The Distant Future of Console Gaming

[Game_boy]

Grey Acumen said:

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LOL Okay, I give you props for that.

I can see both sides of the debate, as a Nintendo fan and a technology enthusiast. I felt a good debate was needed on the subject.

I will pose this idea to maybe give a boost to the conversation about this.

One thing I found you focusing too much on was that the consoles were becoming too much like PCs, but actually, the real issue that I seee occuring in the future is that PCs are beginning to recognize that people want simplicity as well.

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An interesting idea, and quite probable. As manufacturers of CPUs and GPUs (the most expensive and frequently upgrade-requiring parts of any PC) switch to multi-core, software has to be more capable of using all of the cores. Therefore, the cores do not have to be physically on the same PCB and it will be much easier in the future to implement multi-GPU (SLI and Crossfire) and multi-CPU setups. Yes, we will begin to see multi-socket computers at the lower price points soon, making it easy to upgrade a system by adding more cores.

However, PC performance tends to increase exponentially, and Crossfire for example will still have all of the problems of current 'add-more' upgrades: Buying another card after 12 months for £100 may increase performance by half again and double your power consumption, but completely replacing for £150 can often give you three times the performance at the same power and space. Platforms also quickly change and often after a few months you can't find a retail card that will fit your given socket or bus.