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Epic Games Predicts Console, Mobile Convergence
An anonymous reader writes "After taking the stage at the Apple iPhone event in September, game developer Epic Games has finally revealed more about its plan to release Unreal Engine for the iOS devices. UE3 is incredibly popular on consoles, and its free UDK has been really great for us modders. In this new interview, engine boss Mark Rein says the developer envisions a future where all game devices are handhelds, with high-end processors inside: 'It feels like there's a great opportunity for game consoles to cease to be something you plug into the wall and rather become something you take with you. Of course it will be more than just your game console; you can have your productivity apps, your documents, and your media collections on it as well.'"
Epic Games Mark Rein predicts the emerging market of a combination between laps and tops of some sort.
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
I envision a future when all apps will be directly felt by human minds without the need to use physical interfaces nor fallible senses.
Nope, I don't have any date for my vision either, so it's just as useles as his.
It sounds good to me, except for that this is targeted at only one mobile platform. This direction is not in the best interests of the free market or customers.
I realize that the quote may be a little far fetching or out of context, but really? Even if mobile phones did have the same capabilities of my PC/consoles, would you really want to play serious games spending half your fingers holding the thing? Crappy sound or at best stereo headphone speaker sound? 3-5 inch screens? Even tablets with their adequately larger screens suffer from the problems of holding the device, and touch covering up the picture. If you 'solve' it with joysticks and holders, you lose the portability benefit, and we're back to what's the point. I definitely like mobile games in either phone or portable console styling, but its delusional to think that the use case for video games will stride so far from today's gaming climate. Oh, Fallout New Vegas is getting released for an iPhone! I'm totally lining up for it. Lets not even touch the caveats of trying to run 'real' network multiplayers through modern carrier cell networks. I never even want to run it through my flaky Wifi.
Bye!
And just a few years ago, I predicted that my PDA would converge with my telephone.
Gimme a "D!" Gimme a "U!" Gimme an "H!"
That spells "DUH!" Go team!
In my past i predicted the same thing. It was called the sega game gear. It played master system games.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Bandai_Pippin
Same expensive, low frame rate, with a Bungie game box for 2011?
Whats new again? Just the next gen of people who want to be locked into a walled garden?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
donotwant tag desired! We love to play our games on our consoles, with a huge TV, a cold beverage and bag of chips or popcorn or etc beside us. Not on some finger greased up portable small ass screen that is easily broken by a 10yr old pitching a fit when she loses a level / life.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your politician, and hitting them?"
From TFA:
What we’re seeing with the success of Madden, GTA and Call of Duty on iPad and iPhone is that big brands and big marketing, combined with high production values, creates mindshare that lets them stand out in a crowd. It’s a natural evolution. When the audience size and expected sales justify a publisher like Ubisoft to spend $15m on a TV advertising campaign for their latest Assassin’s Creed mobile app, they will. This will happen.
You'd think this is a joke, but no. Game companies often spend more on advertising than product development.
And this is why I hate commercial games.
This game will waste your life. Don't clicky!
Considering how locked down consoles can be, I'd rather not be pushed into having my options in mobile technology be so limited as to have no real open options. Considering how everything seems to be pushing that way (there's only a handful of devices, all effectively out of date, that allow you to gain control without using a local exploit,) I'm sure hard times are around the corner for those who like to own our devices.
I'm sure I'll be flamed a million ways to Sunday by people who like hacking through a bunch of BS protections to get back to basic levels of functionality, and a pile of people who will tell me to simply not buy it. Have fun encouraging lock down or being stuck years behind the times, or locked out due to insufficient anti-user DRM. Oh and the inevitable idiot who will use the MPAA/RIAA/BSA lines to argue against an anti-DRM position.
Of course it will be more than just your game console; you can have your productivity apps, your documents, and your media collections on it as well
Where have I heard of this idea? Oh right, it's called a fucking laptop. When PC game developers stop removing single-computer multiplayer from their games, gaming laptops -which are usually great for working too- will be mobile gaming consoles. But oh noes, that would mean that more than one person can play with a single copy of their games! Stop those pirates!
I can see this happening for casual gamers as most of the games they play can already be played on a smaller, handheld device. Like you really need a PS3 to run Tetris, The Sims or Farmville.
For serious gamers? Unless by "mobile" you mean a VR device I can mount on my head/stick in my retina, I don't think I'm going to be switching over to any "mobile" device any time soon. Gaming is important enough to me that I'm content having it as the main attraction in my living room.
'It feels like there's a great opportunity for game consoles to cease to be something you plug into the wall and rather become something you take with you. Of course it will be more than just your game console; you can have your productivity apps, your documents, and your media collections on it as well.'
That used to be a laptop.
they are envisioning a multiple platform sdk, which is currently only available from Unity.
...it'll be a bit like a laptop, or a tablet then?
No really, I'll pass thanks. I'm actually quite content walking through the door after a long day at work, plonking myself in my comfy chair, picking up the controller, and going straight to playing games without having to fuck around for a little while.
This will never be the case simply because handheld system will never be as powerful as consoles of the same price. Smaller components cost more, the designs of the systems are harder to make, keeping it all cool and low-powered brings even more challenges. For the gamers that want the latest graphics and gizmos they're always going to go for the console over the handheld.
Contrary to what some of the comments above seem to assume, I don't think he's quite saying that handheld consoles as we know them today will completely replace full-sized consoles as we know them today. Rather, from what I can make out, he's predicting that consoles will converge at some point where they are portable, but can also be connected up to the mains and your TV/sound system when you're playing at home. This might not be completely ludicrous. After all, I know a few people, including a few fairly serious gamers, who use a laptop as their main machine, but who connect it up to a proper monitory, mouse and keyboard when at home; except at the very top end, the performance difference between laptops and desktops these days is narrower than it used to be.
However, I can kind of understand the "do not want" sentiments above, given the way that many developers, particularly Japanese developers, seem to have fled in terror from the full-sized consoles this generation and focussed instead on the handhelds. So in many franchises these days - I'm thinking particularly here of the likes of Kingdom Hearts and Metal Gear Solid (as far as I can tell, MGS4 was an anomaly and the series is now PSP/3DS focussed), most of the games released this generation have felt like a step backwards from what we were getting when the PS2 ruled the roost. And then we get the likes of Blue Dragon and Valkyria Chronicles, where you get a decent game (awesome, in the case of VC) that debuts on a proper console, only for the developer to milk the franchise mercilessly via churned out handheld sequels that are a step down in terms of both graphics and gameplay.
Here's a nice example of mobile gaming setup that makes sense http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX2RB8jIm3k
The phone works as a controller (orientation sensor + touch screen), while the graphics are outputted to TV via HDMI.
In this new interview, engine boss Mark Rein says the developer envisions a future where all game devices are handhelds, with high-end processors inside
The 3DS is a 2011-2012 handheld with a 266MHz processor that's slower than my desktop computer was in the mid-90s. You can argue battery life, but the PSP from 2004 has a faster processor inside of it.
Nintendo may not be the entire handheld market, but they're a huge share of it. He must be talking really, really, really long-term. At this rate, Nintendo will need at least five generations more to match current PC hardware specs in portable form. So if PCs don't get faster by 2040, then he may be right.
Ah, shut up, you just can't recognize a visionary. Just imagine a future where you'll have just hand-held device that you can play your games on, read your email, have your calendar, and make phone calls too. If only someone could start making a, dunno, a Nokia N-Gage. And you could look like a complete retard while making calls with it too, for no extra cost! ;)
(The geniuses at Nokia placed the speaker and phone on the side, so, yeah, you'd have to hold it in a completely ridiculous position to actually use it as a phone. Official version is that they didn't have enough room on the front after all those buttons, but I have to wonder if it's not really a marketroid's idea so everyone could see you're making calls with their game console.)
When the year 2003 comes by, you'll see how much of a visionary this guy was ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
You're not seeing the real advantage. That being, of course, more money for Epic.
With traditional consoles you buy a game, plug in 2, 3 or 4 controllers and can play with your friends or family. With networked handhelds (which actually isn't new either, the PSP already did wireless multiplayer in 2004, and so did the Nintendo DS) you can play with several people too, but you're not going to do that with 4 people around a tiny screen. You're going to buy 2, 3 or 4 games. Ka-ching.
Add the fact that this is, you know, Epic. The guys who fled the PC because they only had one rehash of the same game to offer again and again until it tanked. And they blamed it on the imminent demise of the PC market and piracy and whatever, when similar games sold several times the number of copies in the same period. Then they did ok on the XBox as long as basically they were almost the only FPS game in town. Now they're pretty much the only major game dev excited about Apple's walled garden enforced with an iron fist. I wonder why ;)
What, did you think he was excited about it because of advantages for _you_?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
There might be a chance that it will be an epic fail ?
Connecting to an HD TV
Nokia N8 and EVO 4G, for example, have a HDMI port to connect to a HD TV.
GPU Power
The current Smartphones can put up to 1000 MPixels/sec (see http://alienbabeltech.com/main/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Cellphonehardwarecompari1.png). For example, an ATi Radeon HD 2400 Pro PCI-E produces 2100 MPixels/sec (see http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=525&card2= )
RAM
iPhone 4 has 512MB of RAM, the same as the XBOX 360.
With new cores, such as ARM Cortex A9, the computing power of these devices will further increase.
You can find more info at:
http://alienbabeltech.com/main/?p=17125 (Hummingbird vs. Snapdragon: The 1 GHz Smartphone Showdown)
I look forward to playing Crysis 3 for 2-3 minutes before my battery dies!
Seriously, I'd expect more intelligence out of the company that is on top of the engine game. This "Everything is going to be a mobile device," concept is STUPID. No, it isn't. Were it the case that humans only wanted one device for things, that a single mobile unit was the be-all, end-all of human needs, well then we'd already be seeing convergence in many markets around that idea. The technology is there, and has been for some time for most things, yet it isn't happening.
Why? Because we want devices that are more suited to various purposes.
Your post about a TV is spot on. Could I watch media on my phone? Sure. It is a smart phone, it could do that. I don't though. I bought an LCD TV. In fact I bought it AFTER I already owned the phone. Why would I do such a thing? Well because my phone is tiny. I don't care to sit and stare at a minuscule screen I have to hold up. I want to sack out on the couch and watch a nice, large picture. My TV lets me do that quite well. No, I can't pick it up and take it with me, but that's ok. The phone is for coming with me to make phone calls, the TV is for staying home and playing media.
To me this is like saying "Everyone is going to own nothing but a toaster over. Seriously, why would you want anything else? I'll make toast, it'll heat your food, it does everything. You should ditch your stove, oven, microwave, toaster, electric kettle, etc and just have a toaster oven. It is all you need." Ok, perhaps if you got nit picky that would be true. I suppose for small food sizes one could indeed cook everything in a toaster oven. However that is a pain. I'll keep my multiple cooking appliances, thanks.
Personally I for sure don't see phones replacing consoles/desktops for gaming for just the reason of size and convenience alone. However there's also the simple fact that until we invent a better battery technology, phone life is rather limited. You spend 3 hours playing a game on your phone, you'll be lucky to make a 10 minute phone call after that. It is just life. There is no magic way around this, without new technology you can't increase energy density of batteries, and screens, radios, CPUs, these all take power. You can decrease their power draw somewhat but the screen in particular just needs a lot of power, especially if it is larger.
Also people do like visuals and you can do more with a console than a phone. This is true no matter what the technology. If I can do a certain amount with a 1 watt GPU in a phone, I can do a lot more with a 10 or 50 or 100 watt GPU in a console. This is true for any given technology. Yes, a 40nm GPU in a brand new ultra-modern phone might compare somewhat favorably to say a chip from, say, an X-box. However that was built using 150nm lithography. If you compare a mobile phone to a current GPU, also built on 40nm lithography, it compares much less favourably. With the same technology, the chip with more transistors can do more.
I'm sure mobile phone gaming will be a big market, because it has the advantage of being the device people nearly always have on them (something to be said for having a game at hand when you are waiting in the doctor's office). However I am also sure that it will not be the be-all, end-all.
And just when we'd finally realized extremely popular, open-source consoles.
We have open-source consoles; they're just not popular. PCs in a home theater PC case are consoles in the sense that they are game-playing devices sitting in a home entertainment center. ION nettop PCs such as Acer AspireRevo are consoles in the second sense of "fixed hardware" as well as fitting in a TV cabinet. But apparently, the major labels have some sort of tradition against releasing multiplayer PC games designed for set-top use.
I don't understand the locked down console argument. It's a benefit, it's a gaming machine which makes cheating vastly more difficult to the point it's not a problem you ever really encounter in online multiplayer games.
The problem is that there's an industry tradition to conflate offline multiplayer with a walled garden whose SDK agreement locks out developers working from home. With few exceptions (such as Trine), PC games tend to support only LAN or online multiplayer, not two to four gamepads plugged into a home theater PC.
The 3DS is a 2011-2012 handheld with a 266MHz processor that's slower than my desktop computer was in the mid-90s. You can argue battery life, but the PSP from 2004 has a faster processor inside of it.
The PSP has a 333 MHz MIPS CPU underclocked to 222 MHz. Later firmware versions expose a function to max the clock, but full speed operation interferes with Wi-Fi.
So if PCs don't get faster by 2040, then he may be right.
How long have PCs been stuck at 2000 to 3000 MHz, just adding core after core?
Leads one to believe that the general assumption is that mobile devices won't become more powerful and efficient. I don't think that is the case - rather, they'll continue to get more powerful until they hit the "good enough" plateau that desktops have been in for the last several years (and have been in before).
It is very likely that when such a convergence happens you'll get as pretty a game on a big screen as you're used to, just driven by essentially mobile hardware.
How is this prediction much different than one that claims most computers will be mobile in the near future? Leaving aside whether or not you would be ok with that - the slashdot reader is hardly the most common consumer of computer products.
semantics are everything!
When PC game developers stop removing single-computer multiplayer from their games
CronoCloud thinks your "when" is a "won't". First you'll have to convince HDTV owners to use a nettop PC instead of a Roku box, Boxee Box, Apple TV, Google TV, or other walled-garden appliance to play video.
To me he's dreaming of putting modern console CPU/GPU into mobile phones - it's not going to happen soon. Not even in the next three years. But even then, playing a game on a big screen with a decent sound system seems like a much more enjoyable experience than tiny, unhandy controls and shitty sound.
and being tired of bad console quality, being jerked around by vendor lock-in, and stifled games, because of the limited hardware.
Unrealistic.
"spending half your fingers holding the thing? Crappy sound or at best stereo headphone speaker sound? 3-5 inch screens?"
"donotwant tag desired! We love to play our games on our consoles, with a huge TV"
"playing a game on a big screen with a decent sound system seems like a much more enjoyable experience than tiny, unhandy controls and shitty sound."
What would limit a 2020s super powered mobile device to be connected through HDMI (or something newer) to a 7680 x 4320 52 inch screen and then use 4 additional wireless controllers to turn this hand-held into a complete 4-player console?
Make me remember Game Gripper. Take a powerful enough cellphone, put there a bunch of games and console emulators (playstation, n64, mame, etc), and with this layer over the keyboard you have a portable gaming console (and a cellphone, gps, camera, media player and so on).
Between the greasy fingers and small screens comments, I think many are not paying attention to the current trends with the higher end smart phones, several android devices already have hdmi out, nearly all have the capability to hook up bluetooth devices and 3d chips are now the standard and storage density keeps increasing. If you throw in "cloud" based gaming its not very far fetched to see a time when your handheld can be used as a regular console. As long as the capabilities are there I'm all for it. Streaming games and content seem to be the direction all the major consoles are taking so why not have them use a device that can go anywhere with you? It really doesnt take much imagination to see this as reality, there are already dual core tablets that are far more powerful cpu wise as the 360 or PS3, its only a matter of time until the gpu capability catches up.
This is foolish. It won't happen due to one constant; The temperature at which people say "ouch!". Whatever power you pack into a handheld device, there will always be a market for 20 of them stuffed in a box cooled by fans or pumps.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
only problem with this nifty future is that i'm gonna look like a fuckin' dick in the waiting room at the doctors office playing COD 19 on a cell phone with a 56" screen.
the same people who predicted that the merging of gpu and cpu would happen before 2003. These doofuses can't get anything right.
Not until apple pulls their head out their ass and gives us some hardware controls, or bluetooth compatibility with controllers or something. Trying to play DUCK NUCKAM on the ipad is a joke. Most games I've tried seem to be unless it's press to play or point and drag casual game.
--- Do you believe in the day?
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There isn't enough screen real estate to warrant any useful 'app' that could do what a console can do. I don't want my phone to be anything more than a phone. Mobile AND console. Hey, guess what? Its called a laptop. You couldn't possibly sell me any phone that can run 'games' because it would suck to have to use the lame phone controls to play it. I may as well buy a Nintendo. Sounds to me like they're grasping at straws. There really is an end to what you can do with any device. May as well realize it and go from there.