| Wyrdness said: As a company can you really blame them though? They'll still have decent third party support and the broad market has much more money potential then the avid group those sacrifices may alarm the so called hardcore group but in the end this group are ever shrinking and becoming more irrelevant as time passes, the whole go all out approach in consoles against the competition is dead and now it's about a balance of being smart and catering to all. We'll still see great games only we'll be less concerned about raw horse power. |
The console makers aren't seeing what's happening or are in denial. Nintendo seems to have already missed the mark and their console is being abandoned by 3rd parties. They are losing exclusives like Rayman Legends and developers are complaining the console is not next generation enough, fearing most people will skip it. Casuals are becoming increasingly more interested in spending $1-3 games on their tablets and smartphones to play at lunch, between classes, on the way to work, at the office, on the train ride from work, etc.. If you buy casual games, you get access for all your iOS and Android devices. That means you can buy 1 game and have 2-3 of your kids playing it on their devices. Some of my friends who teach in grade school say kids growing up now love playing on tablets and smartphones more than on consoles. It's not a waterfall drop off in interest wrt to consoles, but it's definitely there. Consoles are no longer the definitive go to gaming toy. Actually many kids even want iPads over consoles when they are 5-7 years old.
The hardcore gamers are getting completely fed up with some of the direction consoles are moving. Instead of being simpler to use, they might require always on internet connection, block used games, and unlike the past, they might no longer seem that revolutionary. In the past a high-end PC cost thousands of dollars. Now the cost of a gaming PC has come down exponentially where it's pretty affordable to put one together. With things like Steam Big Picture in your living room and incredible prices of PC games online (Trine 2 is going for $3.74 on Steam right now for example), a lot of people may be questioning why they are going to buy a next gen console. I am not talking about guys like us on this forum who will buy those consoles. I am talking about the general public.
Free to Play market on the PC is set to explode worldwide by 2015.
League of Legends on the PC is now the the most played game in terms of hours per month on any platform/system. It's a Free to Play game....
The console makers are facing major threats from both the hardcore and casual markets simulateneously on competing devices.
Crytek just announced that ALL of its games soon will be free to play, including Crysis 4:
http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/crysis-4-free-to-play-crytek-says-its-game-will-all-be-free-to-play-in-the-future/#ixzz2Kk40w791
The console makers continue to charge $60 for games, MS forces the Xbox Live gold fee to play online and force us to pay high prices for their hard drive upgrades. Now with Xbox 720, they are rumored to force you to install every single game you buy, which means that 500GB hard drive will run out of space in no time and then you are forced to pay $100 for MS's overpriced 1TB drives I bet when in 2014 you'll be able to buy a 3TB drive for that much $.
So hell ya I am mad that they are shoving us a $400-450 console with such weak CPUs and then dare to sell $60 games as $90-100 games by tacking on additional DLC/Season Passes and micro-transactions. You know Dead Space 3 had 11 Day 1 DLCs??????????????? The console industry is out of touch with reality. They are not prepared to face the future in 3-5 years where you could play 100s of free games on a basic PC/laptop. Starting out with weak hardware is not the answer either. Just look at the Wii U.
Look at other trends projected for gaming. Consoles are under threat and it's only to increase in the next 5 years.
Valve Software Boss Expects PC-to-TV Streaming of Video Games to Become Standard Feature.
No Need for Game Consoles: Future TVs to Stream Video Games from Local Desktop PCs
P.S. I am not mad at you btw :), just releasing some frustraction since I was still hoping deep down the next gen PS4/720 just might use something better than that 8 core Jaguar CPU :(
