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Gaming Crash up Ahead
Milktoast writes "Joystick101.org has posted a story predicting an upcoming gaming crash. They claim that a crowded marketplace in conjunction with the large number of ports will lead today's consoles down the same road as the Atari 2600. Will gaming consoles go out the window like before, or will we pull out of this?"
Why not just get one of those 750 GHz CPUs and run PlayStation II, DreamCast, GameCube, and XBox emulators? :-)
Really, PCs are more versatile. Why bother with consoles?
If hardware in your hands == not vapor, I'd be playing games on a Pippin. X-Box is as real as Farenheit.
Games nowadays are so much more involved, with my schedule, I can get a full 3 months out of a really good game. Which means I only buy about 4 games a year. Think about it. This year, I bought two games, Quake 3 and Half-Life. The mods alone have kept me a happy gamer for three years straight. Can you say Counter-Strike and Rocket Arena? There are so many consoles and so many developers out there that only the best of the best will survive, right now I would say that is ID, EA, Square, Valve (RIP), and Namco (maybe). I'm sure there are others, but those are the ones who I see getting any of my money anytime soon. I used to buy 20+ games a year, because I would buy it without knowing much about it, and play it for a day, beat it and get sick of it. Games nowadays have a much longer shelf life.
How many parents will spend $450+ on a PS2 for their kids, when a decent PC with a good video card will display better graphics, surf the web, do word processing, and play DVD's?
Well, the PS2 lists for $300, and it does play DVDs. As far as better graphics, I don't know if they will be significantly better enough for the parents to tell the difference. You can't beat the simplicity of a console. And what makes you think a PS2 will never do work processing? It has a FireWire port and two USB ports. Surely those are in there for something...
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
*CAUTION! EXTREME SARCASIM, USE OF PROTECTIVE GOGGLES IS REQUIRED
I agree the console market will die, however I think it will happen when things are being run by those "damn dirty apes!"
Capt. Ron
crazy dynamite monkey
Then came the rise of the PC. A typical entry level PC has always been around 1000 UKP (that's $1500). Prices have stayed stable for a long time. But finally they are starting to creap down and with inflation over the intervening couple of decades, $1500 now is probably not worth much more than $600 was then. PCs have become cheap, real cheap and while the games cost more than the 8 bit ones did, the prices for those are coming down and budget games just put the icing on the cake.
I'm not saying consoles won't make it but they have a struggle ahead and the x-box (though I hate the idea) will probably just make things more complex.
Rich
But the parents have to buy a desktop PC (which continue to drop in price) anyways just so there kids can do their homework. The console then becomes redundant.
No, it does not.
How many times does this have to come up on slashdot? Console gaming and PC gaming are just different. They have different types of games and offer different experiences. The PC is better at more immersive, detailed games. The kind you sit up at your desk and play. The console is better (indeed, about 100x better) at games where you lay back on the couch and relax, maybe with a few friends.
Do not underestimate couch multiplay. I have much more FUN playing Mario Kart with 3 friends (who are right there with me, laughing and drinking) than I do playing online PC games with anonymous strangers, but I am still driven to play games online, improve my characters and my personal skills... Consoles offer a party atmosphere as opposed to the more solitary PC experience. It's nice to have something to do when you are actually physically hanging out with another person. For example, I can interest my girlfriend in a game of Worms Amageddon on my DC, or the aformentioned Mario Kart... But she would never agree to play Quake with me, even if we had two networked machines.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Console and PC games are different. Both will continue to exist, unless something comes along that combines the best aspects of both.
Josh Sisk
Yeah, 'cause we know custom hardware will always be cheaper than off-the-shelf PC components. Oh wait, when people start using consoles for computer functions excessively, consoles will stop being sold at a loss or the software's cost will increase.
You are missing out on some great games, man. I love the old games, too... But I also love new ones like Metal Gear Solid, Shenmue, Tony Hawk... New technology sometimes offers new gameplay as well, not just fancy graphics.
And as far as kids not liking the classics... Would you like Adventure as much if you had grown up playing Tomb Raider?
Josh Sisk
6 platforms = death of videogame market? hardly!
if we take a look back to the latter 16-bit age, i can remember a time when there were at least 6 systems (some not so memorable) on the market:
genesis
turbografx-16
SNES
jaguar
3DO
and just to parallel the indreama, i think there was even a rumored AMIGA CD-based console back then - not to mention the sega CD, turbografx CD or sega 32X. that's 9 platforms! 6 should be no problem for today's market.
Calm down. I have nothing against consoles, per se. I meant the "should" part more from an economic POV. I'm not signing any petitions to have them outlawed and I'm totally opposed to age restrictions and the like.
I just think they're a waste. With the advances that are being made on the desktop, I can't see any value in throwing away buttloads of money on a console that can only play games.
I'm not much of an advocate of Network Computers either. I see how you *could* run all your apps over the net and rent your software and storage, but with the price of PCs dropping and speed increases, I just don't see any advantage there. I guess I feel the same about game consoles. Sure, they have better graphics right now, but the PCs will catch up in a short amount of time.
A few years back, consoles filled a pretty important role in that they were more affordable than a full-blown PC. But PCs get cheaper and consoles (+ games) get more and more expensive. I see less and less market for consoles, and *that* is why I think they should die. Their niche is shrinking. IMHO. sorry.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
maybe i need a sarcasm-impaired version of it...
tagline
... hi bingo
If this is the case then that doesn't bode well for the industry. My understanding is console HW is sold at a loss, $$$ to be made on game licensing fees. If no one buys games then they're losing $$$.
Nathan
If you don't have anything nice to say, say it often.
- Ed the Sock
"There are hundreds of PSX titles out there, but I only own 7 of them, because I have no reasonable way of finding out which ones I'd like"
This problem isn't nearly as bad as it used to be. Sony has a playstation underground magazine that comes on 2-4 CD's quarterly, and usually contains multiple demos. Subscribers also get numerous demo versions of assorted PSX games mailed to them.
You can also pick up demo versions of PSX and Dreamcast games in their official magazines.
Of course, these options pale in comparison to just downloading the demos, but then again, it can often be easier and faster to just go buy a magazine than to spend numerous hours pulling the demos down via a modem.
it'd be one hot seller, as all the guys who got tired of hearing women go on and on about how it's so romantic and leo's so cute and what drama... blah blah blah. time to die, leo. muahahaha.
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
Many, perhaps most, people who have game consoles also have computers. When one can choose between buying a console or upgrading a computer to play the same games with the same or better performance, which would be the smartest choice?
I have a very nice gaming PC. I also have a DC and plan on getting a PS2, once the furor dies down and more games come out. I will always buy consoles for one reason: it's a different experience. With a console, you can sprawl out on your couch, in your living room and play a game. It takes virtually no time to start the console and begin to play. No boot up, no distractions (how many times have you sat down to fire up a game and noticed a stack of emails in your inbox), no sitting up in your chair, at your desk. Console games are usually set up where you can sit and play for a few minutes, relax, then get up and do something else. When I sit down to a RTS or FPS game, I generally play until my eyes hurt. Also, consoles are fun for the couch multiplay... Nothing like taking your friends on at some Soul Caliber, Tony Hawk or Mario Kart.
Consoles will always be popular for these very reasons (unless the PC can gain more headway in the living rooms of the world) and it would be silly to think otherwise. There is a reason why the console market is growing and the computer market is, at best, staying the same.
Josh Sisk
Not trying to start a flame war or anything, just wanted to let the AC know it wasn't a rumor...
Commodore had a CD "console" (ok, it was more akin to a set top box than anything) back when the NES was still an infant (around 1987?) - the CDTV. A full 16 bit game playing machine, it could be outfitted with a hard drive, a keyboard, and a monitor - if you wanted. Had a CD-ROM drive that allowed you to load a few games, and enjoy VCDs and such (waaaay ahead of its time!)...
As far as the 90s are concerned - in 1992 (or was it 1993? Can't remember...), the CD32 came out - a full fledged 32 bit CD-ROM drive based gaming console (and this one looked like a game console), joypads, etc - had either a 2x or 4x drive, and the ability to play back MPEG-2 streams from CDs (no DVD then). Shared a lot of hardware with the Amiga 1200 (AGA Graphics, etc), as well as had a bit of custom hardware not on the Amiga AGA computer line (vector chip? Can't remember). The blitter was faster, too. A full CD based 32 bit gaming platform - long before all the others...
Nice to see everyone play catchup...
I remember being in a shop here in Phoenix, and seeing a CD-based game on the thing, and was very impressed. I asked the salesman what CD32 title it was - he told me "It isn't a CD32 game - it is a CDTV game we had lying around, we just wanted to see if it would work!" - amazing...
Memories...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I don't think there'll be a convergence between the console and the PC. Even HDTV will be unweildy to do any text-intensive tasks on from the couch across the room whereas a PC on a desk with a monitor already performs that function perfectly. The PC is becoming easier to set up (USB) and the graphics hardware is getting more console-like, but I don't think people are willing to give up hard drive installations of software and the off-the-shelf x86 PC platform just yet.
I expect the two forces to borrow new technologies for their own, but the power of specialization is an abyss that keeps them both indispensable yet seperated, possibly forever.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
--> we still haven't finished this one, the end could come, just give it time......
End of Internet (ongoing)
--> bah! who needs the internet, when i was young all i had to play with was coal.
End of Usenet (bandwidth)
--> lets get together a bunch of spammers and give them forums to post to. that will make everyone want to post.
End of Email (UUCP routing map complexities)
--> email? never heard of it, if i want to send a letter to tom , i will write the thing, lick a stamp and send the thing myself, i dont need no fancy 'puter for that.
End of Movies (videotape)
--> why would i go the the theater if i can download the movie a week before it is released.
End of VHS (Betamax quality)
--> DVD, i need not say more.
End of Movie Theaters (TV) --> they are too expensive, back in my day, it only cost 5 cents, who is willing to pay $8 and up for something they can download,.... it's good to be 31137.
-| My other ride is your mom |-
Since the type of gamer is not in questions here, what's your point? The games may have changed, but there are still gamers!
It's like you said, not an end, but a blurring of lines. We will see the lines of PC and Console blur ever closer until they are different versions of the same hardware.
AF-Design, web development.
Maybe the real question then is not if the console market will crash, but if the concept of the home-computer will make a come back?
This might not be the time nor place, but how can you justify saying that in 10 years time China and India will be superpowers??? Yeah, I'm from the U.S. and No, I'm not looking at this in a U.S.centric point of view. But seriously, why China and India?
There will almost certainly be some sort of convergence for gaming playing in the future, but I don't think we should assume that the desktop computer is the source of the gravity. The PlayStation 2 is essentially a computer. Not only does it have decent CPU power and a DVD drive, but it has a FireWire port and two USB ports. That stuff is there for something.
Now, consider the marketing component. With the exception of Apple and Gateway, TV ads for computer hardware are pretty rare. And I never see ads for computer software. By contrast, Sony has blanketed the earth with PlayStation ads. They could easily make the PS2 the most advertised computer system ever -- essentially buying its way into the space. I know it has been said a thousand times, but you cannot beat the simplicity of a console. This is very attractive to a lot of people. I'm sure Microsoft figured this all out around the time the PS2 specs were announced, which is probably why the XBox will be coming out a year after the PS2.
As far as an actual crash, I think that's fairly unlikely. There's going to have to be some shakeout over the next two years: PS2, Dreamcast, Nintendo's GameCube and XBox can't all be significant. But at the same time, it's fairly obvious that the demographics for video games have expanded dramatically in the last five years or so. There's nothing abnormal about a 35-year-old man with a PlayStation. It's totally acceptable. I'm not sure the same could have been said about the NES in the 80s. And girls are progressively getting more interested in games as well. There are more people playing video games than there have ever been.
Yes, desktop computer graphics will significantly surpass PS2 in time, but apparently most people don't really care. Sony is selling oodles and oodles of PS1s this Christimas, even though it has the most fugly graphics of any platform in circulation right now.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
2)The market will be bigger, as China and India will be superpowers. This will render the crowded marketplace idea obsolete.
And you don't think that a larger market will also have a larger number of companies competing for market share?
/mikael jacobson
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Imagine if the gaming industry could pin all their hopes and dreams on this one title... and it would be sure to be a success because its based a Steven Spielberg film that everyone loved!!!
Yeh yeh ... the licensing is insanely expensive, but trust us, it'll make one hell of a game... It'll change our company forever!
now go out and write the worst game that you can create, make sure the graphics are horrendous, the storyline is stupid and incomprehensible, and there is not point to it.
Great... now lets see how our company cashes in on this!
tagline
... hi bingo
We'll always play video games of some sort. When Microsoft enters the fray, we may see some turbulence as people decide WHAT video game systems to buy, but that will probably only benefit the industry in the long run. That's REALLY what the article suggests about the previous "crash"... read between the lines; had we not reoriented the market in the 80s, it wouldn't be the same today. Well, I for one think it's just great today.
I managed to get hold of a PS2. It's a great system. The Dreamcast is great too, and i expect good things from Nintendo's Game Cube... (no idea about Microsoft). We've lived with three or four major vendors for a while with no problem.
The article lists PC and linux based systems as competitors too, tho, and that's poorly placed. PC gaming has never been the same as console gaming. Both have achieved ubiquity in their areas, but if you look at crossover titles (games that play on both machines) there are very few, and they're vastly different. Quake could never be good on the console because most of it's charm eventually came from its expandability. Quake-C just couldn't be ported to a console. Much more complicated games just don't work on consoles... Real Time Strategy games don't hold the same charm on consoles as on PCs because the interface is limited. There's no way around that.
Console games on the other hand are generally much prettier and the interface is much better for what they do. Sports simulations don't transpose as well to PCs for some reason; probably related to the viewing screen and the controllers.
What's my point? Well, some day these two technologies will combine. PC and Console gaming platforms, that is. The XBox may be a step in the right direction. Only time will tell. That just hasn't happened yet, tho. That will be the next great hurdle for console makers. Sony is probably best positioned to deal with this, but again, they've got some time.
Just look at the popularity of the PS2 in the middle of a strong economic slide (at least in the US). Console games will be around a while.
Both India and China already have growing middle classes with money to spend: take a look at rental prices in central Mumbai - they're as bad as central London. IIRC Shanghai's about as bad and let's not even mention HK
--
Cheers
Cheers
Jon
Except when someone comes out with an orginal, fun, RTS+Sim hybrid title, no-one buys it!
Majesty? I downloaded the demo, and didn't like it. That's why I didn't buy it. ;-)
Mind you, the games I've bought and enjoyed lately can't really be considered too original and innovative.. Carmageddon TDR 2000, and Dungeon Keeper 2 and Might & Magic 6 from a bargain bin.. all sequels. Oh well. :-)
I whole heartly agree, put the problem is what view do you use?? Do you have the view of one of the players? cameras? What if the match is really boring, how do you spice it up for the average joe? These questions need to be answered first.
Gaming won't die, but consoles will (and should).
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Licensing - As I understand it, Microsoft is throwing out the traditional video game licensing model. Forget paying royalties, and forget about having to get a game approved by the console manufacturer.
Which often is cited as one of the reasons for Atari's ultimate failure with the 2600 and friends - a glut of shite games over which they had no control. Obviously Warner didn't help either.
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
MTS was tough @ 110 baud on a Teletype. An older I guy I went to school with was deadly on that configuration playing combat, but stuff like XTALK would have been pretty tough at that speed. 300 baud was more appropriate for XTALK. 1200 baud was almost too fast, but the modems were expensive and the dialups limited to staff accounts IIRC, so it was a non-problem.
I believe he meant the cost of developing games, not buying them.
Josh Sisk
- End of MECC Timeshare, 1983
- Ruggies busted for moving to MERITSS, 1983
Some things Scott Wilcoxin predicted accurately:It's not that consoles will turn into PCs, it's that low end PCs will be cheap and powerful enough to compete with the consoles.
People say this all the time, but yet, even though the price of an entry level computer has dropped signifigantly over the last five years, console sales just keep getting stronger and stronger. For example- five years ago, selling a million consoles, total, was considered a huge success. Now, when the PS2 can't do that on it's opening DAY, its a huge misstep. The world is hungry for consoles ands not because of the hardware... It's because of the differences in the play experience.
Josh Sisk
People have been gaming since the cave man days. The games have just changed.
Josh Sisk
You must realize that you are the 0.001% of the population that will a) not go to a mega store to buy a computer and b)able to build one your self.
The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. --Robert Benchley
Whatever. I've been downloading game demos since way before Doom. Doom may have been one of the first 'big' ones, but computer game demos have been availible as long as I can remember.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Also, you can get demos for many consoles with the purchase of a gaming magazine (not Nintendo for obvious reasons). Sure it requires a $7 purchase, but that's a small price to pay if it saves you a couple of bad $50 purchases
The sole purpose of the Internet is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children.
"you suck goat balls, biznotch!"
sounds legitimate enough.
If you're old enough to remember 1984, you may remember that demand for the Colecovision (like PS2 today) was VERY strong in 1983/early 1984 and we were all sitting on our hands waiting for the supersystem from Atari, the 7800 (like Xbox today). A huge older system, the Atari 2600 was still selling well (like PS1 today). The market quite suddenly crashed under its own weight and the 7800 was scrapped, only to re-emerge in 1986 as a half-assed American answer to NES. I remember bargin bins of Atari 2600 games for like $9.99 when they were selling for more like $40 and everything was rosey a couple of months before.
1984 is much more similar to today than you think. The big players were raking in mad cash and awesome systems loomed on the horizon, just like today. Your likely scenario may come to pass, but I think a crash may be equally likely.
This was bound to happen sooner or later.
"...heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will, to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
And then, we'll have optical storage that will hold 650MB of data, we won't need to buy big hard drives to play the latest games!
Oh... wait...
This rating is Unfair ( ) ( ) Fair (*) Funny
Sigh... If only. Modding would be so much more fun.
The days of playing a game by yourself and with 4 of your bodies on a tv with the screen chopped into 4 tiny boxes is over.
No offense man, I'd prefer to do that, and actually hang out with friends than play a online game. Online multiplay games have their place and are quite fun, but the play experience is still very similar to playing a single player game... The AI is just better, since it's not artificial. Console games are fun, and always will be, because it's just damn awesome when you bust out that killer combo in Tekken and beat your friend down. And when he's sitting right next to you, you can laugh at him and talk trash. Typing "I skewled j00!!" is just not the same.
Josh Sisk
I have a feeling that with consoles now supporting online play, developers would want to develop games where console gamers and PC gamers can play across the same network. If games such as Diablo were ported over to the Playstation, then I feel that developers can take the next step and implement network gaming between the console and PC. The game itself won't have to cost that much, as the profit for the company developing the game can come from the monthly access fees to the network.
Speaking of gaming crashes, apparently WOTC has gotten screwed over by corporate money grubbers, because their stock prices aren't doing so well. Check this out. Hasbro's won at least one gamer's emnity now.
-PARANOIA is fun. D20 is not fun. The Computer says so.
-The Computer
The playstation2 will get it's killer app and dominate the market.
The dreamcast, with its internet features and some really innovative games (Jet Set Radio fits IMHO) will have a diehard following. I don't think Sega will make much more money from it though.
The gamecube will once again please Mario/Zelda/Metroid fans. I doubt it'll unseat Sony though -- we'll see.
XBox and Indrema are up in the air. Either one could succeed with a killer app or by moving more towards an appliance.
That's my take on the current situation. Take it for what it's worth, nothing. I highly doubt there will be a crash though. Atari was being stubborn (so stubborn that they still tried to compete with Nintendo years later -- under 50 bucks!) and everyone seemed to think that Atari WAS videogames. It would be as if Sony just kept on kicking out Playstation1 games, and nobody paid attention to anyone else. Videogames are big business now, there won't be anymore crashes.
3)The film industry will be no more, as it will be subsumed into the games industry. This will bring gaming to the mainstream.
Movies will always be around. You are misguided if you think otherwise. People sometimes enjoy being told a story and not having to be a part of it. I agree that as the graphics increase, games will become more like interactive movies... Deus Ex felt like one to me, at times. And gaming will be brought into the mainstream by gaming, not by integrating with movies. I'd say, at least among youth markets, it is pretty mainstream now.
Josh Sisk
I used to be a straight gamer, with all the latest high tech games (now PoS software titles going for $5 in EB). Now im just a simple coder and net user, but i still play the occational game. There will always be a demand for gaming, basically because mankind demands stuff thats fun, and people like to just be lazy and sit in a chair and blow stuff up in Doom. Even at work i occationally have a Quake deathmatch or a descent anarchy game. Life without games is boring, and boring sucks. Gamers may become less of a rampant buyer, but they will always be there.
I am !amused.
Cheap
Short
Easy
Where is the challenge?
The market wouldn't make money on games that are comprehensive, long, challenging if they weren't considered popular by the user base. Having less game developers in the market is definatly not the means of getting more innovative games out there. I mean really, game development is a small tight knit community and isn't something any idiot can get into (unlike web-development), it is a very "clicky" industry. Less developers only means that less ideas will get a venue, therefore less choice. Just look at the early 80's (which in contrast to now had very few game programmers), most games were clones of a select few 'great' games.
I think gaming is heading towards a bright future as game companies can directly interface with the masses via the internet. They have access to immediate feedback on what the gamers want to see and can harness this information to better cater to their clients needs.
Finally, why are PC games so buggy nowadays? Because the developer knows that he can release buggy code and afterwards patch it up. Not so in previous years. While the technology of patch delivery has been around for a while, most consumers did not accept the fact that patching software was viable. In older times, when you bought game software you expected it to run near-perfect. Now-a-days people almost expect bugs to rear their ugly heads, get the latest patch, and bob's-your-uncle, they're back playing their favourite games.
Different strokes for different folks I guess. Some of us could spend years playing "Asheron's Call" whereas others would get equal entertainment out of "Tetris".
Capt. Ron
crazy dynamite monkey
...the Indrema...
Ok, they did, but only in passing.
But, that's understandable. As much as we may want it to succeed, it is still vapor at this time.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
stupid no previewing. That should be IGN. Sorry bout that.
The sole purpose of the Internet is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children.
because instead of playing mechwarrior, kids play supermario
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Disclaimer: I have been big into both PC and console gaming at various times in the past.
The console market seems to be slowly coming around to demos, demo discs often come with videogame magazines just like they do for PC gaming. That said, scrounging up a PSX demo disc is not nearly as convenient as clicking on a web site to download a PC demo, then playing it without ever getting out of your chair.
I think you're wrong about console game reviewers not being objective, at least on the Internet. I'm a big fan of VideoGamespot, I think they give consistent reviews and they aren't afraid to tell you an overhyped game is a piece of crap (or more likely, just average). There are certainly other sites on the net with similar ethics, you just have to find them.
Over the years I've come to trust videogamespot's ratings overall. If a game gets a 9+ from them I can buy it feeling confident it will be a good game and I've never been disappointed (maybe I'm just not critical enough).
20 years ago computers were not as mainstream as they are today. That is why console controllers have increased in buttons slowly (atari's 1 button to the DC 7 buttons). Now that computers are common in almost every household, it allows consoles to be more 'computer-like'.
--
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Yeah! Instead of playing loser games like Quake I/II/III or Half-Life, play the free/open source...err, freeciv? GNUChess? Sokaban? Tetris?
Yeah! Those opensource, free games beat the crap out of the commercial games. And the graphics, sound, etc, are just as good.
OK, time to wake up and face reality. Opensource/free games bite in comparison to commercial offerings.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Realistically, the X-Box will replace the Dreamcast, as a gaming platform. It is based on faster hardware, and its DirectX 8 api goes farther in streamlining graphics programming. Basically, it'll be easier to program, and faster too.
No data, no cry
>> In ten years all games will be written in Java. Computers will be fast enough to handle it, and this will render porting problems obsolete.
The problem is not the speed of computing, but the relative efficiency of Java versus other languages. Just because a brand-spanking new computer available today is much faster than its 1990 counterpart doesn't mean than gaming companies can slack off. The competition is often (though not always) to obtain the best graphics and gameplay by squeezing as much performance out of a box as poassible. The reason why Java is not feasible today is that C++ is much better for highly computationally intesive projects.
I'd agree with you that if Java can overcome that obstacle, AND it doesn't fall prey to standards prolilferation, it would be an enormous boon to computing in general -- not just gaming.
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
All other console products will whither and fall. The Xbox is the future. Bow down and accept you fate. Where do you want to go today?
See you in hell,
Bill Fuckin' Gates®.
See you in hell,
Bill Fuckin' Gates®.
(This post is ©2001 Microsoft(TM) Corporation.)
> Consoles may be competitive against $1500+ PCs...
Yeah, but it's getting harder to live w/out a $1500 computer at home anyways.
But who am I to say. I play 2600 games with Stella and that's good enough for me.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
>I think the author is off base about what would cause another video game crash.
You have a very good insight here. The cost of video games is going up, and horrible games are getting published because a company wants to re-coup some of their investment.
But how off-base is the author? If a lot of horrible video games are ported from pc to the x-box, as he suggests, and the average consumer ends up buying several melons, it may discourage a good portion of the market from the systems.... Then again, maybe everyone is investigating before buying.
Phos
First of all Moore's law states that processing power doubles every 18 months, not every 12. 2.) China and India will never offer increased marketplace when their people are oppressed by communist regimes. 3.) There will always be a place for movies. My grandmother wants to watch Kevin Kostner, not play a game.
Consoles may be competitive against $1500+ PCs, but we are getting to the point where a top-of-the-line gaming console costs more than an entry-level PC.
No this is not the case. PS2 (which is a DVD and game machine) will retail for $450 or less once the insanity dies down. $450 computer.....ummm anyone want a p166?
When we start getting 3d video cards in those cheap PCs it will be very hard to justify buying a limited machine only for games when one can get a general purpose computer capable of playing the same games.
PC games will always need cutting edge computers and video cards, which in turn will always keep the costs high.
The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. --Robert Benchley
First off, Half-Life was created by a company named Valve...not Blizzard. Blizzard doesn't have a single game on the market that even vaguely resembles the Half-Life engine, playstyle, or storyline. They're simply rehashing their own innovative ideas from years ago.
In case you're unaware, EverQuest has a playerbase of over 300,000 people paying $40 for the game, $20 for each expansion, and $10 a month to Sony for the ability to continue playing. Once again, a wildly successful PC Gaming model that doesn't even come close to Half-Life.
PrimalChrome
Wouldn't be the first time. When Commodore brought out the Amiga they gave Electronic Arts a huge sum of money to be one of the development houses to have titles ready when the Amiga shipped. They also stipulated that EA wouldn't release any of those titles for other platforms for a period of time (a year, if I recall). It's why you didn't see EA titles on the Mac, Atari ST or PC (and most of it was shovelware. Seven Cities of Gold was not technically difficult on any of those platforms!) EA was more than happy to engage in an exclusive license with CBM, and even touted it in ads of the day. I see no reason why they wouldn't be willing to do the same for Microsoft, a much bigger 800-pound gorilla than even Commodore was in it's heyday.
I think so. When Sony promised the moon to gamers with all the hype/FUD they distributed regarding the PS2, they dug themselves into a hole. Now they're desperately trying (and failing) to reach their 100,000 units per week goal. Add that to the paltry 4MB of video RAM (when every modern PC video card has at least 32MB), and the polygon limit, and you've got a serious problem on your hands. The supercharged hentai machine doesn't look all that supercharged anymore.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
You can go to blockbuster, etc. and rent a console game for a few bucks and have the chance to try out the full game for a few nights.
Computers don't make mistakes. What they do, they do on purpose.
There is a flaw in your thinking as well, though... "By the end of the cycle, it is a dinosaur compared to the current computers."
Take two friends. On the same day one buys a decent PC, the other buys the best console. In four or five years (one life cycle), the PC friend 1 bought will be a dinosaur compared to the current machines as well, unless he upgrades (and generally, after five years I think it's time to buy a new machine anyway, or upgrade to the point where it is basically a new machine).
Both friends have to upgrade to play the newest games. I do not support one type of gaming over the other- indeed, I try and keep up with both. But I can see the reason why many people, who aren't die hard gamers, would simply choose to go the console route. it's just easier, no upgrades, no boot times, etc. The games ARE simpler, but many see that as a strength.
Josh Sisk
You knee-jerk douchebag.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I found that system with no comparison shopping whatsoever. I would gladly bet money that I can find a better deal yet if I look around a little.
On an unrelated note, I'm not really sure what made my last post "flamebait". I merely pointed out the FACT that somebody who shops carefully can get their hands on a decent gaming PC for under $500.
Yes, 233 is minumum box specs for most new games, which means that 400-600 is plenty enough. My game system is an old 333, and it runs every game I've installed so far with no problems whatsoever. You do not need a 1.1 GHz system just to play the latest shooter.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Back in 1984 most games were written by freelancers or by smallish groups. It did not take long for the independents to surpass the tepid offerings from Atari - a console that rapidly showed its age.
The entry of Microsoft's X-box will be a good thing since it will be the first console that is an 'open-ish' platform. Not open as we know it but open compared to the SDMI-type closedness of the traditional consoles. It will be very easy to move games from the PC to the X-Box.
The main divide between consoles and PCs in future are going to be display and configuration. Consoles typically plug into a TV an have limited resolution graphics as a result. This is likely to change over time.
The other issue is configuration, the X-box is an appliance. If you are reading slashdot then you probably don't need one. But you might want to buy one to keep the kiddies busy without worrying that they will screw up the windows registry. Or as with Web TV buy one to get granny on the net without hassle.
Really the X-box is not aimed so much at the console market as the home infopliance market. It would not take much to upgrade X-box to create a Tivo, or for that matter a general media jukebox. Jam an 802.11B card in one and it could be a low cost media store for the home.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Yes, and you are also getting MY point across, which is that you don't need a "state of the art" $1500+ system to play the current crop of games. The fastest reccomendation you quoted to me was 450 MHz, which was impressive a year ago, but will only be found in cheap budget systems today.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Even if you are correct and we follow the pattern (and I am old enough to remeber, if just barely), didn't the console industry come back and grow to about 20-30 times its pre-crash size?
It seems to me that the PC market is shrinking... More and more 'value' games, less and less PC-exclusive games... Major PC designers like Warren Spector and Peter Molyneux saying that developers must develop for the console market for projects to be economically feasible... I like consoles, but think I like PC gaming more. I hope neither goes away.
Josh Sisk
Let's face it, there has been little to no innovation in Game markets
I might have agreed with you a year or two ago, but companies seem to be starting to do some pretty interesting stuff, and if you haven't at least looked at games like Sacrifice, No One Lives Forever (a FPS, admittedly, but very clever), Giants, and up-coming titles like Black and White, you're missing out on some cool stuff.
Of course, the article was about consoles, so I have to mention some of the more innovative recent console games, like Jet Grind Radio, Shenmue, Perfect Dark, SSX, etc.
Actually, home computer games had a very bad year in 1983. So did coin arcades. Although the popular myth is that too many bad Atari 2600 games killed the system, it seems more likely that 1983 simply marked the end of the videogame fad, with the backlash that always accompanies the end of a fad. Atari simply got the blame for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The current market lacks the two features that made 1983 such a disaster 1) Videogames are no longer a novelty; they are simply another entertainment medium. 2) There is not the unrealistic frenzy among developers, which led developers in the early 1980's to overextend themselves chasing the exponentially growing videogame market. When the fad ended, they had nothing to fall back upon. That doesn't mean that there won't be a shake-out. There have been shakeouts in the past, and there will be in the future. The PS2 is probably in the weakest position, sandwiched between the DC, which is a bit more powerful, but has lots of strong games and and an up-and-running online gaming system, and the X-Box, which is expected to be both faster and easier to develop for. Unless Microsoft fumbles badly, the PS2 may have a rather short lifespan, especially since Sony was unable to meet demand this Xmas. Nintendo, of course, is always a wild card.
Because the consoles are getting more expensive
I beg to differ. Most consoles have traditionally retailed, at launch, at $300 or more. The current consoles continue this trend and the Dreamcast was much lower, at $199, I believe. The PS2 is more expensive, since it comes loaded with a DVD player, but I believe it is no more expensive than the PSX or SNES were at launch.
A cheap PC becomes the hot new console. And that, my friends, is the end of the console era.
Then why, even though entry level pcs have been getting cheaper and cheaper, has the console market, at the same time, grown so fast? And why is the PC market disappearing? Console games are different from PC games. People need to figure this out... The best PC games are the ones that would be no fun on a console (who wants to play a RTS or FPS on a gamepad). The opposite is true, too. Who wants to play Tekken or Madden sitting at your desk? Console games are easy and appeal to the masses where computer games don't. I personally prefer PC gaming, but would never get rid of my consoles.
Josh Sisk
Depending on what happens all around, I don't see this happening. Back in the 80's people were pissed off because they BOUGHT the games first, then found out they sucked. With word of mouth bigger than ever since all those systems are everywhere, and the advent of the internet. People can find out if games are worthy of buying now. People remember the crash, and most intelligent don't make the same mistake twice
Secondly is cost. If you look at the proportion of quality/cost, games today are a million times better than their Atari ancestors. With sound, graphics, story, game play, and sheer length, systems now will do better.
Thirdly, is the fact that back in the 80's Atari was the only big system out. You HAD to buy those games if you wanted to get your moneys worth out of the Atari. You had no choice. No the market is rife with possibilities. You got your Nintendos, your Sony's, The Sega's, and eventually your X Box's (anyone notice who that name rhymes with a certain crappy wrestler X Pac? curious....) Anyway, if a game sucks, you don't have to buy. Too much violence for your kiddies? get a Nintendo. Do you have a desire, maybe a sickening craving for blood, then go with a playstation or dreamcast. And since it has been a while since a machine has broken into a already stable market, who knows how the X Box will do, but I doubt people will want to deal with the constant patches. If anything, I don't think X Box will cause a global game market crash. I think it will cause it's own demise.
I'm not saying a crash COULDN'T happen. But with so many systems out there, I don't think one system will cause another. If the X Box floods the market, it won't affect the Sony market, infact, it might make some born again Sony fans, or Dreamcast, or even Nintendo. And Vice versa, if Sony floods the market, buy an X Box.
People have been predicting a game crash for years. Won't happen. Trust me. There is excellent content in the pipe. There are excellent platforms in the pipe. Sales are brisk, even if they aren't uniform.
Even if sales disappeared, you would still find people working on the next epic title. It goes beyond profits. Game developers write games because they're passionate about it and addicted to it. Just as film-making is a dumb idea for turning a buck, so is game-making. It's not a sensible business to be in, but people get hooked even though it is extremely risky.
VC's generally avoid game investments because it falls in the class of "hit-driven" industries. I had a friend who wrote what I consider to be one of the finest business plans I've ever read, but it was for a game company. He shopped it to over 200 VC's. No one bit. He eventually got backed by one of the few game publishers that has managed to stay afloat (surprise, surprise).
This is the way the game industry tends to work. Whoever is winning often ends up being the next big publisher.
So in a sense, you could say the game industry has always been in a slump because no one wants to invest directly in start-ups, but in a way, its own incestuous investments are more stable because the winning game developers end up investing in the other game developers.
Amateur game developers are the angel investors that infuse new money into the industry. They work for months - sometimes even years - without pay, draining their savings because they believe in the title.
It may be the case that many developers continue to suffer the marketing politics, the retailer shelf-space bribes, project cancellations, poor back-end compensation, artificial milestones, moving target libraries, and turnover. However, the consumers will not.
Ask yourself if the film industry or music industry or book industry has ever really "crashed". There are lots of starving, passionate actors, musicians, and writers, but consumers continue to see great selection year after year.
It would take something really major, like the repeal of copyright law or a way for pirates to have access to considerably higher bandwidth media and connections than the developers have access to in order to cause serious damage to the game, movie, music, or book industries.
Look what happened to arcades, games at home today are equal to or in some cases better than what are at the arcades. I would definitely prefer a Lan Party to a day at the local arcade. Networked games just add a realism that you can't get from a standalone. I think if anything is on the way out, it is arcade machines. I used to go to play the latest technology, if I can get better at home for less money, I'll do it.
-Daniel
You cannot live by renaming Doom to Quake alone. What gaming needs now is a new idea that's as revolutionary as 3d-first-person-shooters was in the Wolfenstein to Doom period. Otherwise, why buy new games? Just keep releasing new Quake levels.
My user name is Latin and refers to the power of Fokker airplanes
I'd love to see Pinball make a comeback!
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
PS2 is what, $300?
You can build yourself a linux box for what, $300 (I'm sure someone's built one for even less)
Given that the PS2's price is subsidized, I'd say we're already there...
Kurdt
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
Moores law renders it irrelevant, IMO. Okay, so ther might be setbacks for a while, and the market may remain stationary, but with computer power doubling every 12 months it doesn't matter. This is what I predict:
1) In ten years all games will be written in Java. Computers will be fast enough to handle it, and this will render porting problems obsolete.
I think there should be some sort of Moore's Law for 3D Graphics that will account for the fact that as computers become faster artists will always find a way to bog them down with more and more stuff. So I don't see this happening for a while. Not to mention my doubt of Java to be the language to do it.
2)The market will be bigger, as China and India will be superpowers. This will render the crowded marketplace idea obsolete.
Hasn't this been predicted for every market for like a thousand years? Besides, you think they'll PAY for their copies of games?
3)The film industry will be no more, as it will be subsumed into the games industry. This will bring gaming to the mainstream. Exciting times are ahead, my friends.
Yeah, uh, no. Movies are going to be around forever. Hell, we still have OPERA for christ's sake. Not to mention theatre, mimes, rock concerts... etc.
"America, I smoke marijuana every chance I get."
Again, ever since I discovered programming, which I consider to be a game in itself, I've loathed consoles: where's the keyboard and disk?!?
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Consoles *WILL* grow up to be the poor-mans computer
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
I'm a fan of Joystick101. I go there every day to check for any valid news links to my site. The writers opinions are always insightful. However, I think the author is off base on this one.
It's funny that John Carmack called these the halcyon days of polygon based gaming, and yet two years down the road, some flawed marketing is going to drop that down the tubes. Consoles are just not that essential.
I think we're finally arriving at at age where we can honestly say that games look exciting to people who don't play games. The same people who stop to watch movies playing at Future(Torture) Shop would now stop to watch some kid playing a game at some display stand.
Games truly look good for the first time, and there are enough excess polygons to throw around to express artistic ideas. I don't buy it.
... and quality is sadly lacking in all fields of entertainment. Look at music. Endless amounts of boy band/girl band types, all making near-identical session-musician produced stuff with dance routines. A genuinely original band hasn't a hope, because the music companies know what sells.
Games are the same. The FPS genre accounts for most of the console games out at the moment. They get prettier and prettier, but the gameplay gets crappier and crappier. Look at Q3A for example. It's pretty, but is it as much fun as playing Q2 up through the levels?
I'm loath to pay that much money for a single-use machine, then a sizeable fraction of the price for the games. But then I'm a grumpy tight-arsed sod.
Actually, in 1983 you still could not buy a computer for anything close to the price of an Atari 2600. And computers of the day could not match the graphics of the contemporaneous Collecovision, which also suffered in the crash. Moreover, computer games also had a weak year in 1983.
The price gap between computers and consoles is as large as ever. Considering that a fast computer with an up-to-date graphics card is required for adequate performance on the latest games, you can expect to pay at least 3 times the price of a console. And the major advantages of consoles remain:
They (and their games) are designed to work well with consumer TVs. The average consumer would rather play games in his rec room than at his computer desk.
There are no configuration issues. If you have the target console, the game will work out of the box, period. You don't have to worry about whether you have enough RAM, MHz, the right version of the operating system, or the right video card.
Because you really need some cheese with that whine.
ure, a game that takes 60-200 hours to finish (Baldur's Gate II) is great for the high-school kidees with nothing better to do
If that is too long for you, THEN DON'T BUY THE GAME. Simple as that. There are plenty of choices out there for a shorter attention span; really long games are the exception, not the rule. There are some things I dislike about BG and Diablo but that doesn't mean I diss that part of the genre.
I look back fondly on the days of the endless Ultima sequels
Ah, you must be one of those people who look back with rose colored glasses of nostalgia. People have been whining about how stuff was better when they were kids, wether its games, music or films for as long as we've had them. The simple fact is that there is some good stuff and a whole lot of crap; its always been that way and always will.
For every classic release of Ultima there was another E.T. groaner that never should have seen the light of day. And there are plenty of great modern games, like Dues Ex, Half Life and Grim Fandingo to go along with the bombs like Diakatana.
There's lots of stuff out there to like if you'll look for it.
After a while, spending a $500-1000 a year on PC upgrades gets old if it's only being done to play the latest games. (And the upgrading is obviously a side-effect of gaming as my office PC is still a blazing 233Mhz beast with 64 megs of RAM and would still be a 133Mhz ball of fire if I hadn't needed to replace a fried CPU with one from the parts pile.) I've already decided that my next gaming upgrade will be a PS2 (after Christmas). For $300, it'll play lots of games, has nearly the same expansion potential as a PC, and plays DVDs. All my entertainment needs in a simple package. I'll leave the comptuers for getting work done and find something else to do with the extra cash.
Does anyone find it odd that an article talking about video game crashes says nothing about all those expensive 32bit systems that flooded the market around 94-96 (my dating may be off) with prices that were outrageous at the time. There's no mention of the Panasonic Real 3DO, the Atari Jaguar, the Sega 32X/CD or the Phillips/Magnavox CD-I only the Playstation and Saturn. Perhaps more research was needed.
I find the Atari Jaguar's history most interesting right now: a system whos 2 32bit processors made it very powerful and also impossible to program a decent looking game on. Then there were also the 3DO and CD-I, complete multimedia experiences with kerioke additions and all. Sounds like the Playstation 2 albeit to a more extreme level. I find it ironic that Sony eventually beat out the Jaguar and it's competitors with the Playstation only to repeat Atari and company with the Playstation 2, however the market and developers seem more friendly this time around.
Sega also looks to be repeating the past, the Dreamcast looks to have a fairly established user base (including myself, it's neat) but at the cost of less powerful hardware. They've done the same with the Saturn, Sega CD, 32X and Genesis. There is also a matter of capital, the only Dreamcast commercials I ever see are in that one slot during the simpsons and the company hasn't made a profit in 4 years, making for some pretty lamo marketing, especially when it looks to be the only console for under US$150 in this generation, judging by component prices.
But then again maybe it would have been a bigger mistake for these companies to have looked at the past. The Gamecube will have a proprietary DVD drive but it won't play movies, which is a huge selling point for the Playstation 2 and helps justify the rediculous price tag. Nintendo says it's because people want a game machine, not a multimedia machine. Hey, didn't the CD-I have a couple of Zelda games? They also said cartridges would be far better than CD's a while ago because there would be no load times and look where that got them. The N64 would have been a great CD based system.
Instead of comparing these systems to some old 1984 consoles with a completely different market and completely different games maybe the writer should have focused on more recent events, especially with the changing demographics. 16 year olds who were born in 1984 have a lot more cash to lay down on a system then their parents did, or even their siblings of 6 years ago. The writer also takes for granted that every console generation has a lot of competitors that get weeded out. A crash seems very unlikely with this economy.
PS I realize the CD-I wasn't really meant to be a gaming machine but it made for good comparing.
Gamers don't buy cheap PCs. Maybe we will see a move toward lower system requirements, but right now a gaming computer costs a heck of a lot more than a PS2.
Bite the hand.
A little over a year ago people were crying "crash" at the thought of the new digit on the front of the year triggering a mass loss of faith in the stock market. However, with increased support for the market and many, many words to the wise encouraging people not to sell, the market stayed afloat, and even got through the few Y2K bugs with flying colors. So here we are, a year later, and I'm hearing of the gaming market's possible "crash" of 2002. I don't buy it. I can easily see a couple of the gaming companies going under (in that market only), such as Sega, but the gaming industry itself won't crash. Sony releases a virtually infinite supply of games, and Nintendo seems to sell itself with its 1st and 2nd party games, not to mention all the goodies we should inevitably see with Microsoft's Xbox (which I am against, but hey, it will be a good machine). In other words, don't expect the gaming market to crash. Don't even expect any consoles or companies involved to crash. I'm not saying it won't happen, but I don't think it's very likely. There is also a simple solution to avoid such a crash. EVERYONE BUY VIDEO GAMES! Com'on, we love to entertain ourselves, and when all else fails, video games are great! So if this threat of a video game crash ever becomes realistic, do what I'm going to do ... everyone start buying video games like mad!
Yea, guess you're right that is fun sometimes. You know if the console games could do both they would be serious competition for computers.
A "crowded marketplace"? Yeah...crowded with game consoles.
I downloaded the demo too. It sounded fun before I played it but afterwards I was frustrated. I couldn't take the lack of control. Just can't stand watching the stupid heroes walk right past a monster.
I don't play computer games (with the exception of quake). Console games are much more responsive, varied, and just plain better than computer games. In fact, I'd rather play snes games with snes9x than just about any computer game out there. Playing multiplayer console games with a group ofg friends where you can talk shit and joke around is always more fun than playing multiplayer online games w/ some random people you don't really know.
Try Gentoo Linux!
Gaming will never die. Isn't that what was said about disco?
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
I have 5 consoles under my bed gathering dust. Big deal. The market moves on the young grow old and complain. Young gamers step up and take their place. and so an and so forth. Time passes Gandalf enters N,N,S. :)
A 3dfx Performance Architect recently told me: "It's possible that the Emotion Engine is using the Newton Raphson approx
Oh, yes, I guess that probably is what he meant. I misunderstood.
Care about freedom?
I'd rather be lucky than good.
It's the death of the console system as we know it (and I feel fine, yeah, insert REM song here).
The point is, every console out today has some sort of "extra ports" on them to be able to connect to other people--something PCs have had for ages, and the console makers are finally waking up to the fact that "Hey, them gamers like to play with each other! Hu-yuk" I guess it goes without saying that the fact that the PS2 has two USB ports and a modem jack (I'm assuming it's a modem jack, I'm probably wrong), and the Dreamcast has a modem that finally made its debut with NFL2K, that the consoles are trying harder and harder to actually become little PCs.
I mean, hell, look at the X-Box. It is a little PC. It has RAM. It has a name brand video card. It has a hard drive. It has an OS. It has upgradability.
I think the thing that seperates consoles from PCs is the fact that there are no drivers. There are no bug patches, or updates. There are no mods. There is the CD (or cartridge, for you poor N64 users), and that's all you get. With NFL2K, you can use laggy-ass servers to play a half-ass game of football that you'd be better off playing on a PC anyway.
I think it would be nice to believe that consoles serve a purpose, and they should only do that purpose--to have fun. You plug it in, turn it on, and it works. But when you utter the absolute tightening-tech-support-asshole words of upgradability and Operating Systems in the same sentence as consoles, your only going to have problems. Those wonderful seven year olds out there are going to want a new hard drive for their X-Box so they can play Pokemon 2200: It's Not Over Yet, and more ram or a new video card so they can watch Tony Hawk do another sweet move off the half pipe.
When you get into upgradability, it gets dangerous. When you get into connectability, it gets dangerous. When you try to be something your not, normally you're just going to fuck it right up.
Now we'll just watch and see it happen.
Was this the "game show" where kids played video games for prizes? They basically competed to get the most points within a time limit on popular arcade games (like Star Trek, and Paperboy). Wow
that's been a while ^_^;;
The article spoke about how Xbox 'already looks like the system to beat' and coding and porting for the Xbox will be so much easier, but who really needs this? For almost a year and a half I was running a PII 400 with 64 megs ram and a $20, 8 meg video card, non-3dfx enabled, and it supported every game I wanted to play that came out in that timespan, up to and including Diablo II. I've always played console games because they weren't available for the PC, not because they'll look better than the PC variant. If the Xbox is just going to be an outlet for high-graphics FPS games, it's not going to be a merket leader. Sure Quake III or Half-Life will look amazing on the Xbox, but do you really need more than two Doom-clones a system? Besides, at the rate hardware is advancing, given the lack of upgradability for the Xbox, PCs will be able to belt out faster and prettier graphics by the end of 2002 anyway. My point is, if the Xbox doesn't have a set of games produced for it only, it's not going to succeed as a console. In a similar vein, I do not think the PS2 will take as much of the share as some of you think it will. The gaming core knows it has exceptional hardware and will feature more and better titles than the Dreamcast, but I've talked to people farther from the gaming center, and their money, for the moment anyway, is all going to the Dreamcast. First of all, it's much more available, and the public hasn't seen any proof of the PS2's higher capabilities. The Dreamcast is already building quite the fan base, while the PS2 is still largely an unknown. The PS2 is a system that the general public, by and large, is not willing to wait or pay for, and it and the current PS2 owners are not seen in a favourable light by the "softcore gaming" sector, due entirely to the launch process. -Crypthanatopsis "Once I had no shoes, and I pitied myself. Then I met a man with no feet, so I took his shoes."
-Crypthanatopsis
Having less overhead in the game market is absolutely the way to get more innovative games out there. More genuinely talented people can break in, and there is less reason to keep the sub-average developer or designer employed. Today's games are hampered by the fact that the finite resources of the market (good programmers, good designers, shelf space, patrons, publishers) are stretched thinly across too many games, most of which suck, and which take years to bring to market. I'd rather see a great development house turn out a game a year than wait 2-3 years to find out a game sucks, or is good but bloated because of all the excessive crap they added. Diablo II would've been a great game minus one act. The development of 1/4 of the game delayed its release and tied up its developers for how many months?
And, isn't it a better business model to spend a shorter amount of time developing a game that might be a hit and which you can follow up on quickly than spend 2-3 years only to find out that the game is a complete flop (Daikatana anyone)? Better to find out if the game is popular before spending years developing it.
The only certainty is entropy.
And consoles are cheaper.
And that's what matters to John Q. Public
Yes, the console market is going to contract and shake out some players, and here's why:
1) Licensing - As I understand it, Microsoft is throwing out the traditional video game licensing model. Forget paying royalties, and forget about having to get a game approved by the console manufacturer.
2) DVD - Sega and Nintendo are missing the boat on this one--big time. DVD is going to be a strong selling point for X-Box and PS2.
3) TV Set-Top Box - We are just now coming to a place technologically where it's possible for a game console to become the mythical set-top box. The question is going to be, "How many peripherals do you want to connect to your TV?" Not only will the PS2 and the X-Box be game consoles, but they will be the DVD player in most homes. And they might even replace the TiVo (PS2 has an available hard drive bay, and the X-Box will have a hard drive standard).
However, I can't see the two becoming one to the point that we'll be doing our taxes on the Dreamcast-8 or some such thing. Computers are still excellent at nonspecialized tasks, and consoles are still excellent for simple game-playing. I think that trend is likely to continue long into the forseeable future.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
1. Because they each have 1 billion citizens.
2. Because their GDP has been growing at a dramatically faster rate than that of the Western countries.
3. Because they are investing heavily in technology.
Seriously, are you so uninformed about the world around you, that you have never heard about China and India becoming superpowers?
Hell, they already ARE superpowers!
the path of all-consuming evil...
The path of Digital Video Disc decryption...
And now our favorite video games are headed to the same fate? Damn!
--hongpong.com
It's not that consoles will turn into PCs, it's that low end PCs will be cheap and powerful enough to compete with the consoles. You could buy a $300 console system and a $500 PC or you could just buy the $500 PC (or use the savings and buy an $800 PC). The problem with consoles is that they are not a necessity for people whereas computers are entirely necessary unless you like to live the life of a hermit.
It's an interesting article, but I think it's incorrect in a couple of ways.
1. The main reason for the crash wasn't because of all the competing systems. It was because there was a huge amount of crapware released for the Atari (like the infamous ET game). This turned off gamers more than having to choose between competing systems. Indeed, one could argue that with Atari being in such a dominant position over the other guys, there really was no real competition, hence the downward spiral in quality.
2. Just because a console is made by Microsoft doesn't mean it's going to contain a bunch of mediocre PC ports or patches. There's no reason why Microsoft can't enter the business like any other console developer. Remember, the real reason console games don't need patches is because a) There's one and only one hardware configuration you have to deal with (and without any other concurrently-running programs to worry about), and b) Console companies run very thorough quality checks of prospective games before releasing them. All Microsoft joking aside, I see no reason why Microsoft can't equal other publishers in this area.
I think what you will discover is that the market can't support all 6 developers at once. One or two of them won't gain enough critical mass to sustain the whole "enough people playing it = publishers develop games for it = more people buy the console" cycle. It will mean failure for one or two developers. But an entire market crash? I'm skeptical.
"Do you expect me to talk?" "No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die!"
In 1984 my brother and I were both turned off by the crap being sold for consoles and turned to the commodore 64, which had a very healthy gaming market, and never skipped a beat (plus, you could actually PROGRAM it. What a beautiful assembly language it had!). People shouldn't talk about the video game crash of 1984 but rather about the console crash of 1984, because all my friends at the time were playing tons of games on their commodores and apple IIs and we were all lusting after the AMIGA!
Video games didn't crash in 1984; consoles did. I think the same statement may be applicable in 2002, as the author of the article indicates.
I have to disagree. I remember spending as much as $80 for new video games for Super Nintendo and N64 (when it was new). Now, I am routinely able to buy dreamcast games for $35 or so. This is, of course, largely due to the high price of cartridges wrst discs, but the claim that video game prices are going up strikes me as just being false.
Care about freedom?
I'd rather be lucky than good.
Being or not being a superpower has NOTHING to do with market. Neither China nor India would need to be superpowers to be a huge market. All they need is an economy. A GOOD economy and a growing middle class with money to spend. That is not the same thing as, or tied to, being a superpower.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
the n64 and psx controllers have more buttons.
n64 has 9; R, L, 4 C buttons, A, B, and Z (trigger)
psx has 8; R1, R2, L1, L2, circle, square, triangle, and X. (who the hell came up with the idea of using shapes to identify buttons?)
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I absolutely can not tolerate one more person mentioning that we should make a beowulf cluster of whatever the article being discussed is about.
Can you imagine what it would be like if we made a beowulf cluster out of these name droppers?
BAH!
Keep in mind the current state of society. We have those stereotypical fat teenagers that sit on the couch all day and play video games. There is the demand... Also, people are making more money and so it is not uncommon to own multiple systems. Here on campus finals started today and there are people playing DreamCast as I type this. Keep in mind the PlayStation and N64 in the same room are sitting idle...
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It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
I thought this was Gates's corrolary to Moore's law
"Every 18 months the speed of software is halved."
Hooptie
"Heavens, it appears that my weewee has been stricken with rigor mortis!" -- Stewie Griffin
It seems to me that the games you see today are all rehashes of older games. Hence the categories of games (RPG,RTS,FPS,etc). They're all modeled of the same successor or successors. I've pretty much given up on finding a game that can hold my interest. RTS games were great when they came out but the last few years everyone I've played is the same old concept with a new spin. My starcraft addiction took all the fun out of RTS. The same could be said for all the other categories. The gaming industry needs to come up with some new types of games or stop releasing 12 games that only have relatively minor differences every year. How many first person shooters can you play before you're burnt out on the entire category of games?
True, but people tend to buy based on the cycle.
If you upgrade / buy new computers regularly (I do 1.5-3 years, with upgrades in between. 5 years for a computer? I don't think so), the computer will be more powerful. 4 years into the console cycle, who has the more powerful system? The computer has been through 3 or more cycles, probably quadrupling or more in power, especially in the video card arena.
And close to the end of the cycle, there are many more of the more powerful systems out. Compare the average computer out now to the PS (1, not 2).
Of course, the main drawback to this is that it is expensive to keep a computer upgraded. Consoles are more disposable.
They claim that a crowded marketplace in conjunction with the large number of ports will lead today's consoles down the same road as the Atari 2600.
god, i fuckin' hope so, because the atari 2600 is the only system i have right now because i bought one when they got cheap! if people are throwing away their playstation 2's in a few years, you can bet the smart kids out there will be nabbing them up for when they make their "retro" comeback. and the dumb kids, like me, will be sitting at home giggling with a beer in one hand and a controller in the other, because nothing feels better than playing kick-ass games you got for real cheap.
grizzo
www.grizzo.com
it's 100% grizzo
grizzo: totally insecure, but very convenient.
Let's see. The economy may be ready to take a nosedive, but not soon. And the consoles from the big three (Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft) are all backed by companies (N,S,M) with shitloads of money. These consoles have good games on them. These consoles take zero effort to set up, and no one has to configure any drivers for them or worry about the DirectX version.
In the end, I guess it's fun to discuss, but it's one of those idiot statements: Five years from now, everyone will be looking at the web through VRML, because virtual reality allows you to truly interact with the web. And: Usenet will collapse under the weight of AOL and spam! Uh-huh. Right. Go ahead and worry about it, meanwhile, I'll play Ogre Battle 64, and Shenmue, and Perfect Dark, and Soul Calibur, and oh hells yeah I'm looking forward to Phantasy Star Online, Metal Gear Solid, Eternal Darkness, etc.
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Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
Firstly, I don't think that the PC is competing or will compete to the extent that the author is leading us to believe (on which I'll expand below). Also, I don't believe that the market or developers will treat each console with equal respect as implied by the introduction and conclusion of the article. Even the exposition of the article, describing the highlights and low-points of each system, goes somewhat against the gist of author's point.
After mentioning Indrema, he says little else about it (and I myself naively think that it will go the way of the 3DO). The Dreamcast, PS2, XBox and Game Cube have been or will be launched at different times, which can have an adverse effect on each console's reception in the market. The number of (good) games launched with each console will differ and the pricing will also be an issue. Developers, despite the inertia associated with learning new dev tools and acquiring the necessary equipment, will move to more popular platforms if they believe their games can reach a larger audience by doing so. There is a chicken-egg disparity in my argument here with developers moving to more popular consoles and the market share going to consoles as more developers adopt it, but IANAE (I'm not an economist), so such a subtlety is beyond my scope. I also believe (without much qualification - does some have numbers?) that the reality of the situation is that there are plenty of developers to bring enough games (good or otherwise) to each console, at least at launch, as evidenced by every console company's ability to bring long lists of names of developers tied to a console's launch.
Thus, my conclusion on the market over-saturation issue, given the inequality between each console, is not that the sudden appearance of a wide range of consoles will suddenly confuse customers to the extent of commercial impotency, but that the good/popular ones with an early enough footing will gain in popularity and support, weeding out less popular ones, while some, in good old N64 fashion, will hang on due to die-hard fans and good (and infrequent) in-house games.
But the point which seems to have cropped up in others' comments, somewhat independently to the article's content, is that the PC will slowly erode the console's popularity. I disagree with this, as I believe that the two play inherently different roles.
I find that good gameplay on either platform is immersive, but in different respects (if you will allow me to generalise): with PCs becoming more and more powerful, it is the game's environment - the 3d world, the space simulation that gets you to move you head out of the way just before you collide with an asteroid, the RTS that effortlessly makes you adopt the rules and strategies of the game because of the sudden reality of having to manage resources in order to beat your opponent to a tank/zerling/whatever rush - that is immersive; with consoles it is the game's tactile play-response (how's that for a buzzword?) - the way you move the controller to steer Mario's kart as if somehow you'll turn more sharply, the way your fingers are tired after pressing so damn hard on the d-pad and buttons because all your concentration transfers itself into your hands.
What I'm getting at, if you didn't understand the raw nonsense in the previous paragraph, is that design of a console (and more relevently, the control pad) seems to dictate the games that are playable on it, and likewise the keyboard and mouse/joystick for the PC. FPSs seem to be playable on both, but I suspect most would prefer a PC because of the higher resolutions and the flexibility of having a keyboard, especially in multi-player scenarios. But things like RTSs and Sim games (Theme Park, Sim City, The Sims) don't seem to lend themselves to porting over to a console. But I would much prefer playing Mario Kart, a good platform game and even most sport sims on a console.
Other arguments concerning the fact that consoles are only for games and that computers can duplicate that function have also arisen. This is an interesting point, since, coupled with what I've said above, if consoles became more computer like, bundled with mouse and keyboard and such, these arguments against them would in fact become considerably stronger. Once consoles start imitating desktop PCs, it would then become obvious that a desktop PC would be a better alternative given its greater functionality. In other words, it would be better for consoles to continue evolving with respect to better gameplay.
Anyway, those are some of my ideas, and I've gone on for far too long now.
-Terence
--Still waiting for a Multiplayer-Internet Elite/Privateer clone--
Haskell, the static-typed, lazy, polymorphic, programming language.
Folks,
One problem with the PlayStation 2, Dreamcast and Gamecube is the fact you often need very specialized programming tools just to write the games for these systems--this costs major amounts of money to pull off.
I know I'll be flamed for htis, but this is why Microsoft's Xbox could be a very formidable competitor when it is released in September 2001. Think about it: Xbox is essentially a PC running a highly-optimized version of the Windows 2000 operating system code base. Given that there is a huge amount of Windows-based games out there, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that all the experience writing games for Windows 95/98/ME/2000 machines can be very easily applied to writing games for Xbox.
For example, a game like Diablo II or The Sims could in theory be a very fast and straightforward code conversion to run on Xbox.
This is why Electronic Arts has signed up to write games for Xbox. EA sells a lot of games to PC owners, and since the source code for the PC games can be easily ported to run on Xbox....
Also, don't forget that almost every Japanese game publisher (Namco, Koei, Hudsonsoft, Game Arts, and many others) are already writing games for Xbox. The only notable absentee is Square--and they may come onboard given their working relationship with Electronic Arts.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Gaming crashed in 1984 not because of an oversupply, but because of an undersupply of quality games. Atari dominated the early 80's (coin-op, console, home computer hardware, AND gaming software), and when they died due to poor management, there was no one to pick up the slack until Nintendo came along a few years later.
> Most consoles have traditionally retailed, at launch, at $300 or more.
Yes. The PSX when it first came out was $300.
> The current consoles continue this trend and the Dreamcast was much lower, at $199, I believe.
Current price is $150! It's pretty hard to pass that up!
Disco is dead? SWEET JESUS!!
I have never had a console and have always considered keyboard based computers far superior (for my purposes)
Rich
I think the last remark should be modded up. How can someone complain about the lack of demos on consoles when Console game rentals have existed for at least 6 years? Demos on computer games have been around for a long time, but were very uncommon until shareware doom/heretic showed that you can make money on a game despite having a playable version of it. Within 3 years, most games had a demo version out there.
I read a lot of comments saying "Consoles are dead (and good riddance!)", but I have a different take.
The thing people like about a console is that you plug it in, and it works. It's simple to operate (though, the games may not be), it's non-threatening (one or two controllers, with a few buttons and a joystick).
The downside is that it's limiting (no keyboard, no high-rez screens, no connectivity) -- dowsides that are being alleviated with the Indrema or (maybe) the PS2.
But look at your modern computer -- no longer a box of bits you put together yourself from bought and found parts (/.ers excepted). It's a nice, friendly box you buy from a nice, friendly guy at CompUSA that you take home, plug up and (most of the time) works. Computers are becoming more consolish every day, while consoles are becoming more computerish every day.
The juxtaposition of these two axis will create some bastard box with the computer's "eyes and nose" and the console's "hair and bone structure" -- and it may not do all that well. (Vis a vis, the 3DO or Apple's Pippen, the first generation of bastard boxes) For example, the Pippen was a great idea -- a computer or game platform, reasonably priced. Computer labs should have been filling up with those things, since they were so easy to set up, nearly impossible to infect with a virus, and w-a-y cheaper than a full computer (at the time). I think Apple sold ten of them. It was a so-so computer, a so-so game platform (and marketed like a leper whore).
Will gaming die out? Not likely -- people by nature loved to be entertained, and as long as games provide entertainment, they'll sell. Where will these games play? It's too early to tell -- I think consoles will move to the top of your TV and will be TiVO/PS2/WebTV bastardizations, until the tech improves to where it will be included in every TV. But that's nothing more than a guess.
One more item -- the great console crash of the early 80's was partially due to market saturation (everybody who wanted one already had a 2600), paritally due to home-computing's rise (C64, Apple ][ ), and partially due to cable TVs rise ("you wanna play Pitfall?" "Nah, let's see if we can find some boobies on Cinemax").
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Hardcore gamers and hardcore games are no longer the juggernaut they used to be. Sure, your Quake XVII and Diablo 29 get a ton of sales, but that's slowly being eclipsed by the Joe Average gamer who plays things like Deer Hunter. Check the gaming sales charts back for the last year, and you'll notice hunting and fishing simulations all over the boards.
Whether or not there's a hardcore game market crash is almost irrelevant. Maybe it'll happen. Maybe the old "Golden Convergence" scenario that Robert Morgan was trumpetting two years ago will happen. In the end, it will have limited effect on the Wal-Mart gaming market, which is where the money is really being made these days. We can scoff at Barbie Detective, but it's making more money than the vast majority of other games out there.
That's what killed Atari. They sold dirt cheap consoles in order to sell more cartridges. Once there was enough competition from games ported to computers to force cartridge prices down, bye-bye Atari.
Many, perhaps most, people who have game consoles also have computers. When one can choose between buying a console or upgrading a computer to play the same games with the same or better performance, which would be the smartest choice?
My user name is Latin and refers to the power of Fokker airplanes
Recently all this talk has been made about the PC dying as a games platform - well nearly all the companies I've seen abandon the PC for pastures X Box were not the game makers I look out for or expect great things from. So a badly licensed substandard kid's product won't ship on PC, but Deus Ex 2 will. Boo fucking hoo. The PC will also continue to innovate in the online realm before the consoles do for several more years.
As far as a gaming crash is concerned, ask EA or Square or Sony how much they think they're going to lose in the next few years. Very, very little.
This is no reason for hope, however. Massmarket acceptance and the pure visual quality of titles released today will insure gaming continues - albeit in a sea of licensed, substandard, boring hogwash. More WWF games, more bad movie ports, another EA Fifa 2001 September edition. The gaming business is no longer what it once was, a playground of innovation and boundary pushing and an attempt to create a genuine new art form. Now it is all about the money, bottom line. That's what's depressing. True, there will be the odd rose buried in the mountain of shit - but unfortunately this article has it all wrong. That mountain of shit is worth a lot of money, and people are going to fork over cash for a piece of that shit, and keep doing it. What the article should've said is that we need a gaming crash to rejuvanate it creatively.
** http://www.nkhumanrights.or.kr/ ** Human rights in North Korea. 1 million estimated dead from starvation.
The idea of two of the worst countries in regard to civil rights becoming superpowers frightens me.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
This article ignores one of the factors of the 1983 crash. Cheap home computers. Parents could buy a system that would let kids do their homework (that old salesman's story) and at the time had much better capabilities than the braindead 2600 (which was an ancient system by that time, true, but it was the king). Consoles have always face irrelevancy in terms of price vs. capabilities of computers. The NES came out and for its price it couldn't be beat by computers for years to come (especially since the PC was taking over the market where more game-capable systems were losing relevance). The gap between when a console comes out and it is matched in price vs. capabilities is shrinking rapidly. Because the consoles are getting more expensive, and their capabilities are only slightly better than a PC in the same order of price magnitude. Meanwhile, satisfactory gamers' PCs are getting cheaper by the minute. The X-box and Indrema only make it official. For the same price and capabilities, plus the ability to "do homework on it" makes it the preferred choice. A cheap PC becomes the hot new console. And that, my friends, is the end of the console era.
I find these figures hard, maybe even impossible to believe. If this were the case, we would only see completely vertically integrated game producers (Nintendo, SEGA). Otherwise, who would risk it? Are you saying that a huge, publicly held developer like EA makes a profit on 10% of its products? That means that these 10% of the products must make so much money that they can cover the rest of the company--why would they even bother developing other titles? Nope, we would see a marketplace with fewer and fewer, rather than more and more titles. Furthermore, no stockholder would stand for IRR's on these projects with such high risk. That would put the level of videogame developing risk on par with, say, copper speculation.
"Chill, Orrin!"---Trent Lott
Well, let's see.
I just bought Mindrover. Haven't seen a game like it since Robowar on the Mac or Robot Odyssey on the AppleII
Number 1 and 2 sellers on PC right now- The Sims and Roller Coaster Tycoon. The Sims is certainly original, and RRT may be a clone of Theme Park but it's got its own unique flavor.
Yeah, there are a dozen RT strategy and first person shooters for every innovative thing out there, but they certainly exist.
Eric
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
The analysis is complicated somewhat by the fact that the systems aren't coming out all within a year like they used to. Who knows if people will to buy a new system in another year? My guess is no, I think that by being first Sega and Sony will have too big of a market share to be displaced by the time Nintendo and Microsoft finally get their products launched. But I'm not an industry expert, obviously. I guess I'll stop speculating and just wait and see what happens.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
The author compares one company's efforts(granted there were other competitors, but not on the same level) in 1984 with those of, as he counts them, 6 platforms today. This is competition compared to domination.
This is a manual virus. Copy it to your sig and help me spread!
Soul Caliber
and
Tony Hawks Pro Skater (1 & 2)
2 of the best Dreamcast games, bar none.
PS: Do NOT think about the background music of bubble bobble!
PS: Do NOT NOT NOT go to this website:
I expected to find deconstructionist web comics occasionally related to Nintendo vs. Sega, but instead found constructive logic web comics. BORRRINGGG!!!When we start getting 3d video cards in those cheap PCs it will be very hard to justify buying a limited machine only for games when one can get a general purpose computer capable of playing the same games.
If you take a cheap, buggy PC game and port it to X-Box (assuming X-Box even ships, which is not proven), you have a cheap, buggy PC game on a midlevel modern gaming PC, on which MS is dumping money instead of earning it. My suspicion is that the whole thing isn't to produce X-Box, but to kill the console market so people give up and go back to Windows games.
One of the great hidden secrets of the video game industry is that 50% of all products lose money, 40% break even, and 10% make a profit. Of those 10%, only a handful make what could be considered a spectacular profit.
I think the author is off base about what would cause another video game crash (something that comes up every couple of years, going back to at least 1990). This time around the issue that development is hugely expensive, takes two to three years, and games have to do exceptionally well just to make up development costs. The next time you read a poor or mediocre review of a game, consider that a team of 20 was slaving away on that game, day in and day out, since 1998. This is in a different class than a band spending two months to write and record a weak album. Daikatana is a high profile example of a failed game, but the sad truth is that most games follow the same path; it's just that they don't have a well-known figure managing the team.
So uhhh, presumably how long is the "perfect" game supposed to be? Just long enough not to bore me but long enough to keep me interested? How long is that? And in case you didn't notice, game prices haven't fluctuated much in the last decade. Yes I had to pay $69 for Super Mario Bros. 3 in 1990 and yes I have to pay $59.99 for Tekken Tag Tournament, game prices aren't going anywhere and they are never based on actual development cost, they are based on what the industry suggests as "retail price". If you can't handle the high prices of games get a mod chip or get a crack!
As for less programmers making more innovation, does this make sense at all? I don't care how good a set of programmers are, the fewer there are the less innovation there is going to be, a larger group stimulates innovation (and if you can't find innovative games, you should obviously stop looking at the shelves in your local Wal-Mart and start poking around the web for more interesting games). There is more choice for gamers now than there has ever been, and if you can't find games that are "just right" for you, you aren't looking hard enough.
Capt. Ron
crazy dynamite monkey
I agree with you though I might be more inclined to pick up the first Playstation, and see if I can cheaply find certain games that were among the best that console had to offer. The last thing I'll want is expansion. I'd rather wait a couple years and get that PS2 at under a hundred bucks- assuming it's even still possible to get a console that was as direct and unfussy as the Atari 2600 I grew up on, or a Playstation. I wonder if that is becoming a thing of the past, and people will end up grovelling through errata and knowledge bases just to play various simple games on their consoles. "Well, this original X-Box game gets broken by this update that enables this other game, and these two games also get broken, but the latest game won't run without the update though you can run one of the two new games on an older update that I saw on an FTP site somewhere..."
I personally feel that the consoles won't so much be the first to go, in as much as professional gaming. The first wave of professional gamers will be the martyrs. Professional gaming will definately have a place, as soon as the games are developed with a spectator in mind. I have many friends that are gamers and quite enjoy watching them play, but I feel that I am in the majority.
There is a majorflaw in your argument:
What is the lifecycle of a console?
What is the lifecycle of a computer?
The console will only be ahead at the beginning of its cycle. It will rapidly be surpassed. By the end of the cycle, it is a dinosaur compared to the current computers.
It's not too easy to see what the shake down of these four consoles is going to be in two or three years, but here is a take on the strength and weakness of the four players, and what we can expect them to do.
Dreamcast: The first one out of the gate.
Their strengths are their strong first-party support, a cheap system, and the first ones to establish an Internet presence. Their first-party is second only to Shigeru Miyamoto. Their system will be the cheapest of all systems, cheaper than the GameCube, and may be as cheap as the GameBoy advance. Everything they shipped shipped Internet-ready, and even though it took a year, the software now uses it.
Their weaknesses will prove overwhelming, however. Their hardware, to put it bluntly, is maxed out. This means that there will only be less, not more, support to this system in the years to come. It's Internet support is crippled by the lack of a hard-drive. This is not a big deal this year, but the next machines will have this support, and it will be very very important. And the final nail is that the system has already lost in Japan, to the PS2, which doesn't even have a fistful of good games yet. Let's get to that now, shall we...
Playstation 2:Let's start with the weaknesses. It is almost impossible to program for right now, requiring a massive development team and gifted coders. This is resulting in a stunning mediocrity of released games. This will NOT change in the near future. Sony is losing money because Japan is more interested in it's DVD capabilities which is crippling its DVD player sales. Sony loses money on the hardware, and is not making it back in software. It has no harddrive or internet connection. Oops. Noone buys peripherals that are over $50. It's been proven in the marketplace. If they want to establish an Internet presence, these devices will have to be sold at a loss (do the losses ever stop for Sony?). Moving on to the strengths, they have what noone else has, and may never have this generation: the most consoles sold. They win if they continue to throw money at their problem. Accept the losses for another whole year, give away harddrives and ethernet connections, and finally people will have the software developed to make great games, and everyone will own a PS2 and will buy said games. This is their only way to win.
X-box:This is getting entirely too long, so I will shorten my entries on these last two consoles. The weaknesses of the X-Box is that they have horrible 1st party support, and no presence in a saturated market. Their strengths are great, however. They have EA, and may have Square, they have a box that is easier to code for, and they have internet and a hard-drive. The ball is in Sony's court, but if Sony doesn't continue to spend money enhancing the PS2, then Microsoft wins. The X-Box is better, but no normal consumer will buy both a PS2 AND an X-Box.
Gamecube:Finally, Nintendo. This company will win and lose at the same time. They lose because their console will arrive too late. They have the best first-party team in the world, but it makes no difference in this upcoming saturated market. But they win because it doesn't matter. They can sit this whole generation out and still amass profits because of Gameboy and Son. They have a monopoly on hand-held software, period, and they can reap as much profit as they want from that. It simply does not matter that they are missing out on the next-generation console war.
Well, if you've read all the way through this, thank you for listening to my diatribe. I don't pretend to know the real answers, but this is the only result I can see. PS2 will win by losing the most money. Will that result in a console crash? Well, I guess you should flip a coin. -------------------
It is easy to control all that you see,
Gaming will never die.
Consoles, may.... kinda
Consoles are getting better and better. Faster, better graphics. But it will hit a point where the Console becomes the computer. They will both have the same features, and basically be the same machine as your desktop. Once this happens, consoles and computers will merge into one.
Its bound to happen.
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Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Does anyone remember the great comics crash in the early 90s? Marvel was putting out two books a month for every character because people would buy them, the market was saturated with speculators, and it all came tumbling down, driving many, many indies out of business...
Okay, no one speculates on video games. But a hyper-saturated market where you can sell anything you can put in a box can't be a good thing; and we've seen it more recently than 1982...
grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Yeah, you are probably right. The computer user will definitely have more power.. but they are paying for that power, so that makes sense.
Did you know that video games make more than the entire movie industry? Do you realize how much money is available for games out there. When you have billions of dollars up for grabs, a small piece of the crowded marketplace is still a big piece of the pie.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
Personally I am a little tired of what's out there. Let's face it, there has been little to no innovation in Game markets, they have been pushing out crappy FPS after crappy FPS. And don't get me started on bad Sims. I think the gaming industry needs to wake up and put some of these suckers out of business. Start supporting free games instead of these money-whoring, anything to make a buck companies.
Data for graphics is gaseous, and will expand to fill all availiable space.
I just want to give a big word up to the Atari 2600. I gotta say, I take reservation at the dissing of it in this post. It's alive and well, both in emulation, available roms, and ebay auctions for the systems themselves.
~Voose
Looks like someone got spanked on the Gamespy servers last night...;)
The games are different, but that doesn't mean they're worse. I would suggest to you that it takes as much skill to become a Q3 rail-god as it takes intelligence and memorization to clear Zork, or tactical thinking to beat Civ on Emporer mode.
Last time I checked, India was the largest democracy in the world, and that it did not have a communist government.
--
The problem PCs have had with competing with consoles has never really been about price. The problem is, a PC does gaming simply because it can. A proper console does nothing but gaming, has the vast bulk of its hardware dedicated to graphics/sound and has input devices specialized for playing games. So, even if the two were the same price, it's likely the console would outperform the PC and deliver the better pure gaming experience.
A PC is still darn useful, but I don't expect either to eliminate the other anytime soon.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
I'm going to elucidate here what I think is the fundamental advantage of PC gaming over console gaming as they each stand today.
;)
;) But other than that, I don't expect to end up with many games unless I find some reliable journalists or a friend who rents the things like crazy.
The list of console games I've bought since I started seriously gaming on my PC (circa Quake) is very short.
I played Einhander (PSX) at a friend's (who rented it) house, loved it, and bought it.
I borrowed Final Fantasy Tactics (PSX) from that same friend, loved it, and bought it.
I bought Viewpoint (PSX) cuz it was $8 and I remembered playing it on a NeoGeo arcade machine. It sucks
I've also bought a number of NES and SNES games, like Super Metroid, Star Fox, Wizards & Warriors, and Power Blade, that I had played before and picked up because they were relatively cheap.
What do all these have in common? I'd played them before. I'm most likely to buy a console game if I have the opportunity to play it for a significant amount of time before purchase time. And while it's true that many used game stores like our local BuyBack Games chain will let you play used games for a minute on their in-store systems, that's not the same thing. I'm talking about the kind of sample experience you get from - here it comes - a PC game demo.
I haven't bought a single PC game in recent memory that I didn't download a demo or or borrow from a friend first (well there was Half-Life, but that was a gift. And come on, it's Half-Life!) There are hundreds of PSX titles out there, but I only own 7 of them, because I have no reasonable way of finding out which ones I'd like. Gaming journalism is largely a joke, the writers tend to have $5000 PC's and every console in history, have played more games than I've ever even seen or heard of, and have editors that won't let them come out and say a game sucks balls. And renting games based solely on the box-back propaganda (and maybe some of the aforementioned BS journalism) for $5 doesn't float my boat.
So I think that once broadband internet becomes really pervasive, the best thing the console industry could do for itself would be to create a system for downloadable game demos. Gamers could log on to a central repository of demos, and browse them by (BS journalistic) rating, genre, number of downloads, or whatever. This would give us a reasonable way to thresh the wheat from the chaff.
I plan to buy a Playstation2 (eventually) mainly because it plays DVD's, and because it's Squaresoft's main platform. If there ends up being a Final Fantasy Tactics 2, that'll be worth the whole $300+$50 right there
MoNsTeR
Actually, I do know that, but I was testing the waters to see if this troll was going to bite. And apparently it didn't, but I managed to piss you off =)
I think there should be some sort of Moore's Law for 3D Graphics.
So then, let's make a corollary.
Wayne Gayle's Corollary to Moore's Law: The need for 3D graphics power, by programmers and artists, will match or exceed Moore's law.
Molog
So Linus, what are we doing tonight?
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
Haven't there been stories posted on /. about consoles ending gaming on PC's, etc.?? And now this. It doesn't matter becuase there will always be advocates for both.
/. from a game console!
People will always buy consoles because they are cheap, they work, they're easy to use, and they are well marketed (generally). Yet people will always buy PC's (and Mac's) because they do so much more.
Course, I might be wrong once you can
You can laugh without eating a sandwhich, but you can do both if bring one.
There will always be some degree of conflict between pricing of game units and PCs; consider:
- PCs that provide PCI bus should cost a bit more because they offer the option of upgrading video hardware, RAM, and possibly even CPU. (Plus other options not so directly relevant to gaming.
- PCs are built in smaller lot sizes with less uniform hardware, so you'd expect them to be a bit more expensive.
- PCs as "general purpose" hardware can run any software (within some limits); as a result, the hardware vendors cannot afford to assume they can subsidize low-priced hardware by virtue of people having to come to their software arm to buy from their 'video game monopoly.'
Put that together and the present pricing of PCs being a fair bit more expensive is quite rational.Those factors seem to me to be more crucial than that of "cutting-edgeness."
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
During 'crash' periods, music and film get more creative and risky - is the corrilary true of gaming?
What happened in 1985 was because Atari was the 600-pound gorilla in the industry, and they completely mismanaged their product line -- also because it was too easy to write a crappy 4K ROM and put it in a cartridge. One year later, video games bounced back, but it wasn't a U.S. company leading the way.
Also, it's easier than ever to port software to a new platform. In ye olde days, you had to completely rewrite Z80 assembler code in 6502, for example -- now you just write a new wrapper for your video/sound/control routines and recompile (I'm simplifying a great deal of course). And XBox will make that process even easier.
I doubt it. The industry seems stronger than it has been in quite a while, with more serious competition than ever before. Backwards compatability, ports (older games seem to be converted to newer platforms more now than ever before), and the Xbox's similarity to MS Windows should fuel the industry, not destroy it. With all this competition, there shouldn't be any lack of new material either.
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I totally disagree with the article. alot of the stuff released for the 2600 was pure crap. With the amount of time spent on games nowadays, If anything happens, a couple of systems will take the throne as the "killer system."
He knows a winner when he see's one ... Xbox is going to tranform the console market.
From a brochure for a car rental firm in Tokyo : When passenger of foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage then tootle him with vigor.
1) In ten years all games will be written in Java. Computers will be fast enough to handle it, and this will render porting problems obsolete.
2)The market will be bigger, as China and India will be superpowers. This will render the crowded marketplace idea obsolete.
3)The film industry will be no more, as it will be subsumed into the games industry. This will bring gaming to the mainstream.
Exciting times are ahead, my friends.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
that consoles are coming up ahead running a Microsoft OS...
...a beowulf cluster of these games?
No it will not go the way of the 2600, the game systems of today (assuming they can keep up with Demand (SONY)) will not go the way of the 2600, because they are starting to offer so much more than systems like the 2600 did.
Not only are the games more interesting than Pong, Tank and even Donkey Kong, the systems are turning into all-in-one computers (Dreamcast surfing web, PS2 with USB support) Before much longer, I think we will see a paradigm shift from game console to WebTV/Tivo/Game Console computer type unit.
Desktop sales will dwindle as these consumer units increase, leaving only the geeks and hackers with desktops and servers in the home market.
AF-Design, web development.
IIRC, the PS2 went down to $200 right after the XMas rush, and before the N64 shipped. (Although, everyone knew the N64 would ship at $200.)
Compare this to the Sega Saturn that shipped at $600, and eventually went down the same $150 as everyone else. Some people got the big shaft on that one. (Although the people that imported Saturns for $900 before the US release got the bigger one.)
I think the article points out one essential fact... that too many incompatible hardware platforms (and not even listing Indrema) will inevitably lead to some companies finding themselves with dwindling market share.
However, the gaming companies primarily make money off _liscensing_ and _games_, and not the boxes themselves. At some point, a company like Sega, which is known for developing incredibly high quality innovative games will realize they stand to maintain much higher profit margins by dumping their hardware development and going purely with software on other platforms, where they will have a much wider audience to sell to.
I don't envision a crash in a few years so much a transformation in which most of the hardware companies will go software, or be bought out by the bigger players.
Bob
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
If you talk to a lot of the developers out there you will find a strong aversion to developing PC games. The market is just too hard to make money in, and there are all those compatability issues. Many PC game developers decided a year or so ago to start creating console games seeing this market as having greener pastures. So in the next few years I think we will see less and less good PC games, and more focus on the next gen consoles. But will those games sell well and be any good? Time will tell, but I bet we see a backlash in 2-3 years as more developers realize that the grass wasn't really greener, and they go back to writing PC games.
My money is on the X-Box because of all the $$$ they are pumping into developers. On the other hand look at how hard it is for a developer to get in with Sony to make a game for the PS2. Even if the X-Box sucks as a platform if enough good games are funded I think it will become the defacto standard.
Console: A machine with a single specific task. thus, products written for them will be designed for that specific platform. This will allow console always to be ahead of computer for that specific task.
Computers: They have a more generic purpose, and believe it or not, gaming is only one of them.
When some clever guys starts writing games that totally reside in a video card, we may see games that are compiled for a variety of video cards(or at least chip sets) and that may bring consoles down.
In essence you would have a "console card" in your system.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So, even if the two were the same price, it's likely the console would outperform the PC and deliver the better pure gaming experience.
You say this as if "gaming experience" is some measurable quantity that's burnt into each game at the factory. Gameplay is not necessarily dependent on technology.
Wherever there's a will, there's a motorway.
True but the majority of the country(US) didn't know anything about it for 2 or 3 years. A friend of the family had a good friend in California that brought NES in from Japan. I played on one of the NES's from the first shipment that came over in late '84. I remember the good old days when I could name every game and count them on my fingers. I also remember Nintendo's hint line was an 800 number that you could through on the first try. Thoses days are long gone.
Like an Xbox??
there have always been atleast 6 systems around at once; mid 90's: nintendo, juaguar, turbo gfx, playstation, sega saturn, sega cd..... all at the same time.
only 2-3 systems hit the mainstream, the rest are just forgot. the same will happen now.
-| My other ride is your mom |-
... but a few of his facts were wrong, such as Capcom developing the next Resident Evils exclusively for PS2. The next RE is RE:0 in development for gamecube right now, with a strong chance of being a launch title. Aside from that, I must say I agree that the market will be strained with all these different platforms. I don't know if it will go as deep as the '84 'crash' as that was more of a industry-wide recession in the consumer electronics industry.
I think the Nintendo consoles will be the big winners in this generation, or maybe the XBox, although it doesn't seem that Microsoft will be ready for launch, IMHO.
Shit adds up at the bottom...
A gaming crash like that of the Atari 2000 doesn't seem likely. Gaming and gaming culture is a much more accepted and much more prevelant than the Atari days. In addition, gaming companies are in much better shape (with the possible exception of Sega) than Atari was. Nintendo and Sony (and of course, MS) have war chests just in case. The game companies are more powerful than they have ever been. The markets for gaming machines are also very different. A lot of young adults, in addition to teenagers and children buy games now. The PC is not a threat to standard consoles. PC gaming and console gaming are two different beasts. Final Fantasy VII and VIII were great console games, but horrible PC games, because of the Save game system. The PC is better for sims, FPS, and the ilk, while consoles have the platformers, RPGs, etc. Notable exceptions good probably be given, but it's a pretty good general rule. Also, consoles are truly plug and play, while some level of technical know-how is needed to run PC games.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
Unless you consider a Palm Pilot to be an "entry-level PC" (in which you couldn't fit a +300$ GeForce 2 Ultra, by the way), your argument is bogus, sorry.
The only new system I plan on purchasing is the Gamecube, for Metroid, Zelda, and Mario. I will not buy a PS2 at any time in the near future. Why? Games. There are no decent games at the moment and none that I am looking forward too on the Release List. Sony is starting to become the new Atari, quantity over quality. Sure, they have Final Fantasy, but I haven't liked any since VII, and Gran Turismo. I can't stand that stupid Crash Bandicoot, and many of the games in the last year have been of low quality and no fun to play. Check out the reviews here at IGN. Backwards compatibility? Already have a Playstation. DVD? Already have a real DVD player.
Sega, on the other hand, has some incredible, original games. Not just the lastest version of some worn out game. Check out IGN's Dreamcast reviews. Yes, there may be a few worn out games and some low rated ones, but if you look at the overall ratings, quality, and originality of the games over the last year, you will find many great games. Plus they have SegaNet and a broadband adapter coming out soon. Enough about Sega...
Too many game systems will spread the developers too thin. Personally, I'd like to see the X-box and PS2 fail. One more thing Microsoft doesn't need to do. And PS2 has yet to impress me, except for their resale value on eBay and that will soon fall below retail prices. I don't think Indrema will be popular enough to even take off, except in the Slashdot and geek communities. And like the article stated about Nintendo, "Nintendo generally plays by their own rules." Plus they have the Game Boy Advance to and a whole slew of killer franchises to fall back on.
Ok, enough from me...
Amigori
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I have no sig...
"The quality of life is determined by its activites."--Aristotle
A crash would be welcome in my opinion because game developers could get back to realistic goals for their games. Rather than have everyone try to create from scratch a winning game design and cutting edge graphics, why not give gamers who like a game more chances to enjoy it? The good games would stick around longer, the bad ones would go away quicker. I look back fondly on the days of the endless Ultima sequels--a good game, same basic winning concept, with tweaks and updates coming at a just the right pace. Even the best franchises today like Resident Evil are under pressure to create huge games. Code Veronica is something like 4 CDs that'll likely never make it into my Dreamcast's drive.
How about a game that takes 40 hours to finish, and is followed up shortly by several installments? Why not use the same game engine for more than one release? Rather than one huge 200+ hour Baldur's Gate release of which I'll never even reach the climax of the story, I want several seperate campaigns of reasonable size. It sucks paying $59.95 for a game that you don't even know you'll finish, much less like. Reasonable goals in game development would lead to games built on reasonable budgets, within reasonable time limits (not 18+ months), and which cost less per installment when released. I'd rather pay $20 a pop for several installments of something good than $50 up front for crap.
Looking Glass Studios is a prime example of the kinds of casualties that occur when the gaming industry moves at breakneck speed. They developed a hugely innovative game (Thief: The Dark Project), but 18 months later are belly up. The good guys can't keep up because the idiots making crap games out there suck up all the money, resources, and mindshare with their promises of the latest and greatest. 9 times out of 10 though, they release some crappy Quake derivative. In the meantime, the guys trying to make good games can't because they're under constant pressure to keep up.
Let 'em all crash and burn. Then only better games will get made, and publishers will have less incentive to push for the unrealistic goals games today try to reach.
The only certainty is entropy.
...when it is saturated with total crap at unfairly high prices long enough for customers to realize it and for the companies to stop making profits.
Look at the gaming fall-out of the 2600 era. Why did it happen? Because tons of crappy 2600 games at $30 a piece (or more) were flooding the market for so long that people eventually saw through the crap and found a complete lack of non-crap. Result: customers stopped purchasing, companies stopped making profits, companies fell out.
But hey, guess what happened? Nintendo released the NES and enough non-crappy games for it at reasonable prices that customers got interested again, and Nintendo rose above all others (until Sega finally started making non-crap at reasonable prices as well, i.e. Genesis).
Look at the recent dot-coms fall-out. Guess why it happened? Because the companies weren't producing any tangible products or services that people actually wanted for the prices being asked. After about 2 years of flooding the marketplace with crap, customers finally caught on and stopped buying, and venture capitalists finally ran out of patience and said "No profits, no funding". Result: all these companies stopped having a source of money for doing business, and went bankrupt. Quite simple.
I think that the gaming industry has grown large and diverse enough that it isn't likely there will be another big fall-out like the 2600 era. It's not like we have 5-10 big companies making all the games in the world--there are TONS of different little companies making all kinds of games for all kinds of platforms, so if Nintendo or Sony or Microsoft or SEGA screw it all up, there will still be innovative smaller companies trying new and different things, so there will always be a starting point of non-crap alive somewhere in the industry.
- "It's just a matter of opinion!" - PRIMUS
Consoles have had 20 years to turn into computers. They haven't, and likely won't. Ever. Computers are nonspecialized devices that play a few games, do your taxes, browse the web and so forth. Consoles are specialized for gaming, and every attempt to make them nonspecialized (3D0 springs to mind) has failed utterly. I can't see how that'll change now.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
I completely disagree. Although you do have a point about games today becoming more easy. Take the N64 for example. The hardest game for that sytem is Mario64. The funest I beileve is Super Smash because there are so few 4 player fighting games. I haven't seen one where all 4 player are on the screen fighting at the same time. But then you have games like FF7,8,9 that are classics. They may not be as puzzling as there ansestors but they are hard. They make the games longer and they have a much more detailed plot. I don't have a PS2 yet but I know that games on the market now will suck. The Gamecube will suck the most. I think the PS2 and XBOx will survive, But the Rest like Dreamcast and Gamecube wont. Nintendo and Sega should just quit while there ahead. And all the new systems were realeased around the same time which makes to much compition. I haven't seen any new game for those consoles that gets my attention. I think I will just go back to my imagination and play clasic Pen and Paper RPG's. D&D, Star Wars, and Gurps. Those are games people should play. They stimulate the mind more than all other games. There is no better graphics or sound that the Imagination.
Don't take me wrong I like games but not as much anymore after they all sold out.
Playing online multiplayer using utilities like Battlefield Communicator or Roger Wilco to do voice chat is surprisingly cool, and, for me, at least, reproduces 95% of the appeal of playing games with other people in the same room. (talking junk, teamplay communication, etc.) Try it out, if you haven't already...
Wherever there's a will, there's a motorway.
With PC gaming down the toilet, I don't think you can count PCs as serious competition to consoles. What will definitely keep consoles alive for the next decade will be DVD. Everyone will eventually ditch their VHS, and as long as they're doing so, might as well get a DVD player that runs games, or can even record TV shows in mpeg. People would be buying the total entertainment unit, with games as an afterthought.
Oh, and the author is a loon if he thinks ports of PC games to consoles are a bad thing. He seems to believe that only games that are exclusive to your system will sell. Far from true. Very little people have a machine powerful enough to play Quake3 or UT at a reasonable speed, but on their shiny inexpensive console it runs like a dream. Plus unless said game is so good it actually makes people buy your console, then exclusivity is a lie.
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"After Careful Consideration, Bush Recommends Oil Drilling" - The Onion
I also don't think that the nearly free computers out there will end the industry. Prices reflect, and consoles are made from similar technology. If/when computer hardware and software decrease in cost, so too will consoles and console games. It should be close enough to proportional that it shouldn't matter in the long run, just means you can buy more games!
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