of War: Chains of Olympus a-a-a-a-nd... my ex-GFs entire PS1 library(~60 games, from Spyro to Tekken3). Mostly used it to watch movies and listen to music on the way to work.

 

[Vya Domus]

It is sustainable. Millions of consoles have been sold so far.

We'll see how many they can sell in the next years , but I'll hold my breath. This console is for a niche market in this day and age flooded by phones and tablets. The people who wanted one already bought it , I do not expect the user base to grow much further.

I guess the devs were caught off guard.

That's a bit silly , of course they knew , the Switch didn't just dropped form nowhere , rumors go back as far as 2 years ago. There is another reason for that , the platform is just simply not interesting to them. First of all this came in the middle of the current generation , it's hard to invest in something new at this point. Secondly being the user base that I already talked about. And thirdly , lets face it , it's not very powerful , big publishers want games on many platforms and it is unrealistic to think that they'll be able to bring big AAA games to the Switch. And if you can't get those as a gamer it's not great.

t's doing better in Japan than PS4 did.

That's hardly a good metric for success , if they can live off by just selling stuff in Japan good for them.

 

[Vayra86]

That's hardly a good metric for success , if they can live off by just selling stuff in Japan good for them.

https://newzoo.com/insights/infographics/japanese-games-market-2016/

Don't underestimate that. Half of the revenue is into mobile, so Switch is a perfect recipe for that marketplace.

 

[Vya Domus]

https://newzoo.com/insights/infographics/japanese-games-market-2016/

Don't underestimate that. Half of the revenue is into mobile, so Switch is a perfect recipe for that marketplace.

I never said the market there isn't huge , but there's a caveat : It cannot be any more different from what it is anywhere else in the world.

So I'll rephrase that : That's hardly a good metric for success worldwide

 

[Vayra86]

I never said the market there isn't huge , but there's a caveat : It cannot be any more different from what it is anywhere else in the world.

So I'll rephrase that : That's hardly a good metric for success worldwide

I'll refer back to what @jboydgolfer pointed out about that big pie that is the gaming market, and how you only need a slice of it to survive.

All these different products, consoles, mobile, PC can exist side by side and they can all be successful. And worldwide is highly culture specific too. What's great in Japan just won't fly here and vice versa. And the US/Oceanic market is just plain boring. Nothing really specific comes out, sports franchises are popular (EA thrives on that) and people play something of everything. In Europe there is also definitely a different type of games to be found, and Japanese influences land well here too - not all of them, but many. Look at NIER Automata.

 

[FYFI13]

Definitely no.

 

[Vya Domus]

I'll refer back to what @jboydgolfer pointed out about that big pie that is the gaming market, and how you only need a slice of it to survive.

All these different products, consoles, mobile, PC can exist side by side and they can all be successful. And worldwide is highly culture specific too. What's great in Japan just won't fly here and vice versa. And the US/Oceanic market is just plain boring. Nothing really specific comes out, sports franchises are popular (EA thrives on that) and people play something of everything. In Europe there is also definitely a different type of games to be found, and Japanese influences land well here too - not all of them, but many. Look at NIER Automata.

If you can live with just a slice it's cool , but you aren't a big player in the grand scheme of things and therefore not of any major importance. People claim Nintendo is a big player, but really they're not. They always do the same thing , they make it look like their products cater to everyone but when the dust settles the only people buying their stuff are hardcore fans and Japan , they can't make a dent in what Sony and MS are doing. If they can keep doing that , great but they should spare us the BS.

Yes there are things from Japan that influence things back here but the other way around? Not really I'm afraid. The entertainment industry there as a whole is very closed down and as a result things simply don't work efficiently enough to bring a huge amount of success both ways. That's why I do not believe something like the Switch is going to have a huge success overall. And that's bad for Nintendo because MS and Sony have the biggest domination on this market in history.

The reality is this : go ahead and watch any trailer for a big upcoming multiplatform game and tell me if it's coming to the Switch. I bet you'll see a lot of "Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows". And that's further proof that consoles aren't really what they used to be.

 

[Frick]

That's a bit silly , of course they knew , the Switch didn't just dropped form nowhere , rumors go back as far as 2 years ago. There is another reason for that , the platform is just simply not interesting to them. First of all this came in the middle of the current generation , it's hard to invest in something new at this point. Secondly being the user base that I already talked about. And thirdly , lets face it , it's not very powerful , big publishers want games on many platforms and it is unrealistic to think that they'll be able to bring big AAA games to the Switch. And if you can't get those as a gamer it's not great.

"Caught off guard" as in "selling more than we thought". Also look at the Wii. The Switch costs more, but still. It corners roughly the same markets, and remember all those Zelds fans are now adults with kids of their own and money to burn. It might not get the same kind of dev attraction as PS/Xbox, but that will not mean it'll be a failure. Again, consider the wii.

 

[Vya Domus]

Again, consider the wii.

There was a different time when the Wii sold , it was literally the only thing of it's kind on the market. I don't want to say it was luck but it could've been a total success or a total failure. It ended up being a huge success because of the gimmicky nature. Let's be real it was nothing more that a calculated risk.

This time around the landscape is different , Switch isn't alone. Mobile games for phones and tablets have been in everyone's hand already for years. And those games already got the reputation for being free or very cheap and of low production quality. Do you think they can change that perception and make people pay 60$ for a mobile game ? I personally don't think so. Like I said the majority of people buying the Switch are already fans and I simply don't see these things being bought by the average gamer , it just doesn't spark enough interest.That fact that a good chunk of the sales are from Japan alone proves again that in general it's not an attractive console to most people.
Just for reference none of my friends or anyone that I know plan on buying one , yet some of them are thinking about buying a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X instead even though they already have the base versions. That must say something about all this.

and remember all those Zelds fans are now adults with kids of their own and money to burn.

Funny because that's the only tactic Nintendo ever had for everyone outside of Japan. I am curios to see for how long it is going to work.

 

[Frick]

There was a different time when the Wii sold , it was literally the only thing of it's kind on the market. I don't want to say it was luck but it could've been a total success or a total failure. It ended up being a huge success because of the gimmicky nature. Let's be real it was nothing more that a calculated risk.

This time around the landscape is different , Switch isn't alone. Mobile games for phones and tablets have been in everyone's hand already for years. And those games already got the reputation for being free or very cheap and of low production quality. Do you think they can change that perception and make people pay 60$ for a mobile game ? I personally don't think so. Like I said the majority of people buying the Switch are already fans and I simply don't see these things being bought by the average gamer , it just doesn't spark enough interest.That fact that a good chunk of the sales are from Japan alone proves again that in general it's not an attractive consoles to most people.
Just for reference none of my friends or anyone that I know plan on buying one , yet some of them are thinking about buying a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X instead even though they already have the base versions. That must say something about all this.

None of my friends are gamers at all. Sooo .... in the end I could be wrong. We'll see what happens in a year or so I guess.

 

[jaggerwild]

Hi,

I was watching THIS and got to Thinking...

Knowing that most *If not All Games are now just Ported over to our PCs (Some are Awful Ports where others are Good) Just knowing they just stupid Low-End AMD [APU-Based] CPUs is just Laughable in a since. Knowing most games are just programmable for that Hardware but it's a very not-able-buy Hardware that's made for that Console. We have AMD APU's but they can't even compare to those!

Talk and Laugh... but stay Cool and to the Point

Toms hardware misses you!!!!

 

[Mussels]

Havent read all the comments yet, but i've been of the opinion for many years now that consoles are just going to be PC's with a custom/locked down OS.

The current Xbox platform is heading in that direction, with i think the end goal being:

1. Consoles are basically a replacement for a pre-built PC
2. Locked down variant of a normal OS (think windows 10 that only works on the windows store)
3. Game titles/programs on this platform can also run on the consumer OS/custom built PC's, through the same platform (windows store)

From a business perspective this gives them hardware + software sales, doesnt really lock anyone out of using their ecosystem, and has other benefits (guaranteed performance on their hardware, not on PC systems)