Hookedgamers

New mobile gaming technology is making the current gen of consoles look even older and will force living room entertainment to evolve or die.

I have never been an advocator of mobile gaming, it just doesn't suit how I like to play my games. But after seeing what hardware developers are doing to take mobile gaming up to the standards of (and perhaps surpassing) the current gen of consoles, I find my interests piqued.

Back in February, Nvidia made clear their bid to work on mobile chips but now Jen-Hsun Huang, the CEO of Nvidia has stated what platforms they are aiming to develop for during the earnings conference call: 

We’ve made very, very large investments in the Google operating system. And we have a great working relationship with [Google]. As soon as the next-generation Kal-El processor goes into production we can run like the wind.

Huang also said that he is looking "forward to Ice Cream Sandwich and expect to be very successful with it.” Ice Cream Sandwich is the next version of Android upgraded from Honeycomb and Gingerbread. Not only this, but Huang also mentioned a heavy interest in Windows 8 running on tablets and laptops: “We’re very bullish on Windows 8 for the second half of next year.”

Nvidia's new chip, known as Project Kal-El, is ridiculously small and powerful as has been showcased previously. Their next-gen Tegra super chip is the world’s first mobile quad-core processor. Kal-El combines a battery-friendly, powerhouse of a quad-core processor with a 12-core NVIDIA GPU that supports 3D stereo. The first tech demo of Kal-El can be seen below. In the words of Nvidia, the demo showcases "true dynamic lighting, rendered in real-time with physics" - a first for mobile gaming.

Nvidia have expressed a determination to outdo these outstanding specs in the very near future. Their goal is to produce a yearly refresh of its architecture, as can be seen in their TEGRA roadmap. Although their target set back in February of releasing Kal-El this month has not been met, their determination has not been swayed. The original plan to double the performance of Kal-El by 2012 and then another 5x increase in 2013 is still reachable. The furthest NVIDIA is willing to go out is 2014 with 'Stark', which they say will roughly double the performance reached in 2013.

Whether a mobile gamer or not, a lot of effort is being poured into part of the industry which is often thought of as inferior to consoles and PC gaming. The cycles of hardware compete with those of PC gaming development, and obviously outstrip the console's typical 5 year + cycle of generations

http://www.hookedgamers.com/blogs/chrispriestman/2011/08/12/next-gen_chips_favour_mobile_gaming_leaving_xbox_360_and_ps3_behind.html

Not sure what to make of this..

The thing is it's not like CPU / GPU evolution's in performance - size -heat and power are confined to the Mobile platform yes they are improving and shrinking but that is Tech for you, all it means is each gen improves upon the last, just like next gen home consoles will improve and PC's even more than those, the question is this, will the new mobile tech make PS360 look old before the next gen appears I don't think so.

I don't think people are going to drop blockbuster games on big TV's for lower budget titles on small handhelds.

I hope you are talking about 3DS and Vita, not smart phones.

Well there is one aspect of hardware that kinda does that: the user interface. And that's where mobile phone and tablet gaming (touch screen) is limited. The KB+M provides for very precise and responsive user interface, and the console controller provides a high level of precision and responsiveness, and it has rumble. Then there's the motion control thing, without having to tilt or shake the screen and with scope for much more dexterous interaction.

I do however agree with you in that the raw processing power side of hardware in a mobile device doesn't really define video games and what platforms will be successful.

I think most people are buying mobiles and tablets for purposes other than gaming, and gaming is great for downtime. And of course there's such a wide variation in processing power in the mobile devices arena that very few games are going to get to use the latest processors to the max. It's worse than PC game development, because at least with PC there are core gamers who stay up with the gaming specs. I don't think there is a core gamer segment of the mobile/tablet market. So massive processing power going into mobile devices seems a bit of a waste. Are people really going to be doing a lot of processor heavy stuff on mobiles and tablets other than gaming?

the sweet smell of advancement in tech

wrong,foolish article

Next gen chips are limited as there will be battery problems and screen size which everybody wants to be bigger.they will not be able to bring the change that consoles with a power source and a bigger screen size will bring.

also its funny how they compare mobile chips to console,howmuch ever they advance in mobile processor power it just doesn't make sense.As mobiles have closed to reached their full capacity or will in the next few years,the mobile screen is so small that any application wouldn't require more processing more as detail required is less for games and for other application like computer applications,it will just be too hard for the user to use it

This means absolutely nothing, there are 4 reasons mobile gaming will never even come close to handhelds or even console gaming

1. Input, it's just a touch screen, precision takes a huge hit and it becomes frustrating and annoying with alot of more complex games.

2. So many upgrades so close together, making a game to the specs of the latest mobile phone is a sure fire way to cut your install base by 90%.

3. Development budget, phone games can't afford to have high development budgets because they sell for so little, so even if the phone hardware was superior the games would be technologically inferior.

4. Price of the device and upgrading, the thing costs more then a console and handheld and there's a new one every year, some people complained that consoles coming out every 5 years was too often.

so yeah phone games have absolutely no chance of overtaking console or handheld gaming, it might cut into some of Nintendo shovelware and puzzle game market but that's the extent of the negative impact on gaming.

I think the potential in these high tech mobile/tablet advancements isn't soley in the ability of a user to play a game on these devices but to allow these device to be extensible to other input and output devices. Imagine a powerful tablet running windows 8 that can extend to your HDTV and an Xbox 360 controller. Given this setup you could run a PC game like Call of Duty on your tablet but play the game on your TV with a proper controller. Things like battery life might be a problem for the forseeable future but just having the ability plug the tablet into your TV via USB would solve that.

I dont think the current paradigm will shift to this in the near future but it's a potential for the future of consumer oriented products.

Consoles doomed, so on and so forth...