| Naninho said: I agree. PS4 and X720 are essentially non upgradable PCs. They will seem outdated in a year or two. VALVE realized this, and their approach of various Steam certified PCs makes much more sense to me. I can totally see Microsoft and Sony selling game software for other platforms after the 8th generation. Nintendo is way too rigid and will probably release one or two dedicated systems more before doing that, but console generations will cease to exist. |
Actually, they don't seem outdated. Maybe after 4-5 years, yes, but only based on bare specs alone do they seem outdated so soon.
And as consoles, everything is a billion times for optimized because you are developing for 1 set hardware configuration instead of billions of possibilties. This allows performance to continue to grow while hardware does not, and prevents stagnation for several years.
Even if what you claim ever does come to pass, the next step would simply be to make a modular console. If PC's were threatening consoles so badly, MS/Sony/Nintendo would simply make a modular PC design where graphics cards, memory, hard drive, and CPU could be swapped in and out. After 2 years, if you WANT to upgrade, spend $200 and get more RAM, better GPU, better CPU (again cheaper for consoles because of mass production of only 1 type of product each, only 1 licensed brand) and be done. Developers would then simply only have to account for 2 sets of hardware or just 8 possible combinations of hardware total.
Either way, I don't see console gaming going anywhere until the day that PC's are much more "similar" in design to one another. Consoles vs PC is kind of like smart phones these days. You have people who love Apple and only release 1 model every year or so, or you have people who love Android and the choice they have in hundreds of different phones each year.
Ironically, though, I love console gaming and Android smartphones :)
