The Big Bad Console Thread - Sway your Station with an Xboner !

Lenas_sl said:

I don't think it's indicative of anything that people are doing those things (watching shows/movies, listening to music) on their gaming systems. Including gaming, these are activities that people have always split amongst their free time. The only difference is now they can do all of those things on one box.

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Agreed, it's only telling that the consoles have great secondary functions and people happen to use them for it. People "surprisingly" do not spend 100% of their free time on video games (even me!).

Video games sell video game consoles. The PS3 is the #1 Netflix device, but people do not buy a PS3 for that, they buy it for video games. If you make video games, people will come.

Sean_sl said:

The phone hardware will catch up, but it's a matter of them going "can we make and sell these games to this audience at these prices" and actually having that happen. The hardware surpassed this last generation a while ago, but it still did not happen. Plus, there's the huge issue of Storage Capacity and the fact that everything is now going to be tailored to BR disc sizes. The only way I could see those games working on phones is if they sold a dock for it with an external harddrive. Should probably throw in a controller too.

I do not think Phones taking over as a primary gaming device is going to happen until Cloud Gaming becomes a reality and that's not going to happen until our internet infrastructure goes under a drastic change to be able to support it.

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I think the biggest reason a phone will not take over the real gaming world of AAA titles, even if they could play them flawlessly, is that Phones don't have the greatest controllers as part of the package. I guess they'll eventually make blue tooth controllers that work, but that's just something else you'll have to carry with you to play a real game. As opposed to a console or hand held system that has controllers built in.

To be honest I think the next generation of gaming will simply be streaming games. Microsoft and Sony have already begun to transition into "Services" rather then buy a console and just play games. Eventually you won't buy a console at all but subscribe to a service and games will be streamed to you along with everything else. Big companies will slowly expand and have their fingers in a huge variety of consumer products. I think we are all thinking in the wrong direction. More and more companies are trying to create a kind of brand loyalty so when a transition is made to a complete service instead of a 'product' it will be a smoother transition.

An example in Australia and I'm sure it's similar in the US is companies like Coles and Woolworths. Slowly they've expanded pushing/buying out smaller companies. From huge supermarkets to buying petrol. Big companies will cut the prices of products and run at a loss in the new market while profiting in an already controlled market just to bully smaller franchises out of business. Apply that thinking to Sony and Microsoft. Microsoft with their drive on TV. Eventually we will only have a few entertainment services because the big corporations will swallow or destroy the smaller ones. Look at how far companies like Virgin and Google have come from their original form.

I'm high as shit right now probably don't make sense.

DMK_sl said:

To be honest I think the next generation of gaming will simply be streaming games. Microsoft and Sony have already begun to transition into "Services" rather then buy a console and just play games. Eventually you won't buy a console at all but subscribe to a service and games will be streamed to you along with everything else. Big companies will slowly expand and have their fingers in a huge variety of consumer products. I think we are all thinking in the wrong direction. More and more companies are trying to create a kind of brand loyalty so when a transition is made to a complete service instead of a 'product' it will be a smoother transition.

An example in Australia and I'm sure it's similar in the US is companies like Coles and Woolworths. Slowly they've expanded pushing/buying out smaller companies. From huge supermarkets to buying petrol. Big companies will cut the prices of products and run at a loss in the new market while profiting in an already controlled market just to bully smaller franchises out of business. Apply that thinking to Sony and Microsoft. Microsoft with their drive on TV. Eventually we will only have a few entertainment services because the big corporations will swallow or destroy the smaller ones. Look at how far companies like Virgin and Google have come from their original form.

I'm high as shit right now probably don't make sense.

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No, you're pretty much on the money there and it definitely makes sense about things becoming Services (despite you being high as shit). However, I think stuff like that and phones taking over, etc, are a much longer ways off than people realize. The infrastructure isn't there to support it on a large enough scale yet and won't be for quite some time. Technology and services like that are massively held back by the horrible condition of the US and other large geographic areas' shitty internet.

Microsoft and Sony still expect to sell 100 million X360/PS3s lifetime (they're currently at 78-79) and they probably will if the price on them drops enough. Sony will also likely sell more PS4s than that. The world is getting bigger and there will be more and more people to buy them, because people still want games that they can play on their TVs. China removing consoles from their import blacklist will also likely boost sales of them significantly.

mkopec_sl said:

You guys are not looking at the big picture. That handheld device will do everything in the future. Phone, music, game, work, storage... And it will connect to everything around you making those items smarter. It probably wont happen in this (new) generation of consoles but it will eventually happen. Why have all these separate devices in your house that one device can do, and best of all you can take it with you in your pocket. Why are some of you so against this idea?

And Soy, yes, the phones will never reach the power of PC, but they will be more than enough to run games on. Also the big chip makers are all focusing on mobile. How to shrink everything, have on board video and use less power. For instance Intell has not been focusing on sheer processing power, they have been focusing on board video and power consumption. And why is that? Because the PC market is shrinking and the mobile market is only growing.

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I don't think any of us are "against" it. We just have varying opinions onwhenit will happen. The power that mobile devices have Vs. PCs isn't really going to matter, imo. The biggest deterrent,by far, is having the infrastructure and bandwidth to support it all.

Consoles/PCs are still going to go strong for quite some time, because the demographic is there to support it and make money from it.

Sean_sl said:

China removing consoles from their import blacklist will also likely boost sales of them significantly.

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I wonder about that. When I lived there I knew a fair amount of upper-middle class types, and none of them would ever pay for licensed dvds/games. The import prices on video games (The blacklist seemed to not be in effect, because I saw a few big name games like halo and CoD at electronics and import stores), dvds, and a lot of electronics were insane to the point where just about everything was counterfeit. I must have hung out at about 20-30 mid-20s houses, and never once saw a legit dvd or game console. The $20-60 is ridiculously high priced to most chinese, so they would have to price really aggressively, I would think. Modded ps3/xbox 360 games were $1, dvds were like $2 for 10+ movies on every street corner, yet stores still thought they could sell dvds for $20 for some reason.

I wonder how dvds do over there. I've never seen nor heard of anyone buying a legit one, even though I've seen them around.

About the Steam Box, I don't see what could their pathway to success be. The N?1 target audience of Steam is made of people who have a gaming PC and therefor will have very little interest in a Steam Box. So they need to convince non PC gamers to jump on board, but how are they going to do that when they have minimal brand recognition and just about jack shit as exclusive IP (one Half Life game every 15 years, yay!)?

Tol_sl said:

I wonder about that. When I lived there I knew a fair amount of upper-middle class types, and none of them would ever pay for licensed dvds/games. The import prices on video games (There was an import game shop), dvds, and a lot of electronics were insane to the point where just about everything was counterfeit. I must have hung out at about 20-30 mid-20s houses, and never once saw a legit dvd or game console. The $20-60 is ridiculously high priced to most chinese, so they would have to price really aggressively, I would think. Modded ps3/xbox 360 games were $1, dvds were like $2 for 10+ movies on every street corner, yet stores still thought they could sell dvds for $20 for some reason.

I wonder how dvds do over there. I've never seen nor heard of anyone buying a legit one, even though I've seen them around.

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That is nuts. I wonder if they'll bother to release systems specifically to China. It sounds like they'll make $0 on Software there. Do they just blackmarket import consoles there (pre-ban lifting) and mod/hack every one of them?

Sounds like there'd at least be a market for hardware.

mkopec_sl said:

You guys are not looking at the big picture. That handheld device will do everything in the future. Phone, music, game, work, storage...

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Uhm smart phones already do this you know. Just because a device is capable of doing something doesn't necessarily mean it is the best medium to do it on. From time to time I will play a game on my phone out of boredom in a waiting room or whatever but I would never site down and play through a 30+ hour rpg on a fucking phone. My eyes would melt after a few hours.

I don't know, everyone I know went to "tech tower" to buy hardware/software stuff. 95% of the software was bootleg, and even the city university used bootleg stuff, haha. The hardware giants seemed to be Lenovo and apple. China's a weird place. There are a shitload of rules that no one ever follows or are enforced, and copyright seems to be one of the biggest ones since every street corner has bootleg dvd salesmen. I suspect a lot of the 360s and playstations were not "official", since there's a ton of knockoff hardware there. Like, lots of "836 snes roms on one cart" kind of sales. I saw counterfeit GBAs, snes's, playStations, ps2s.

some of the more hilarious ones:11 Hilarious Chinese Game Console Rip-Offs - Wii Articles | MMGN Australia

Why? They already have all the tech required... Mirroring to TV, check. Bluetooth capability for controller, check. Wifi powerful enough to stream game, check.

Tuco_sl said:

We're a long way from being able to just plug your smart phone into your TV and playing AAA games on them. As in, it's not happening in the foreseeable future.

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I think by the time things are small enough to be run from a small phone or whatever streaming will be a viable option. I think there will be a Universal internet of some sort that is available to everyone everywhere. Like big fucken satalites that beam 4g around the whole world.Or some massive machines buried around the earth or some shit...Whether you can afford it or not will be the question.. Think about the first country that builds a device that offers 4g anywhere any time.

Actually, it's a lot closer than most think. We're currently running Xbox360 models with high res textures and normal maps on ipad3/4 with 0 reduction vs. the console versions at roughly 4x the pixel resolution at 30fps.

Phone and tablet tech iterates yearly with massive jumps in both power and performance. The lastest iphone sports a 64 bit chip with OpenGL ES 3.0 support. iOS 7 has native controller support for the first time in Apple's history. Anyone who is paying attention should be able to see where this is going.

PS4/Xbox One will have clear lead...for a few years. Somewhere 3-5 years into this console cycle you'll see mobile catch up close enough that you won't be able to tell the difference. Someone, maybe Apple, maybe a sensible third party, will have a controller out that is as nice as a console controller. Sony and MS will then be forced with coping with how to handle more agile companies, they can't go into a 10-15 year RnD cycle like PS3/Xbox360 or they will be left in the dust.

I don't think you realize the power difference involved here. Everything doubles in computing every two years. So, sure, yes, some mobile tech today can run games at the same level as the 360 because the 360 is 7 years old and phones have slightly more than octupled in power since it came out. But so has the PS4. Whatever lead consoles had over phones and iPads? That gap is exactly the same size. We're talking Hercules and the Tortoise here, they will never catch up, even if they gain ground (which, for the record, they haven't, they are still basically the same fraction as powerful as a gaming PC, for instance).

Not even getting into the sound issue. A large portion of the space on any AAA game Blu-Ray is dedicated to sound. Mobile devices do not have the technology to reproduce this sound at an acceptable level of quality, it isn't a priority and they are limited on space and processing power. Even modern day dedicated mp3 players aren't good enough for this, all audiophiles I know have to buy custom modded ones or simply give up on the idea of having mobile music, so if you think a big multi-tasking thing like a phone measures up in the audio department...

This might come as a surprise to you, but the increase in processing power is a steady upward trend. There aren't "sudden" jumps or advancements. We know exactly where it is and where it will be. To get to the point where a mobile device the size of a smart phone is as powerful, in all categories!, as the PS4's current specs is 14-16 years off.

I'm tellin ya people. Streaming is the future!!

Szlia_sl said:

People with $100+ fighting sticks are a niche within a niche and on top of that there is no fighting game currently announced for the PS4! Talk about low priority!

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Injustice was just announced for PS4.

The Master_sl said:

I don't think you realize the power difference involved here. Everything doubles in computing every two years.

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Actually is every 18 months (Moore's Law), so let's do some math here

PS3s GPU pushes about 200 G(iga)FLOPs. I think everyone can agree that the PS3 was state of the art at its time of release. It was a beast. Research facilities were buying them for processing clusters they were so powerful.

PS4 GPU pushes about 1800 GFLOPS

The PS3 has been out for almost exactly 7 years. That is a little over 4 cycles of Moore's law. Which means that if you go by Moore's Law, the PS4 should push about 3200(200x2x2x2x2) GFLOPS, which is not an unreasonable number, as AMD will have multiple video cards available this month(Oct '13) that push in the 4000-6000 GFLOPS (280x and 290x). An Nvidia 660Ti video card pushes right at 3000GFLOPS, and that is a year-old card that can now be purchased for ~ $250. A solid, mid-range card.

The PS4 is already WAY behind the curve here in raw graphical power, it is where a new system should have been around 2011 performance-wise.

Nvidia is releasing a mobile chip in 2014 that is on par with the PS3 in terms of power. Mobile technology is not being restrained to following Moore's Law, its increasing by somewhere around 5-7x every 12 months. As it stands, Mobile tech is on pace to have a mobile processor in your phone that is as powerful as the PS4 in 2-3 years tops.

NVIDIA Tegra 5 More Powerful than Sony PS3

The PS4 and XB1 are going to get swallowed up by mobile technology, and unless Sony and Microsoft haul ass and start bringing out new systems every 4-5 years, they're going to be left in the dust. Who wants a PS4 when your phone has better graphics and can wirelessly stream to any TV you are near? Your Samsung Galaxy S8 will be a wireless console in your pocket, more powerful than your PS4 or XB1

tl;dr consoles are falling behind the Moore's Law pace, mobile is greatly exceeding the Moore's Law pace, mobile will surpass consoles VERY soon.