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Will Consoles Merge Back Into PCs?
GamePolitics is running an interview with Randy Stude, president of the PC Gaming Alliance, discussing the future of gaming on the PC and the console. Stude has some interesting thoughts regarding the long-term viability of stand-alone consoles:
"The guts of every console should tell you that the capability is there for the PC to act as the central point for all the consoles. If you bought a PC and as part of that equation you said, Okay, when you're on the phone with Dell, 'Hey, Dell, on this PC, this new notebook I'm buying, can you make sure it has the PlayStation 4 option built into it?' Well, why not? Why shouldn't that be the case? [Sony is] certainly not making any money on the hardware. I mean, can't they create a stable enough environment to specify that if Dell's going to sell that notebook and say that it's PlayStation 4 [compatible] that it must have certain ingredients and it must meet certain criteria? Absolutely they could [do] that. Are they going to do it? I don't know. I predict that they will. I predict that all of the console makers over time will recognize that it's too expensive to develop the proprietary solution and recognize the value of collapsing back on the PC as a ubiquitous platform."
I can tell you that almost all PS2 online games support keyboard for lobby chat even if they use voice for in game chat. The PS2's Network adapter setup thing also supports keyboard input, which surprised me back in 2002. Game control is a different matter, most PC FPS ports support it. There are other games that support mouse and/or keyboard and some don't even mention it on the box. As I mentioned, Gran Turismo 4 has keyboard support for menu control, but doesn't mention it on the box or in the manual.
Consoles don't need to "come with" mouse and/or keyboard since people can just plug in any USB models, even the ones currently attached to their PC's.