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Video Game Consoles Are 'Fundamentally Doomed,' Says Lord British
zacharye writes "Microsoft sold nearly one million Xbox 360s last week alone, but we're nearing the end of the road for video game consoles according to one industry visionary. Richard Garriott, known for having created the fantasy role-playing franchise Ultima, says converged devices such as computers, smartphones and tablets will soon render dedicated game consoles obsolete: '... the power that you can carry with you in a portable is really swamping what we've thought of as a console.'"
As a PC gamer I can't wait for consoles to finally die, fewer crap console ports and PC exclusives tend to be better anyway.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
I don't see the game console going away.. It's just going to evolve into more of multimedia device. Really it already has..
My game consoles spend more time streaming Netflix then playing games these days.
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
your smartphone is a bit more difficult to pile a bunch of buddies on a couch and have a fuckton of fun for hours on end, and a touch screen is a bitch for complicated controls.
now go back to whatever cave you crawled out of lord brittish
By this definition of consoles, they died out five years ago. The current generation are already going very far out of their way to be multipurpose devices. They all have Netfllix, which is an ENORMOUS draw, and probably drives most Wii purchases these days. Two o them have browsers, they can all play music and display your photos, two of them can initiate voice/video chat over the internet. They can all send messages.
They're locked down, yes, but so is the iPad. It's so locked down, and its base software is so limited that I'd say the only difference between it an a current-gen console is online store policy. If Xbox LIVE allowed third parties to sell utilities and productivity tools, the two platforms would be conceptually identical.
A 7"/10" tablet or a 4" phone screen will NEVER replace a gaming console. There are many many factors that make this an insane and retarded statement.
1) Game controller. Yes the kinect is interesting. Yes gyros can provide an intersting experience as well. But can you do a 16 hour gaming session waving your arms around like that (both kinect style or wii style with a large tablet). The standard game controller is a perfect interface for most games, and an OK stand in for others (FPS games should be with a mouse).
2) As mentioned above: Screen size.
3) Social gaming (in close physical proximity). A big screen is ideal for this. Tablets (or worse phones) are just too small to share.
4) Touch screens suck for the vast majority of stuff. Motion control is just behind it in usability. With touch screens a large number of games are not playable because your hand is blocking critical space on the screen.
There are more.. but there's beer in the NOC and I'm thirsty.
What is going away is the console that can only play a game, which is being replaced by devices that have apps as well as games. This is already happening in the current generation of consoles.
I've had one of those for thirty years. We call it 'a computer'.
I suppose I could instead buy a separate machine for my TV. Doing that I could even design/get it specifically designed for a livingroom environment. Hey- wait a minute.
The difference between such a PC and a console is that a living room PC would have solo productions like Bob's Game and indie games developed by a 2- or 3-man family business. But then next to nobody wants to play a game developed by a micro-ISV in a small city; instead, as CronoCloud has pointed out in a previous comment, they want to play games developed by people who have had to move to a different state for their video game development apprenticeship.
Why are people still listening to this guy? The most relevant things he's done in the last decade are tie himself to doomed MMO projects and buy himself a ticket on a spaceship.
The "anyone who has an opinion different to mine is obviously a shill" thing on slashdot is getting tiresome.
It *is* possible for people to like things that the /, groupmind dislikes without them being paid to do so.
PCs have had enough power (including GPU power) to compete with game consoles for a long time. Why didn't they?
Phones and tablets are beginning to approach the level of power of a PC. But they won't replace game consoles either. Why? Because, as with PC's, it's not about the processor or GPU power.
The game console has some strategic advantages over PC's and tablets: 1) it's cheaper than a PC or tablet, 2) it is specifically made for playing games, and 3) it sits next to the TV, permanently connected and ready to play. Just turn it on and go. No need to set up a connection each time you want to play. No need to go fetch the tablet to hook it up to the TV. It's already there.
Simply put, a multi-purpose device will never be quite as good at gaming as a dedicated gaming device.
Eventually, mobile will be the only web. Why would i bother walking over to a PC to browse the internet when i can do it from the tablet i use to control my house, or the mobile phone in my pocket? Or the device embedded in my TV (which is likely to be something ARM/mobile OS based, rather than a full blown PC).
The vast majority of people who want to "browse the internet" don't necessarily want to use a PC to do it. Its simply that until recently, using a PC has been a requirement. Most people have no interest in computers and something like a tablet is ideal for them.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.