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."

Comments

No....

[jawtheshark]

Never gonna happen.... I simply can't see that ever happening. It would at least partially mean that companies like Sony or Nintendo need to build components and allow interoperability with what is essentially an open platform. It means releasing control, they won't do that.

Besides, consoles are mostly played at the TV and installed in a fixed way like a DVD Player. It is simply convenient. Connecting a laptop to your TV? Cumbersome!

I personally think that PC gaming is on the way out except for a few niches. My brother bought GTA4, and we simply can't get to run it on his 2 year old PC. He now faces the choice: pay about 1500€ for a new rig in order to play GTA4 at acceptable rates. Or spend +/-450€ on a PS3 and buy the game again....

I recommended him to get the PS3.... Throw in a USB mouse and a USB keyboard and he can play like he is used to.

Re:No....

[TheThiefMaster]

GTA4 is known to have a terrible PC port. Most recent games would run just fine on a couple-of-year-old pc.
A surprising number of games even run on my parents' TIME (who've now gone bust) pc from 2003, and that has integrated graphics (admittedly it's an integrated geforce 4, not a via or sis crap).

Re:No....

[plasmacutter]

I have one thing to add to this.

MMO's are preferably played on PC's.

The multitude of abilities are more easily accessed via keyboard and mouse, and there is a guarantee of enough space for patches/expansions/what have you.

For every other genre though, i agree a console is better.

Re:No....

[zehaeva]

RTS games are joy to play on consoles then? FPS games? I'll grant you some RPG's and Platformers and a few FPS's designed from the outset to work well on consoles but every other genre than MMO's? ~zehaeva

Re:No....

[MrHanky]

Keyboard + mouse is a lot more accurate in an FPS than a game pad. It's as if a top athlete were to participate in the Paralympics: not fair.

Pretty unlikely

[RogueyWon]

Ironically, though, the biggest weakness of consoles (that they are "closed boxes") is also their greatest strength and, I believe the reason why this article is wide of the mark.

After all, with a console, you buy a game, you go home, you stick it in the drive and you play the game. Even with Sony's best efforts to thwart that on the PS3 by demanding firmware updates every 10 minutes, the system hasn't changed much. By contrast, two of the last 4 PC games I bought (Spore and Far Cry 2) have required me to faff around with drivers before they would run. Now, sure, I'm a reasonably advanced user by the standards of the general public (though a veritable neophyte in slashdot terms), but this is awkward and irritating.

There's also the price issue. A console will set you back a few hundred dollars, but you then don't need to replace it for 4-5 years. A gaming PC will set you back at least twice as much (and frequently more) and will generally be obsolete within two and a half years, unless you're willing to sink a lot of money into interim upgrades.

Now, even if you get around the ease-of-use issue by basically putting a console inside the PC (anybody remember the old Mega-PC, which had a Megadrive/Genesis inside a PC case?) you are still going to be in a situation where the thing is locked into a piece of hardware with a far faster obsolescence cycle.

This is before you even start to get into ergonomic issues, such as the fact that the general usage pattern is that people use PCs with a monitor at a desk, but play console games on their TV while sat on the sofa.

I can think of a few reasons why it wont happen

[Xest]

1) The games industry is already shifting away from the PC to closed platforms like consoles because they claim they make more profit due to not having the piracy issues they get on the PC. To them, this would be seen as a step backwards.

2) If one company manages to screw up the latest console plugin does the company want to be associated with that- Microsoft owned up to the original RROD problems and put money aside to deal with it, they've resolved the issues but to this day get slated for the problem. Would they really want to put themselves in a position where the latest Dell notebook has poor venting around Dell's hardware design is making their component fail and they get the blame for it? It's one thing if it's their fault, but if it's a 3rd party's fault and they risk the blame?

3) Do they really want to spend money offering support to the various hardware developers that want to implement their addons? Do they want to deal with compatibility issues? Do they want to spend and money time keeping their systems secure whilst keeping them open enough to integrate?

Consoles as the secure PC platform

[ludomancer]

PC's are too "open" for the comfort of many industries. By moving focus to more restrictive consoles, companies regain their control. Once they have control, the ability to push ads you can't block, monitor what you're doing for marketing, and limit what you are allowed to do or not do with media, consoles will eventually come full-circle so that users will eventually be using them for the same things PC users have been, only in safe, friendly, controlled environment.

Suckers.

The other way around

[Kjella]

The far more likely situation I would think is that you'd have a DRM locked console with a virtualized PC running on top where you could run anything you want. You'd have a simple "game mode/PC mode" switch to not mess with what they already have. It wouldn't do much for gaming, but it'd run pretty much all the basic utilities of a home PC without needing a separate box.

I think it could be a valuable supplement to those that only have a laptop, which is quite many these days. Sure it might sound a little odd writing a letter on your huge livingroom TV but I'd rather go with a 40"+ TV and a full-sized wireless keyboard than the laptop. Obviously if you have a proper desktop that's better, but many don't.

This goes back and forth

[jollyreaper]

This is going to be like the whole debate with thin client and fat client, centralized vs. decentralized computing, etc. It's always going to go back and forth.

Back in the PSX and PS2 era, it became stupid to try to keep up with PC gaming. A really good video card would cost as much as a proper console and the console would remain playable far longer whereas the computer would become outdated far more quickly. Game on consoles, work on computers, no-brainer.

With this generation, the consoles are getting too damn expensive. By the time you factor in accessories, you easily spend as much on them as PC's now. It's actually getting back to the point where if you already need a PC, it's just cheaper to spend extra to turn it into a gaming machine rather than gettin a work PC and a gaming rig.

Xbox 360 - was around $299
Extra controller - $50
Charging kit for a controller - $30
wireless adapter - $75
if you decide the 20gb drive is too small, you want the 120 - $200
memory card to serve as a backup to the hard drive - $50
headphones so you don't wake up the read of the house at night - $75

$779. And if you decided to upgrade the TV from the ol' CRT to a proper HDTV to look nice with the console, $1000 and up.

Re:This goes back and forth

[bi_boy]

Your post almost makes a good point about spending money on a gaming PC instead of a console except the total is not $1000 and up. It's simply the price of the console. $300-$400. Current generation video cards alone will meet or double that cost. Really, it was a stretch to try to include all of those accessories as a TCO for a gaming console when really it is just the cost of the console for the average gamer.

As stated many times before the main strong point of consoles (used to be at least) that they just worked. Buy game, put game in console, play game. No drivers, no wacky DRM raping your dataz and privacy, no "oh wow I really need to upgrade my videocard!" moments. There will always be a place for PC gaming but to think it will extinguish the market for consoles is foolhardy.

There will always be both.

[EWAdams]

The PC is optimized for one person to use at a distance of maybe 0.5 m. It sits on a desk. It is a lousy multi-player device.

The console is optimized for multiple people to use at a distance of 2 m. It sits in the living room. It is an excellent multi-player device, and, even if equipped with a keyboard and mouse, a highly inconvenient personal computer.

This is in addition to the cost reasons already cited.