KBG29 said:
Just curious. So, do you think we are going to see 3 to 5 year cycles where we get devices that are not true genrational leaps, but rather make minor advances in resolution, frame rate, and OS responsiveness? Are you thinking that we are basically heading towards a future where consoles are basically the Smartphone of the home theater world? I am just curious at this blistering rate, where do devs aim when they develop their games? It is one thing to develop a Phone title with a small group in a few months, but when you are looking at a project that takes 500 people and 4 - 6 years, a reliable baseline is much more important. That is why I think AAA gaming has to have a hybrid of generations, and the yearly optional upgrades. A base system that sets the development standards for a decade gives everyone a set target, and allows projects to stay on focus. Perhapps with the massive amount of work going into scalability on both game engines/tools, and CPU/GPU tech, they can just aim for a midline target, and scale up and down as needed. Maybe a set baseline is no longer needed. Whatever the case, it is by far the most interesting time in the 25 years I have been following the gaming industry. So many ways companies, could go, and so much potential for failure, or complete domination of the industry. Going to be interesting to see how the next decade plays out. |
A more fluid market, more middleware and leasing of engine tech and physics tech. More streaming-like business models and a lot more focus on digital. Consoles are already showing increased growth in digital media and console manufacturers are already adapting their hardware and features to accommodate a rising percentage of digital titles being bought and played.
Revisions will certainly be more prevalent, we're already seeing this development, and I actually predicted this a while before the Xbox One and PS4 launched (in this very forum). Fringe consumers, the ones that helped the DS and PS2 reach such absurdly large installed bases, have a wider variety of options, the possibilities for different kinds of interfaces and interaction are also growing. Developers are seeing that how we interact with the games and the market itself has changed, and they seem more or less ready to embrace these changes.
Cost saving measures will be focused more on, brute-forcing effects and resolutions will become obsolete and the entire market will converge somewhat again, after almost a decade of splintering and dividing. Alternate distribution models and business models will become more common as well.
Smart devices set the pace for consumer electronics overall, and the pace is blistering. This has long since started affecting mainstream gaming devices, even more dedicated ones. Look at the immense reduction in the total dedicated handheld installed base, compared to the 7th gen. More static products, such as consoles, are becoming more and more dependent on revision and adding features, but building more and more powerful and more and more diverse consoles over and over will have to end at some point, and I believe that this point is quite imminent. The required increase in sheer output and performance in order to keep increasing graphical fidelity and interactive environments is massive, I have no idea how the OP has reached the conclusion that "4x the resolution requires exactly 4x the power", the jumps are increasing exponentially and even real gaming rigs are being hard-pressed to run modern games in 4k resolutions with any amount of PP effects and AA. It is simply not feasible that any mainstream device, dedicated or no, will be able to perform on these levels and be sold at an acceptable price any time soon.
