Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
I'd much rather sit back on my couch while playing games than sitting in my office behind a desk playing PC games. While yes, PCs can be upgraded faster, graphics are usually better, etc., that doesn't make up for the comfort of couch-gaming.
We have come to a point where most of the computing elements are way more powerful than what the human eye demands in graphics even to the extent of photorealism. See, i ran the hell out of star wars the old republic with my 6950 radeon gpu and amd phenom ii 965 cpu in its beta - and in 5040x1080 3 monitor eyefinity resolution. it played overly smooth in 40 fps minimum. Granted, swtor is not a photorealistic 3d rendered game, however, it is very taxing when you factor in the fact that it is a mmo with endless differently textured toons (clothing, armor, face differences) converging on small spaces like coruscant. So, my phenom ii 965 cpu, which is not even a top tier offering in current cpu generation, not only ran the game perfectly, but also stayed so idle that i didnt even hear the cpu fan increase speed at all -> i use a 12 cm fan, and its already VERY silent too. if you go into games like crysis 2 et al, you will find that these games run on consoles very well, and on pc they run even faster.
so, we can easily say that cpus are already over a point where we could consider them a limiting factor for good looking games. the only remaining factor becomes, gpu.
granted, my 6950 is a last generation, top offering card. and even if cpu power had become way too much over the needs of games and graphics cards to become irrelevant after a certain tier, its not possible to play down the mandatory element, the graphics card yet.
but, there are already major strides in this area - amd has already succeeded in fusing cpu and gpu in the form of 'apu', and these apus do low power usage and provide good performance in entry-mid level laptop and netbook market. granted, they are not enough to provide top performance as we see it in pcs yet, but more apus will be coming. this means, we are moving towards a future in which the two indispensable elements of gaming, the cpu and gpu, will be both merged in one unit with top grade components. (next gen apus are to come with 7xxx cores)
so then, indeed lord british is right. you already merged, and optimized cpus and gpus in a form that it will be possible to game in a notebook. the only thing you need for this to become a reality in smartphones, is only more miniaturization and increased efficiency of this concept. and it is, as you know, a given in tech world. and im not even talking about the processors that are developing from the mobile computing vector.
there are already versions of 3d games that play on smartphones. in future, we will indeed be able to plug a device to tv or a monitor and just play.
Read radical news here
Apple are dumbing down the Mac, moving it away from being a high end professional computer, turning it into an overgrown iPad. Microsoft are turning Windows into an oversized Windows Phone OS. PCs are turning into consoles, and it is the serious personal computer that is threatened with extinction.
-- The Grand Teddy Bear has Spoken: "Windows 8 Source Code Available NOW! more disgusting than your pr..."
Not to mention that the best thing about consoles is that everybody is playing on the same machine. You don't have to worry about whether you have a good enough machine and how good the framerate will be on your machine when buying console games. You don't have to worry about silly driver issues, or upgrading your machine every year because. All the current consoles are at least 5 years old. Even if you bought the original PS3 60 GB for $600 at launch (chosen because it was the most expensive), you still go an amazing deal, because that's 5+ years (still no replacement in the next year or two) without having to spend a single penny on upgrades. If you ask me, consoles will be all anybody owns in the future. I've seen where this is going. Most people will have a console, a tablet, which can be hooked up to a monitor keyboard and must when you have some work to get done. Desktop PCs with crazy specs and prices to go along with it will be the territory of a small set of enthusiasts. And everyone else will be exteremely happy because they no longer have to worry about driver issues, upgrades, minimum requirements, and all that other stuff. Me, I'll still own a desktop PC for many years to come.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
He's wrong, plain and simple.
You will never have the same capabilities in a handheld on tight power budget that you can have plugged in to the wall.
There will always be something that the games designers want to do that is beyond the capabilities of whatever hardware you are running on. I'm sure of this. While my 17 years in game programming falls quite a bit short of Garriot's, I don't think the Ultima series was particularly taxing of the hardware the same way large open world 3D rendered games are.
Perhaps in five years or so average quality games might be hardware agnostic but AAA games will always demand the most.