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The time is drawing near for a new generation of consoles...isn’t it? As I’m sure many of you know, the generations would turn every five years or so, meaning that a new round should be expected around 2011.
However would it be a smart move for anyone to release a console at that time? I say no. I say that the current crop of consoles have more than enough features to carry us for the foreseeable future.
We are staring at the law of diminishing returns. If you look back at each console cycle, it was the screen shots and gameplay movies that fired up the public’s enthusiasm. The consoles could easily demonstrate their superiority over the hardware they were replacing. However, the current consoles are so advanced that a comparison with better hardware is difficult.
Take a look at a screenshot of any game that is both on PC and a Next gen console and you’d be hard pressed to see the difference. Even in motion, it’s a tough call. Back in 2003 for instance, a good gaming PC had the ability to display graphics unrivalled by the consoles of the time, but the march of progress has slowed.
In addition, just as the cost of development exploded with the current generation of consoles, a similar increase in effort would be required to make use of the power of a new console. Basically, to have something demonstrably better you need to have higher resolution art, which takes more money.
Have a look at the innovative games of recent history. Many of them are not graphical powerhouses. The ones that are look really good and you’re nitpicking to find the graphical faults. So, given all the cost of a new console and the challenge to gain market share, why would any of the current hardware manufacturers make a new one?
I believe there are several factors that are creating a perfect storm that will end console gaming as we know it. The factors are the aforementioned law of diminishing returns, the state of current technology, the state of the population, and the economics of gaming.
I covered the law of diminishing returns already, so let’s move to current technology. We’ve all heard about OnLive and their plan for cloud computing. This was followed by the news that Sony has snatched up the name PS Cloud. Regardless in your belief of its current feasibility, it is a valid solution for the near future.
Now, here is the question I pose. Hypothetically speaking why, if I am a company like Electronic Arts say, would I not host games on my own servers and circumvent OnLive altogether? Why not cloud-compute the games from EA’s own collection of servers? Server space can be rented from a host of resources and save EA from having to share the cost with anyone.
Or what if Wal-Mart decides to retail games by hosting them in exchange for a cut of the profits? Or what if you take on sponsored servers for cloud-computing? OnLive as a company may or may not survive, but Pandora’s Box is opened none the less.
With the Xbox 360 versus PS3 battle, the preference for first party games is really the only reason to choose one over the other. Sure, the fanboys will grumble about Xbox live versus PSN, but really the question is Halo vs. Gran Turismo.
I have both systems for that very reason. If either machine, or even the PSP, were to navigate to a corporate site they would be more than capable of being used to play games being streamed directly from publishers (MS could easily add a browser to the Xbox).
Now, have a look at the current state of television. With cable for instance, I am paying for channels I don’t want, that have shows I don’t want, simply to see the stuff I do want. Why would someone continue to pay for what they do not want if there is a better way for them to get what they do want? TV online is the way of the future.
With AppleTV, or Hulu, or (insert content source here) I can have more control over what I watch and when I watch it. As with the cloud computing idea, the limiting factor is the mechanism for delivery and the willingness of my provider rather than the availability of the content (for the record, I live in Canada and am currently under the terror regime known as Rogers).
The population is another key factor. Generation X is becoming middle aged and they are at line in the sand of people for whom technology is engrained in their life. This generation and all that follow are tech savvy and willing to move to a less complicated, more useful mechanism for accessing their entertainment.
I’m happy to say that as much as I love holding liner notes in my hand, from both CDs and the record collection I recently unloaded, I dislike having to store all that physical media. I don’t like to sell my old games, but sometimes they simply take up too much space. The same can be said for my movies. Digital media sure cleans things up.
That brings me to the economics of gaming and specifically the used game issue. I’ll go on record as saying that I do not believe used games are bad for the consumer. I will go on record as saying I think that the outlets are thieves for the amount of money they give to the former owner of said game compared to the amount they charge for its resale, but that’s another discussion. Publishers are keen to make sure that they see the greatest revenue from their product, obviously, and a purely digital future is the best way to ensure this. You can’t copy or sell a file you don’t have access to.
Given these factors, I feel the next console generation will not be a console at all but the end of the console war. It’s the Console Degeneration. If anything, the next big “console” will be software that provides the end user with access to television, movies, music, and games in a single simple form.
Much as Microsoft already has done with their updated dashboard. The hardware choice will most likely be dictated by whomever makes the decorative choices in your home since the only real limiting factor is how nice the hardware looks next to the TV.
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OnLive style things results in games being a service, I do not want that, I want to OWN my games.
Also OnLive depends on infra-structure, living in a place where that suck, and knowing that many places in the world it is even worse, with all good games being released on OnLive means that I would be stuck playing older games.
"Take a look at a screenshot of any game that is both on PC and a Next gen console and you’d be hard pressed to see the difference. Even in motion, it’s a tough call. Back in 2003 for instance, a good gaming PC had the ability to display graphics unrivalled by the consoles of the time, but the march of progress has slowed."
I don't need to take a look at screen shots, I have my PC and PS3 hooked up to the same 24" flat screen monitor. My roommates 360 is hooked up to an equally expensive 21" Flatscreen. The differences are day and night, and the fact that you can't tell the difference, tells me that you don't have a PC that's appropriate for this comparison. Now, I don't mean to offend here, but the statement above, is completely 100% false. There is no game, that when applied to the PC correctly, performs equally or less than any console game. I'll say that again, just to be clear. PC > Consoles....IF you take the time to build a proper PC. Crysis, is a fine example of what the consoles can't handle.
I spent 6 months building mine, because I couldn't afford to buy it outright. And as of January, I put together a Quad Core Q9400 w/ 4g of XMS3 DDR3 pc12800 @ 1500MHZ (CPU only clocked to 3.0g) with a GTX260 Core 216. Mobo - EVGA nForce 7901 FTW. Please don't come back with, well, you spent way more on your PC. Yes, no kidding I did, because I wanted a good PC. If you want the same, put in the grunt time and build one. But, here's the thing. GTAIV doesn't run at 1920x1200 on the PS3 or 360. The view distance isn't nearly the entire map. It doesn't take 3-5 minutes to load the game. There're no hiccups, no frame drops, nothing. Crysis: Warhead runs at enthusiast. Stalker: Clear Skies almost maxes out.
The mere fact that GTAIV can't run at 1080p, should be proof enough. The fact that you can't max texture detail in GTAIV, without having more than 4g of RAM, should also be proof enough. Products like Onlive, are actually a detriment to gaming. Say what you will that graphics aren't the end-all be all, but we all know that one of the first things gamers take a look at, is it's visual appearance. Onlive is promising 720p lag-free....and yet, I'm already pushing beyond 1080p, without lag. Guess which piece of hardware I'm going to stick with for the near future.
Anyway, good article, but one seriously flawed omission.
Morne
I think you misunderstand the point. Yes, there are indeed significant differences when you compare graphics directly. Texture resolution and screen resolution does indeed make a difference. However, these comparisons often occur post purchase and the "significance" of the difference is a matter of opinion. Also, to be fair, you are not typical of the buying public. I'm speaking in more general terms. Before a game is purchased, games are most often viewed in a screenshot. Few people go out and rent a console game for comparison with a PC game to see which looks better and even the act of doing so is often too much trouble for the majority.
Granted, you may be correct, not everyone knows how to build their own PC. Not everyone has their hands on their finances enough to stretch a mult-thousand dollar project over multiple months. But, the fact is, it is possible, and the differences are very real. Again, whether a generalization or not, the assertion is incorrect, and it was merely a correction of that assertion. PC games...and this isn't a generalization, always have better hardware scaling than consoles. Always. They consistently run at a better rate than their console counterparts, due, in major part to the available system RAM. They are capable of much more impressive feats than consoles, because of such innovation as DX10 (which the current consoles cannot wholly replicate). These are big deals in the realm of gaming, and visual design in general. Volumetric Water has been an extremely difficult physics process to reproduce in games, but Crytek did it with Crysis for PC.
Again, i'm not disagreeing with your entire article, I really think something has to change about the industry in order for the need for consoles to continue. Otherwise, PC's will just take over. But, I really do believe that your line about PC/Console quality matching these days was extremely off-base. Sorry if I offended.
Morne
Personally, I predict one more generation of systems that accept physical media, but digital-only seems to be an inevitable future, for good or bad.
I agree that a high-end PC can produce higher quality graphics/physics/etc. than consoles. However, I think that Armando's assessment about the law of diminishing returns definitely applies in this situation. For instance, the original Playstation launched in late 1995 and iD Software's original Quake launched a few months later in 1996. At that time, the majority of high-end PC games required so much horsepower that they couldn't even be ported to consoles, or if they were it was several years later and at a huge loss in visual quality. Yes, today there is still a difference in quality, as you pointed out, but it isn't nearly as striking as it used to be.
The other thing you have to consider is that quality is more than mathematical specs, it's a philosophical idea regarding perception. They've been using this idea in the home theater world for years. Since all HDTV content is at the same resolution(s) (720p, 1080i, 1080p) regardless of the size of your TV, they have always had "seating distance guidelines". In other words, "the bigger the TV, the farther away you should sit for optimal viewing quality". The same applies for console vs. PC gaming. In PC gaming, the average gamer sits 2-3 feet away from a typically 19-24" monitor. In this case the viewing distance is basically static, but the display size changes. This is why larger monitors typically support higher resolutions. A large demographic of current gen console gamers, on the other hand, sit 8+ feet away and play the game on a 50+" LCD or Plasma. In this case, the resolution is static regardless of the TV size, but the viewing distance changes. At the average home theater seating distance, there isn't much perceived discernible difference between the console and a high-end gaming PC. In the very least, in this common real world scenario, I wouldn't call the difference "night and day" as you did. It's definitely not as drastic as it has been in years past, such as the previous example of the difference between 1st gen playstation games and the original quake, to be sure.
Even Microsoft is looking to the future when they refuse to add HD hardware to the Xbox 360 in its current state and their comments about DLC as the wave of the future of gaming. They are wanting to get ahead of the curve and patent all that they can so they can troll the patents that will eventually start conflicting, consider that Bill Gates' family money comes for litigation attorney's in the family. And that when you buy a Windows computer you are only buying a license to use the Windows OS not actually/physically owning the copy on your computer like Linux...
But as with all things it will eventually all be in the cloud and that is how "Big Brother" the "Net" will be able to track all the activity of the society of the future...
I agree and disagree at the same time, while I agree that the technological gap has shrunk between PC/Consoles, I believe that now...due to the ease of upgrading a PC, the PC is beast of the bunch, whereas, in the past, it's always been the console showing what real high-end graphics look like.
But, I think the reasoning behind that slimming of the gap, are different. For quite awhile now, Dual Core and Quad Core processors have been on the market, you even have the PS3 with the Cell (7 Cored) and the Xenon in the 360 (3-cored). What you see an amazing lack of, is optimization for multiple cored processors. As well as a general lack of enthusiasm for parralel developement, separate dev teams etc... amongst the 3 major players here (I'm excluding the Wii because...normally, the Wii won't receive the same kinds of games as the PS3/360...and definitely doesn't belong in a conversation regarding high-end graphics/physics). What it turns the prospective app into, is a generalized engine, that basically dumbs it down so that both the PS3/360 can run it equally. Which is a travesty...as those machines are highly capable, but in differing areas. Therefore, on release, what the 360 does best is never seen, likewise with the PS3.
Whereas, on the PC, developement and scaling are 100% open-ended. Heck, even Crysis will play on 7 series Nvidia cards. Can the same kind of scaling be said to exist between the PS3/360? Absolutely not. The thing you're stating, but then you're missing, is that...the improvements are there, and for people in the know...they know it's a big deal. But for those who don't, it's a passing fancy. The texture detail, the post-processing, the water physics, the dynamic lighting etc.. all of that stuff is usually devoid from console games, and while the PS3/360 devs are making great strides, they've still got a ways to go before they can compare their accomplishments with that of Crytek.
Morne
I would hazard to guess that the primary reason for this discrepancy is that piracy is much easier on PC than consoles. There will always be hackers that figure out a way to play pirated games on a console, but the process of doing so is almost always much more tedious than doing so on PC. To the average 15 year old PC gamer, they figure "Why pay $60 for Fallout 3 when I can use my 20Mb/s Fios internet to download the game from the pirate bay in an hour or two."
In any case, these alternative business models such as free-to-play (with advertising or micro-transactions), monthly subscription MMOs, and streaming services like OnLive are the primary future of PC gaming in my view. All 3 business models basically stop piracy in its tracks. The objective shouldn't be to get a piece of already existing pies. The object should be to bake a new pie.
Speaking from my own experience, even though I own a console from the latest generation and an HD monitor to take advantage of the graphical capabilities, I still play my PS2 as much as any other console, and I play it on my old CRT TV. Great games are what I'm interested in, not flashy technology. I don't know, though, maybe I'm in a minority there.
If the console market reaches in to more lower income households then the PC gaming market, free-to-play games sound like an obvious choice.
Computing power will progress rapidly to the point where what's possible in a server-based game is vastly superior to what's doable where distributed hardware has to do all the processing. At this point, even the backward thinkers will want their software to be a service.
I still see most devs thinking as though people are gonna want to download and store massive files, when server-based software makes much more sense. Bigger software publishers ought to want to own this service, eventually. It's a business that will generate revenue every day regardless of the release calendar.
The most important change here is to eliminate the high hardware cost entry barrier, which is sapping off value that should accrue to the people who make the really valuable part of the system: the content. Hardware sellers encourage lower content pricing, because it helps them sell expensive hardware.
In other applications, expensive hardware is sold at a considerable profit (Apple), with content commoditized for the hardware vendor's benefit. Videogames are the only really stupid industry, where hardware sells at a loss (unless it's Nintendo) but is still expensive, eroding the pricing power of content. It's laughable to have designed hardware products that cannot get to a consumer-friendly price 4-5 years after release. Moreover, the hardware was not innovative enough to drive revolutionary change in software development. The hardware did not spawn dramatic uplift in game quality. Only caused a grotesque jack-up in development cost.
I am not a believer in the idea of putting massive digital storage capacity into a console. Give me flash memory that can hold a terabyte, then we can talk. Consoles with disk drives, do you remember the Xbox 360 recalls? They would be a ripple in comparison. Plus it would be just another way for single-purpose hardware to suck up consumer dollars that should be free to buy content.
Developers have choices now as to how to go to market. Don't enslave yourselves.
I say that games are stuck from too long refusing to perform the next step. There's a slight line making deference between what is gonna be the future of game industry. It's because all the great thinkers and genial minds of the industry are just thinking inside the sandbox. Also thhe OnLive project is still "another piece of the same pie", it is.
Unless a solution solves the piracy problem, the high developing cost problem, the long developing time problem, the selling-off problem, the high price for customers problem, the difficult for new studies to enter the AAA market, the fast upcoming player boredom problem... at once, so this solution cannot be called "the next big move".
We're talking about one of the most creative industries going on. We can expect more than babysteps and Deja-vùs.
I don't agree that they took out the wii. Like it or not much of the huge changes on this generation were started thanks to Nintendo and its wii+NDS combo aparting from great techs and focusing in interfaces and more. the wii is as much next gen as the HD twins. You have to accept it.
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I think this little news blurb adds credence to what I state in the blog entry. A move to a service based model and abandoning the hardware race is an interesting take. Sony can leverage the goodwill in the playstation brand and enforce standards to to, in essence, turn any Mac or PC into a Playstation.