Sanity Check: PS4 still on its path to 100m+?

[vivster]

walsufnir said:

vivster said:

walsufnir said:
I think the most important thing to 100m is how long Sony is willing to sell the console. This gen both consoles don't have any advantage to pc beside the api but DirectX 12 is changing this to a good extend so let's see how it will work this gen.
I don't care because beside of emulation I don't care about pc (well, I do my work with it, though) but let's see how long it can keep going.

Didn't expect something like that from you. You're usually quite thoughtful.

Nothing in this gen changed in the advantages and disadvantages of consoles vs PCs. It's still the same factors that make people decide for one thing or the other. DX12 will change absolutely nothing. It will do nothing for the vast majority of PC gamers, let alone sway console owners to a PC.

I'm seeing mobile as the much more prominent competitor to consoles when stealing marketshare is concerned.

 

You think I am not this time?

Well, we have a set of parameters (which also apply to me) why one would choose a console over a PC and I don't want to repeat them as we all know how these discussions and dependencies work and probably had them before many times.

I just want to say that, although we had several gens now, we don't know how close connected tech is with success really as consoles always had a (subjectively) small advantage considering PC tech. This gen, there is no advantage besides of "bare metal" apis which can't compete with better PC hardware which is even more not counting with DX12.

We have to wonder if devs are still willing to prefer consoles to "gimp" PC versions or if they are to take more advantage of what PC can do so to make console versions "appropriate". This is already in some way happening and we  already started the gen.

Perhaps people don't care taking less resolution (which would happen, of course) or don't mind having less IQ as we don't know how much people care about advantages and disadvantages about PC gaming in general.

To me, again, I don't care. I will always prefer consoles gaming for several reasons. But if tech overtakes the consoles (which happened already before release of the console, mind...) I guess both MS and Sony are forced to release "something new" (PSNow, perhaps, although I doubt network tech is there in the next 10 years) to compete with tech in general.

 

Mobile? Well, to me this is just a different market because I look at it how I see it and mobile gaming is a nogo for me :) But I don't know how much it could possibly steal from the main market. I just hope it attracts people like the Wii did while not taking too much from the "core" market.

Technology and how advanced it is compared to PC is irrelevant. Mainstream does not care about that.

Ask 100 non-PC gamers what they would plug into their TV to play games from their couch and 99 people will answer with "console". Ask 100 people if they would like to build a PC or just use a console that is cheaper and you will have a similar result. Pixels and performance are absolutely irrlevant to most people's decision between the 2 choices.

Devs have been gimping their games in favor of consoles for the last 5 years when PCs were miles above anything a console could do. This will not change this gen and especially not this early when PC and consoles are closest.

If the specs between PCs and consoles would matter one bit, consoles would've died out by the end of gen 6.

Where do you think most of the casuals that bought into motion controls and handhelds went after last gen? Certainly not PC. Meaning the biggest deflux from dedicated consoles went to mobile, making it the main perpetrator of lost revenue in the console industry. Hence mobile is the greatest danger for consoles today, not PC. Ask Nintendo about this.