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Kojima Predicts the End of the Console
nathanielinbrazil writes "Konami founder and developer Hideo Kojima predicts gaming console is a dying breed. Anticipates gaming on demand via Internet. 'It's a bold prediction,' Sony Computer Entertainment Japan President Hiroshi Kawano told reporters nervously. 'We hope he continues to develop for platforms, but we deeply respect his sense of taking on a challenge.' Kojima launches his follow-up game Heavy Metal Solid Gear: Peace Walker in late April designed for the PSP."
I know the guy is widely respected in gaming circles, but...is there anyone out there other than me that can't stand most of his gaming work?
Living With a Nerd
Many people have predicted the move toward either One Single Console To Rule Them All, or in this case none at all. The problem with this sort of prediction is that it does not account for the profitability of such systems. As long as money CAN be made by putting out a console, someone will. And as long as someone does, others will want a share of that pie, thus competition. It's the reason why Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo could fold eventually and still we'd end up with a multiple console market competition.
I like computer gaming for the depth - Total War, Master of Orion, etc. Console gaming fulfills the high adrenaline stuff - God of War, Uncharted. Of course, computers get some of that too, but not all of it. But all of this is really off topic. What I believe he's trying to say (having not read a single line of TFA) is that there is strength in a subscription-based gaming service. It's an interesting concept. If you pay $2 an hour to play Bioshock 2, and I finish it in 6 hours, that's only 12 dollars. But I have a friend who is on like his fourth play through - he'd be up near $50. It seems to me then that a subscription service penalizes heavy gamers but would be great for mid-casual gamers like me. It would also save me the heartache of paying $60 for C&C4, when at whatever hourly rate they wanted to charge I could find out that it's awful in an hour or less. Ultimately I think there's room for both services, if for no other reason than the ability to play games in places where there is no significant connectivity.
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The game's name is Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. Heavy Metal is a totally different series.
~Syberz
Consoles are merely a platform whereas the internet is a medium. I can easily imagine a future (or even partially present) where internet speeds make it viable for optical media to be obsolete, and hence allowing for games to easily and confidently implement online multiplayer components without alienating their player base that suffers from poor connections. (though it might be a sad one with DRM).
For casual gaming, yes and this has already happened to a degree with smartphones.
But for hardcore or graphics intensive games, I don't see anything beyond PCs or consoles. Heck, the trend is so much towards consoles, this generation we have 3 of them with respectable size audiences. Six, if you count the DS, PSP, and PS2 (because it's still selling). Back in the original NES days, there was one winner and the rest were afterthoughts.
Years ago, things like the Wii Controller would only differentiate the systems if it came standard with the console, but really dedicated hardware like the Balance Board would never have taken off (power glove, super scope, etc anyone?) and after the initial game very few others would follow because the install base just wasn't there. Now even more dedicated hardware than the console/controller itself is taking off.
I just don't see platform agnostic gaming being feasible in the near-future. It's usually the attention to detail and tailored package that makes the experience and sale.
The console itself may not be dead, but will just become one more internet "appliance", doing precisely what Konami says, accessing the net on demand to play the users game of choice. With VMs becoming more and more prevalent it is only a matter of time before they start to appear on consoles. It would not be very hard to do it now in fact. So a console could run a VM to appear to be any machine....or a PC could run VM to appear to be a console, hmmmm.
If you switch exclusively to HTPC gaming, what do you plan to do when friends come over, or when a relative drops kids off at your house?
A - Have a party.
B - Sell them on the black market.
So your solution is to make console more PC like?
heh.
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With services being integrated into TVs and being able to get home theaters streaming from a file server, I don't doubt a dedicated console will disappear from living rooms. The games will still be there, but they will be loaded on your server/computer and allow you stream them to whatever room you're in. Sort of like a localized OnLive.
Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo will try to keep you locked into their platform, but that will only last a generation or so longer. I can see Steam becoming even bigger and integrating the streaming play, locking others in a different room out while you're logged into your account (unless they have an account of their own).
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Konami founder and developer Hideo Kojima predicts gaming console is a dying breed. Anticipates gaming on demand via Internet.
The flow of that is positively dreadful.
It will come right after the year of Linux on the desktop.
+1 Disagree
I find the lack of commas alarming. William Shatner could never read that if it was in a script.
I'd hate to have that for any bioware or strategy game due to the sheer amount of gameplay involved. I imagine quite a few people here would be poor if they had to pay an hourly fee to play Civilization; Small games can last up to 6 hours :P. If we moved to a subscription based architecture, developers would probably change their design strategy to generate short bursts of content, which will ultimately lead to smaller, more shallow games. No offense to Telltale games, but the episodic content of Monkey Island and Sam & Max feels like a shadow of their predecessors' former glory. I wouldn't mind seeing what the industry does with subscription based content, but I wouldn't want to see it move as a whole to this form of distribution, at least for some developers.
The big theme at GDC this year was social platforms, with the evangelists insisting that hardcore gaming is going away forever within 5 years. 5 years ago, these same guys were using absolutes to describe the total decline of PC gaming. Nobody said a word about Facebook. The only prediction worth putting stock into is that the future will continue to become more unpredictable.
Was it not just a week or 2 ago that someone else said that the end of computer gaming was coming soon, and consoles would reign supreme?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
it helps to read. he's basically saying consoles aren't portable enough. So that means handhelds.
I wonder if the portable market is better than console. More competition in that area would certainly be nice though.
I used to love PC gaming, but the enjoyment just isn't there anymore. Mainly it is the hardware / driver / tweaking issues and ridiculous DRM that killed it for me.
Clearly you don't remember fiddling with config.sys for those last few K needed for the game you just bought. And then flipping through the manual looking for word 6 of paragraph 2 on page 12 so you could actually play it. If PC gaming can survive that, it'll survive this no problem.
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As a long time PC gamer, I'd say games are easier to play now than they ever were on the PC. Games tend to support the vast amount of hardware out there, even low end stuff. I haven't had a driver issue in a long time, you may want to upgrade to computer made after 2000. DRM can be an issue but it's only invasive on a small number of titles that I don't buy (they're usually console ports anyway).
And to me, the experience is dramatically better than a console (although I only play PS3 and Wii). You get more varieties of games, not just action and party games. Vastly better multiplayer, better graphics, more challenging types of games (from indies to AAA), etc.
PC gaming is awesome.
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He probably does.
That sort of stuff is positively benign and quaint compared to the nonsense they pull today.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Why do people keep insisting that PSP and iPhone games will supplant full-blown console games? They aren't even the same thing, to start with. I mean, unless I can hook up my wheel and pedals to my iPhone, then hook it up to a large screen display and into my surround sound, this is like saying the Sony Walkman will replace live concert audio systems.
Next time, try reading the article. He's talking about platform independence, not subscriptions.
"In the near future, we'll have games that don't depend on any platform. Gamers should be able to take the experience with them in their living rooms, on the go, when they travel wherever they are and whenever they want to play. It should be the same software and the same experience."
This is the only part of the article that is relevant to the article's title. The rest is about Kojima's new game. Imagine that, a headline that sucks you in only to find out there's little to no content.
I kinda agree with Kojima. It would be nice if games were platform independent. I stopped computer gaming long, long ago when escalating hardware requirements left me in the dust. It's cheaper just to buy a console every few years than it is to upgrade my PC with every new software release. I used to be heavy into flight simulation--the cost of entry is high. Too high.
You have pretty limited experience with on-line games, don't you?
The "human interaction" is richly-textured and explores the full breadth of human ass-hattery, just like in person. Except it might depend on a modicum of skill with the push-to-talk button. And has less chance to degenerate into physical violence and law enforcement attention.
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