vivster said:
Finally proof that handhelds are dying. |
HH were dying, then Ninty had the hybrid idea, merging them with home consoles. This should be enough to keep their market alive, even if it will have to rely on the now bigger home console market to remain viable. Nevertheless, when mobile CPU will be strong enough, almost surely MS and Sony too will offer, besides pure home models, a hybrid one, that will always run the game logical edngine full power, as gameplay must remain the same, just disabling some services when undocked to lower a little CPU load, while it will scale up the graphics engine, running the GPU full steam, when docked, switching it to lower res and lower FX low-power mode when undocked. It will take time, as next gen will obviously have to be noticeably stronger than current one, so at least mobile CPUs will have to be stronger, even undocked, than those in PS4 and XBOne entry level models APUs. What makes it not just feasible, but also viable, is that CPU power is the only obstacle, as scalable graphics engines have been the rule, not the exception, for years, and PC, smartphone and tablet markets already use a far wider scalability range than what home consoles and NS currently use.
Until then, though, NS and 3DS alone won't be enough to take portables even vaguely near their past glory, but with three competing hybrids, even not ever reaching again the peak of DS-PSP era, we could get a lot closer to it than now.
The only unhappy gamers will be graphics whores, as while triple A games will generally develop with graphics at the level of docked GPU power, and scale them down when undocked, and the richest ones will even make optimised graphics for each of the two (or even three if and when there will be premium consoles too) GPU power levels, projects with smaller funds will develop at undocked graphics level and just upscale them when docked.
