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Nuvendil on 17 March 2015
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Soundwave said:
Nuvendil said:
Soundwave said:


That exists. It's called a Playstation 4. 

It's not like that is any new type of product category, Sony/MS basically still adhere to the same business model (1st party games + royalty licensed third party games) established by the NES even in inflationary terms $200 for an NES in 1985 would be close to the PS4s price today. 

They just took the concept and today market it to adults/teenagers first and foremost, but even that was simply a natural evolution of the NES formula. 

Well, somewhat.  Playstation 4 still suffers some issues of this focus on multitasking.  It has a bloated PC-esque OS that takes up 3.5 gigs of it's RAM; if it took up, say 1 gig similar to Wii U's, it would give them 7 gigs of GDDR5 to use for games rather than 4.5 gigs (yes, the 3.5 are reserved).  The PS4 and Xbox One also use what are not so far from off the shelf parts rather than more custom made hardware designed for maximum gaming efficiency.  Compare this to PS3, Xbox 360 and of course the GameCube in the sixth and seventh gen where all of those used proprietary, unique hardware with every aspect focused on gaming to allow for devs to get right down to the metal and get the absolute max out of the hardware in question.  That's at least a part of what I am saying.  Interface and input efforts are also other areas where you can look into providing a console-only experience. 


People don't want a game console that does nothing but play games anymore. The GameCube tried that and Nintendo was forced to cry daddy after getting beat by both Sony and even newcomer MS. 

All game systems now have allotments for non-gaming functionality, but even that really is not out of line with the original Famicom concept. Yamauchi had the Famicom do many things, a lot of people don't know this but the Famicom could was a networked machine, Nintendo had a deal with a Japanese telecom company that allowed the system to use a modem and go online. 

I think they wanted people to be able to do things like buy/sell stocks, check the news/weather, etc. on it. This is way back in 1987 or so. 

The PS4 may actually have more in common with the NES than the Wii U does in a lot of other ways too. The NES was largely made off off-the-shelf components, just like the PS4 is, whereas the modern Wii U is a fairly propietary design. 

Like I said, the reason I think a dedicated gaming focus will increase in the near future is because people will have the means to do those other functions in their living room anyway, having those in the consoles is redundant and just drives up the price for no recognizable returns. We are talking 2017 and 2018, not this year, and things are moving fast. 

Comparing Wii U and PS4 is a bit unfair since PS4 is using off the shelf parts, yes, but Wii U is bogged down by the cost of the gamepad so the proprietary aspects of the Wii U's inards can't do much good as a result.

Also, GameCube suffered from numerous other issues, you can't take the numbers in a vacuum.  Complete lack of marketing, poor shelf image (it looked like purple lunch box), restrictive proprietary mini-disc format that tanked their waning 3rd party relations, rapid price cutting that caused consumer price uncertainty and torpedoed any perception of value.  Really, it's not a very fair comparison. 

And times have changed a huge deal since the NES days, the infant years of consoles.  You can't really make comparisons to that gen.  SNES gen and onwards are more valid. 

But this is just what I think will happen, it's not guaranteed, and things could change or not go as they appear to be.