Is that a good thing? Imagine games not being held back by console cpu's or tools based on what consoles can do. Instead of having tiny play areas in From dust, you could have a Witcher 3 sized world with those kind of terrain physics. Games have become very unbalanced leaning on the gpu while doing nothing impressive with AI and physics for interactivity. A good cpu could do crackdown 3 type destruction without needing the cloud. I certainly hope that gameplay won't be held back by old Jaguar cores when the next generation arrives.
Nah, games should push GPU compute for physics ...
Much higher quality simulation and higher performance than what the CPU could ever achieve ...
If consider the console market, you'll consider all manifacturers, right?
During last generation hardware sales were split between two manifacturers (counting out Nintendo for simplicity) , this time you have a clear winner whose taking the biggest slice of the pie. So of course when you'll see things by the winner's side everything looks great but if you'll look at the whole picture it's not very favorable. For this gen to match the previous one (already excluding handhelds and 100+ million consoles sales form Nintendo) you're betting that current Xbox One models are going to sell still about 10 million and PS4 is going to double its total sales in the next 2 to 3 years.
They were only split because 360 took half of PS2s sales, and this gen the split will be like +100-110M vs +5-60M, still the same pie. It's very favorable all things considered. Also it's not only about hardware sold anymore, read my last post, there's only so many households to put consoles in. That's why Sony has such global reach, putting consoles in emerging markets to expand the industry.
And again, if Xbone sold more, it wouldn't take away PS4 sales, the Xbone is still selling well maxing sales in America and UK, it's tracking great against 360. PS4+Xbone are up YoY against PS360 every year thus far on NPD so your narrative that PS4 is taking all the sales of the same pie is not true. The totals this gen are higher than last gen.
If you're gonna doom and gloom at least do some research, honestly what are you expecting sales wise? The console market is not dying, stop being stuck in 2011 and move on, enjoy games.
It's only natural to expect YoY sales to be higher at this point, both 360 and PS3 had a very shallow sales curve and did their best in later years. That's beacuse customers had to overcome the technological barrier of HD, consoles were more expansive expecially since a lot of customer were migrating form Ps2 and were waiting for the Ps3 to drop price.
Of course this is not the case with the ps4 and xbox one, both highly anticipated upgrades after an abnormally long generation, launched at a more affordable price, didn't require any setup upgrade for customers.
The ps4 will most likely reach is peak more quickly and then burn out faster, the Xbox One is likely already burn out.
lol ok. Technology always moves fast. To even insinuate that it isn't is just pure ignorance of the advancements made each generation. Of all the entertainment mediums games have evolved faster than them all and will continue to. Generations are just going to be done very soon. It's played out, Sony, MS, and Nintendo aren't trying to prove something to eachother with "blast processing", every company has access to the newest technology and can make the same console if they wanted to. That wasn't the case with the 8bit or even 16 bit era where everything was so custom (the ppus, sound chips, processors, etc.) most companies chose to develop for one console or the other.
It'll just be so stale if generations continue and Sony/MS/Nintendo are always looking at eachother and releasing consoles in response to other conosles. That just isn't wise in such a fast moving field. Back then when there was so little competition, that was fine it was only Nintendo vs. Nintendo for a while and then Nintendo vs. Sega, then here Came Sony and during those eras technology was still progressing quickly but each company still had their own way of developing consoles. People still don't want to acknowledge that the 9th "Gen" has already started with Nintendo Switch so how are we going to get everyone to continue to agree on generations? I'll even go as far as to say that in about 50 years or so, consoles won't exist as we know them. They'll be one device with modular upgrades like PCs that stream games to it and Physical media will take a back seat if it even exists at all. That's my prediction but everyone can make their own.
Stamping a "Gen" on something won't be something we do in the future, the playing field will be so much different.
I don't know about that. There's only so much we can do to improve upon digital technology and that day is coming sooner than you think or anyone else for that matter ...
We can only go so far with silicon and I predict in less than decade we'll reach a point where progression in transistor technology will stagnate for long periods. You're right that there will be no more generations but not for the reasons you imagine but because we'll have reached peak transistor density for a long time frame therefore we can't make integrated circuits anymore cost efficient than they already are at that point. The next generation will most likely be the last one for a while until we can figure out ways to make smaller and more cost efficient integrated circuits ...
The playing field will be different alright and it probably won't be the way you see it either ... (I think we're going to be worse off cause of the way industries take transistor technology for granted.)
What is Nintendo going to do in the post-Silicon era ? More importantly what is everyone else going to do ? (Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Sony, etc)
Very soon, yeah probably not very soon but I stand by everything else I said. Check out these two videos:
My point isn't to say that I don't think consoles suck or anything of the sort but to make it known that the fact that regular consumers are questioning the need for consoles is telling.
And a rebuttal from someone who is probably the most genuine console owner in history:
They both make great points and I know the field MIGHT not be like I say it will be or think it will be. That's the whole idea of making I dunno...a prediction? When media converges, something has to give. Same case with Blockbuster vs. Netflix. There were people who honestly thought that DVDs and DVD players would be around forever and now look where it is. My dad was the owner of a Blockbuster store and he thought DVDs would be the medium of choice for decades. He didn't know, nobody can know but technology moves so damn fast. Netflix, a streaming service is destroying the home video media entertainment realm. With Hulu and Amazon Prime Video, etc. following suit.
In the future, the tech will eventually hit that point where streaming games to a little box will be how you play games. Not because it's how I think it should be but just by studying history. History repeats itself. It's never clear when it'll happen, but it does. Consoles like we know them and "generations" they just won't exist, that's my prediction. You're welcome to yours, I'm just making a prediciton based on trends and history. I don't have beef witih consoles or console generations I wouldn't mind it staying this way for some time but you can't stop progress. It doesn't care what we think. I'm just saying there have been many instances where the consumer base has become so comfortable with the way things have been that they can't see it being any other way and that's kinda stepping into the realm of blissful ignorance. Which is fine I guess, whatever makes us happy.
Is that a good thing? Imagine games not being held back by console cpu's or tools based on what consoles can do. Instead of having tiny play areas in From dust, you could have a Witcher 3 sized world with those kind of terrain physics. Games have become very unbalanced leaning on the gpu while doing nothing impressive with AI and physics for interactivity. A good cpu could do crackdown 3 type destruction without needing the cloud. I certainly hope that gameplay won't be held back by old Jaguar cores when the next generation arrives.
Nah, games should push GPU compute for physics ...
Much higher quality simulation and higher performance than what the CPU could ever achieve ...
Games are pushing the gpu too much. When I run Ori on my laptop the cpu sits practically idle, 4% usage, while the game struggles to run on low settings. Perhaps gpus should enlist some cpu compute :p Better cpus are also needed to run games at higher framerates, and thus for VR.
Very soon, yeah probably not very soon but I stand by everything else I said. Check out these two videos:
My point isn't to say that I don't think consoles suck or anything of the sort but to make it known that the fact that regular consumers are questioning the need for consoles is telling.
*snip*
And a rebuttal from someone who is probably the most genuine console owner in history:
*snip*
They both make great points and I know the field MIGHT not be like I say it will be or think it will be. That's the whole idea of making I dunno...a prediction? When media converges, something has to give. Same case with Blockbuster vs. Netflix. There were people who honestly thought that DVDs and DVD players would be around forever and now look where it is. Netflix, a streaming service is destroying the home video media entertainment realm. With Hulu and Amazon Prime Video, etc. following suit.
In the future, the tech will eventually hit that point where streaming games to a little box will be how you play games. Not because it's how I think it should be but just by studying history. History repeats itself. It's never clear when it'll happen, but it does. Consoles like we know them and "generations" they just won't exist, that's my prediction. You're welcome to yours, I'm just making a prediciton based on trends and history.I don't have beef witih consoles or console generations I wouldn't mind it staying this way for some time but you can't stop progress. It doesn't care what we think. I'm just saying there have been many instances where the consumer base has become so comfortable with the way things have been that they can't see it being any other way and that's kinda stepping into the realm of blissful ignorance. Which is fine I guess, whatever makes us happy.
I think you might've missed the point I was trying to make ...
My argument was not about how we can stop progress but it was about the possibility of progress stagnating or having no progress at all!
My analogy would be is that consoles are like car engine technology where the latter has stopped progressing and that we know the former is going to reach that point one day ...
My question is what will happen if we can't have new consoles anymore or there's no reason to make new consoles anymore ? (Generations or not would be trivially redundant in this case.)
As for game streaming, I don't think it's ever going to take off since there's a cost associated with a middle man known as the game service streamer and it's most likely cheaper for both the platform provider and the customer for the former to push costs on the latter to buy the hardware instead since you get individual ownership of the platform (if you play a lot this is cheaper when you're billed on time basis with game service streaming), higher quality experience (lower input lag and better image quality) and no requirement of high speed internet ... (game streaming makes most sense for super casual gamers (plays less than 5 hours a month) so consoles are equally valid platforms as streaming boxes are if not then even more so)
Very soon, yeah probably not very soon but I stand by everything else I said. Check out these two videos:
My point isn't to say that I don't think consoles suck or anything of the sort but to make it known that the fact that regular consumers are questioning the need for consoles is telling.
*snip*
And a rebuttal from someone who is probably the most genuine console owner in history:
*snip*
They both make great points and I know the field MIGHT not be like I say it will be or think it will be. That's the whole idea of making I dunno...a prediction? When media converges, something has to give. Same case with Blockbuster vs. Netflix. There were people who honestly thought that DVDs and DVD players would be around forever and now look where it is. Netflix, a streaming service is destroying the home video media entertainment realm. With Hulu and Amazon Prime Video, etc. following suit.
In the future, the tech will eventually hit that point where streaming games to a little box will be how you play games. Not because it's how I think it should be but just by studying history. History repeats itself. It's never clear when it'll happen, but it does. Consoles like we know them and "generations" they just won't exist, that's my prediction. You're welcome to yours, I'm just making a prediciton based on trends and history.I don't have beef witih consoles or console generations I wouldn't mind it staying this way for some time but you can't stop progress. It doesn't care what we think. I'm just saying there have been many instances where the consumer base has become so comfortable with the way things have been that they can't see it being any other way and that's kinda stepping into the realm of blissful ignorance. Which is fine I guess, whatever makes us happy.
I think you might've missed the point I was trying to make ...
My argument was not about how we can stop progress but it was about the possibility of progress stagnating or having no progress at all!
My analogy would be is that consoles are like car engine technology where the latter has stopped progressing and that we know the former is going to reach that point one day ...
My question is what will happen if we can't have new consoles anymore or there's no reason to make new consoles anymore ? (Generations or not would be trivially redundant in this case.)
As for game streaming, I don't think it's ever going to take off since there's a cost associated with a middle man known as the game service streamer and it's most likely cheaper for both the platform provider and the customer for the former to push costs on the latter to buy the hardware instead since you get individual ownership of the platform (if you play a lot this is cheaper when you're billed on time basis with game service streaming), higher quality experience (lower input lag and better image quality) and no requirement of high speed internet ... (game streaming makes most sense for super casual gamers (plays less than 5 hours a month) so consoles are equally valid platforms as streaming boxes are if not then even more so)
Games are pushing the gpu too much. When I run Ori on my laptop the cpu sits practically idle, 4% usage, while the game struggles to run on low settings. Perhaps gpus should enlist some cpu compute :p Better cpus are also needed to run games at higher framerates, and thus for VR.
Fuck the CPU, games should also push some of the game logic on the GPU ...
CPUs are a dead end with no significant improvements in sight, GPU has lots of growth left and we should take advantage of that ...
