| Landguy said: I agree completly that the power situation will never be overcome anytime soon. BUT, you are speaking to the 20-20% of gamers that actually need that kind of gaming experience. With the cost of AAA content being so high, if a large portion of the console buying public figures out they don't need a console to play the short mobile games, the publishers won't continue to make them for the console crowd. If you look at the gaming that is coming down the line for mobile devices, it matches with what most of the casual gamers are looking for. The games will not be AAA console/PC games, but they will be "good enough". That is what will kill console gaming, "good enough". Already, we are seeing that most of the next gen games could be played on last gen, but the visuals/framerates would suffer dramatically. So, if the developers recognize that there are a billion smartphones out there that have powerful enough systems to handle games(2-4 years from now), they will slowly quit the console markets - thus further reducing the need for a console. No guarantees to this idea, just a thought of where it is going. Someday! |
Well, outside of the AAA we really can see games going mobile. Indie games are already doing this kind of thing. I'm still a little sceptic about the mass market (CoD crowd) since this guys still want some heavy AAA presentation with tight controls and advanced online. A game like that is expensive and it isn't quite in the F2P or mobile price range. Crytek tried fitting their Crysis-level experience on a F2P game and the company almost broke.
I think we will see a more broad market, like the indies are today. You have some games on PC, mobile and consoles (digital only) at the same time because the tools, specially Unity, make easy to create a game to run on everything. About the casuals, I think the Wii U show they are gone as they were mostly on the Wii. Consoles still have an advantage in the price point of the unit itself (come on, the amount of power they pack for 300 bucks is ridiculously good and you just buy one each 6 years) but casuals will surely shift to phones. I just don't think is isn't that dramatic. It's basically 80M people on the Wii. Well, and times really changed in one aspect: people now have way more gadgets. It's not hard to see people with one console, wanting to buy another, plus a smartphone, tablet, laptops and the list goes on.
I think the AAA model is safe. Costs are high, but with good advertising you can do a WatchDogs or Destiny and profit massively. Indies are safe: costs are low so risc is minimal and they can publish in everything with low costs nowadays. The middle games is where some guys will have problems. It's good to note that mobile isn't a wonderful land: making money there is hard. You have millions of competitors and just the guys on the top make a lot of money to be worthy of the attention of a publisher.
