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The Consoles Are Dying, Says Developer
hypnosec writes "While you might have often heard that PC gaming is dying — detractors have been claiming this for over a decade — one developer has a different take: that consoles are the ones on the way out. In a 26-minute presentation at GDC — available now as a slideshow with a voice-over — Ben Cousins, who heads mobile/tablet game maker ngmoco, uses statistics of electronic and gaming purchases, along with market shares of developers and publishers from just a few years ago, to come to some surprising conclusions. The old guard, including the three big console manufacturers — Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft — are losing out when compared with the new generation of gaming platform developers: Facebook, Apple and Google. With the new companies, the size of the audience is vastly increased because of their focus on tablets, mobile and browser-based gaming."
Makes sense to me. I see many more people playing Facebook games than they play with their Wii. XBox players are about as frequently seen as Facebook gamers, in my experience.
The technology is where consoles have often been ahead of PCs, but with tablet computers becoming almost as slick as Star Trek Pads, it's harder to imagine a console being able to process a lot more than a PC or be as portable as an iPad or Android phone.
Oh You POS
Quoting the summary: "The old guard ...are losing out when compared with the new generation of gaming platform developers".
This clearly doesn't mean that the consoles are dying, it simply means that the smarthphones and tables have a installed base much greater than the traditional consoles and they managed to get a bigger audience. Mobile games are also simpler and cheaper than traditional "hardcore" console/PC games.
At the end it's a similar story to that of the Wii: Someone found a way to reach a much bigger audience than that of traditional games and they made a ton of money in the process.
If your share is the market is decreasing but the overall market size is increasing at a rate faster than your share decreases, then you're not dying, you're flourishing.
I used to play a lot of games on my Xbox 360, but when we got Netflix a few years ago it moved from my study to the living room and now my wife monopolizes it to watch Netflix, and I'm playing my games on the PC. A console can only be used for one thing at a time, and when you keep adding more things it can do, it ends up spending less time being used to play games.
You know, if you think about it, Facebook games are technically PC games, if only that most people would be playing in front of a desktop or a laptop. I can't think of anywhere else you would play Facebook games, although there's no saying they can't come up with some kind of mobile port framework for their developers in the future.
Of course it's not really PC games in the sense that we think of it, but I think it would be good to be reminded that gaming on the PC covers a wide range of different types of games still. This may not be true for the other platforms though.
This is just like saying movies are going out because tons of people are watching YouTube videos. Just. Plain. Wrong.
Sure, there is money to be made in those new markets. The very best iOS/Android/Facebook games make dozens of millions in profit. Great. But the best console games will make that in a single day. Yes, they have the numbers: there are hundreds of thousands of apps in the iTunes Store. Awesome. But 98% sell 0 copies (I'm not talking a few thousands, I'm talking about zero, nil, nada). What about ROI? A competitive mobile game can be done for $100.000 (yes, and that is the absolute minimum to be competitive, this is not 2009 anymore) and would need about $250.000 in marketing expenses (it is that, or hitting a jackpot). One such game can expect to get 20.000 downloads a day (it MUST be free, of course) and a conversion rate of about 0.5% to 2% if it is good. Good luck getting that money back, not to mention making any profit.
The new markets are bad business. They are headline material if you are one of the few lucky ones who hit a jackpot, but remember: the jackpots are jackpots. Those lone developers or startups are the lucky ones, and while there is always someone who will get the lottery price for sure, if you get all your money and invest in lottery, you're an idiot. There is only one good thing about them: no entry barrier. The console videogame market stagnates because it is controlled by a few players who are adverse to innovation and mostly rehash the same product over and over. Facebook or mobile allow anyone to enter and go wild. Just like the computer game market of the 80's, that means loads of crap and some rare gems that couldn't be possible otherwise.
There is something very wrong with the console market. Publishers with absolute power cater only to the mass public and ignore niche or progressive sales, while developers get zero money from the jackpots and can't raise or grow if it is not dancing to the whim of the same publishers. But don't forget it, the new masters are much worse. The App Store is not some place you go to get rich, it is the place you go to die.
I find the OT spot on - consoles are becoming more like PCs, than PCs becoming more like consoles.
This, to me, speaks volumes - the today's gamer wants networking - the biggest games (and that means money here) are social type games like WoW and the various MP shooters. This means networking and connection to the internet.
PCs are just better in this area than consoles are - and it is only recently that consoles even could connect to the internet. The main problem here with consoles is the cold, hard fact that they are not upgradable, at least not for joe user. This means that whatever network type hardware is in use in the console is just that, and cannot be upgraded (along with graphics, CPU, etc).
For example, I have a PS3. I play Tekken 6 online, among other games. The online part of the game is frustrating and very primitive, especially compared to PC games with MP support. It has nothing on my PC - especially for such MP games like Neverwinter Nights (MP play), and other games.
To that, comes the modability of PC games, verses the "locked down" version on a console. For me, this is a pretty important factor.
All-in-all, I think that the console is a dying piece of hardware. I think that the future belongs to the PC, in some form or another. Home Networks is the future, IMHO.
just like when it became cheap to do printing. Now the market for print covers everything from comics, to lifestyle magazines, to Booker Prize winners. Sometimes I want to sit down with a novel, sometimes I want to see what Batman's up to this month, sometimes I'll flick through an issue of Motor Boats and Yachting because that's the only mag in the dentist's waiting room.
The concept of a single, clearly- and rigidly-defined platform will always be attractive to developers. Raw horsepower will always make a difference to any game more complex than Tetris. Control systems will always be a beast to implement on something that has a touchscreen and a single button, unless the control system is implemented first, then the game built around that. It is not possible to replicate the 11 buttons, twin joysticks and a d-pad of an X-box controller on an iPhone.
I think it's good that the market is fragmenting. It won't stop the big studios making AAA-titles. It will help the indie developer with the next great idea get her game made in Flash, or on Android, or running directly in the browser. It might help stem the unearthly tide of shovelware that infests the pre-owned racks at GAME. And although, to an extent, I decry the loss of geek cred that comes with the fact that now everybody and their dog plays some sort of video games, the fact that every woman I've met lately plays Farmville does make it a useful ice-breaker...
You can hook up a game controller to a tablet and some interesting games even support them. I can totally see quite a lot of indies who as of late have been developing AMAZING games(Bastion, Trine...) move to tablets which you can hook up to a TV via HDMI.
Just go to nVidia's Tegra Zone to see how far the bleeding edge tablets have moved on. There are videos of stuff that is easily on par with the current gen of game consoles. I'm truly amazed. It really feels like science fiction.
Also it seems like fondleslab producers are moving away from integrating 3g/4g into their tablets since everybody has a cell phone anyway which is easily tethered to a tablet. 3G/4G simply doesn't justify the extra cost anymore.
Now all I need is a good enough reason to get rid of my current XOOM which is perfectly fine. I want a Transformer Prime more than I want my next breath.
20 minutes into the future
Nowadays you have to upgrade a PC every 4 years or so.
Most PC titles are being made for consoles and PC at the same time and consoles are the lowest common denominator. So titles don't really get any more demanding in terms of hardware until the next generation of consoles come out.
TBH the 'upgrade your PC every 6 months" thing is about 5 years out of date. I'm on a PC I built in 2007, and the only thing I've upgraded is to put a little more RAM in it, and get a new video card after 3 years with the same one. The popularity of the consoles among developers means the games really haven't gone outside of those specs in most cases.
You are quite right. Statistics need to be interpreted correctly. There is still good growth for consoles also. It is just not as great as the growth of the other platforms and the gaming market is just expanding.
XBox 360 and Playstation 3 use absolutely horrifying amounts of electricity compared to devices like AppleTV
XBox 360: 121 watts to watch a DVD, up to 170 watts while gaming
New PS3: 70 watts to watch a DVD, up to 80 watts while gaming
Apple TV: maximum rated 6 watts
And then throw in the added energy required by an air conditioner to remove all that heat from your house.
Granted AppleTV has less horsepower than either game system, but their power consumption is WAY out of line, given what can be done with modern hardware.
I'd say tablets and smartphones will make dedicated mobile gaming platforms (Nintendo DS, PS Vita etc) obsolete but will have very little impact on console and PC sales where gaming is concerned. What he is talking about is casual gaming which although making shitloads of cash is not what the average console and PC gamer would class as gaming. What smartphone/tablet game companies are doing is tapping into a userbase of people who wouldn't normally play games as they wouldn't buy a device just to play games, but as they have the devicealready they then start to look at what can be done with it.
This is why most of the type of games you find on the iPhone/iPad/Android devices are aimed at killing a few minutes while standing waiting for a bus not taking up hours and hours which is what most traditional gamers want/expect from their games.
My wife is a prime example of the new breed of smartphone/tablet/browser 'gamer'. I have had a PC and various gaming consoles for the last 20 years and she has never shown the slightest bit of interest in gaming as it took up too much time and had to be done at home. Now she plays games like Angry Birds on her smartphone and Facebook.
I must be new here, but I click through. Excellent presentation, great data, and a powerful argument. Worth 25 minutes of your time.
Well the problem here is the distinction between what REAL gamers would consider a game, and what could otherwise be considered social gaming or casual gaming.
To say that games on a PS3, XBOX or PC arent social gaming is simply retarded, and will only expose the fact that you sir/madam are not a gamer. Gaming on a PC has been social as long as I can remember. Whether its people coming over to play a game with you sitting side by side as kids back in the early 80s, or when we would dial eatch others houses and Yell obsenities at our family members to stop them picking up the phone and ruining our point to point Rise of the triad or Quake I session.
I used to go round peoples houses with my full desktop and 19" CRT playing over coax networks (cant tell you how amazing the introduction of the LCD monitor was for transport, even though the colour depths and response rate initially sucked), then later into Warehouse LANs. Eventually into competitions.
The fact is that die hard gamers have always been a niche clique. The nerds, the geeks, the tech junkies. But its always been sociable and no one plays against Bots if they can compete against a real player! There are clans and groups of people who socialise around every competative game.
Admittedly I am heavily biassed towards FPS. But as every warcraft fan will tell you gaming is a social medium.
Sure things like angry birds and puzzle games are more popular nowdays that everyone has a tablet or phone. But these are casual games. They arent exciting, they are just targeting non-gamers which make up the majority of people.
The upgrade cycle to keep up with PC gaming is not what it once was. I am still playing on a PC which is 3-4 years old with new releases and having no issues at all. Obviously I can't run them maxxed out, but they still look good and run smoothly.
Minecraft would be more credible.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Can you go from 100% of the pie to 10% and STILL end up with more pie? Yes, you can! Simply increase the size of the pie. Granted, for that scenario, you need to increase the pie a lot but that is what has been happening in computer gaming.
The earliest computer games were the domain of people who had access to mainframes, this was only a small subsection of the population. Arcade games made them more available but the nature of arcade games restricted it to children. Home computers (Atari, Commodore, Sinclair) changed this again but the machines were very expensive and frankly the games just weren't that accessible. You might have fond memories of text adventures, but you are a freak.
Home arcade machines where cheaper and easier but playing pong can only attract so many people for so long. The early machines showed a promising future but the present was graphics where you needed a manual to tell you what you were looking at.
But slowly, this changed, computers became smaller and cheaper while the games got better and better. And so, more and more people buy gaming hardware and play games.
Flash games haven't replaced traditional PC games, they added to the number of people playing games on a PC. Tablets haven't taken away from other platforms, they added gamers. IF there is a slowdown in either the PC or big console market then it has far more to do with those markets on their own. Gosh, do we REALLY need another 12yr old FPS with angry rapper soundtrack?
Women gamers might not be that intrested in games so obviously aimed at 12 year olds. Are there many female gamers? Google for The Sims 3 MODS... this is females not just PLAYING a game, but MODDING it with no official support, just command line tools. FEMALES! Modding!?! But where are these females catered for on the consoles? Barbie playhouse? Where is the mature rated female game? (As in subjects that attract adult females, not 12 yr old boys, as amazing as it seems, for some weird reason most women are not terribly excited by seeing polygon boobies with full jiggle animation. Probably because the spoiled women can play with a real set whenever they want. INEQUALIY! Demand fair distrubution of boobie playtime NOW!) Anyway... I didn't believe that women really played PC games until I found myself in a lotro raid of my guild and I was the only male. And that was a 12 man... 11 woman, 1 man raid.
But you shouldn't take this the wrong way, just because a lot of women game as well, does NOT mean ALL games have to be women friendly. Different games, for different markets. It ain't so hard to understand. Just because hamburger restaurants sell a lot of hamburgers doesn't mean every single restaurant in the world has to be a hamburger joint. In fact, you might find that if you did this, the revenue for restaurants would fall. Angry birds is a top selling game but if that was the only thing on offer, the market would quickly collapse. Yet, that is exactly what has been happening in the big console market. The market is completely dominated with Call of Honor Gears Halo 56. MS knew this and desperately tried to attract japanese developers so they would at least get some JRPG action on the original xbox. It failed and the original xbox was a dismal failure in Japan. It was a far bigger success in the west... with in the segment of the population the games catered for.
I don't even think tablets will kill the Vita and DS. Those handholds are doing their own killing. Look at the line-up for the Vita? What is there? The majority of games are extremely expensive versions of games you can buy for a buck on a tablet or even try for free. Yes yes, wipeout might be some kind of classic (read milked) title but its appeal is rather limited in terms of segment of the population. It also frankly ain't suited for mobile gaming where perfect control, perfect vision, long load up times etc etc are just not on.
Neither are dark games, 99% in the sun it means you don't see shit. Where are the light deep story games that don't mind if they are
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Nowadays you have to upgrade a PC every 4 years or so.
Quite. I still find my Q6600 (stock clock), 4GB DDRII, and 8800GTX (before it died) ran almost any game I could think of at my monitor's native res of 1920x1200 with reasonable graphics detail. In fact, my upgrade was going to be a second 8800GTX from fleabay (I got burned by the seller; Sold me a known faulty card he claimed to have repaired, I found out afterwards. Fuck eBay for not understanding that). Ended up with a HD6950; Good card.
I wouldn't be surprised if I run this rig until the hardware dies.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3774/welcome-to-valhalla-inside-the-new-250gb-xbox-360-slim/3
That's mostly true. But there are exceptions, especially in the genres I like. That is, simulations and FPS games with really large maps.
As an example, take All Points Bulletin:
It is a sort of multiplayer GTA, with maps that are several 100 meters across, plenty of detail and no real limitations on going to any part of the map at any time.
Up to late 2011, I had a dual core PC with Windows XP and 2 GByte RAM. After a few minutes, APB would run out of memory. I don''t think that either the XBox 360 or the PS3 could handle the memory requirements of that game.
My new PC with 4 GByte RAM can handle it though.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Nothing is dying. Just like we have novels, magazines, and comic books living side by side, consoles will always exist and PC's will always exist. Facebook and mobile games are just the latest platform. That will not stop people from wanting to play games from their couch or engage in more involved or resource hungry PC games. The different platforms provide different experiences and target different audiences.
I don't get why there is always this discussion about X dying because now there is Y.
In that case... there's a Minecraft Pocket Edition that runs on Android and iOS phones. :)
In my mind this is a company that has made its business out of "borrowing" ideas from the likes of Nintendo and making cheap knock-offs to sell on facebook or mobiles.
If consoles go away where is this guy going to get his inspiration for his games? If I was in the business of making cheap throw away games with minimal profits and no real appreciation from customers I'd be busy trying to convince people my way was the future too.
Definitely a troll, but I'll bite.
If it requires any kind of intricate or fast movement a tablet is generallybad. But there's loads of games that could still run just fine. RTSes might work decently. Board and puzzle games are a definite. Old school adventure games like Myst would be awesome if someone would make an iPod/Android version.
There's more to games than headshots and rocket jumps.
(Oh man, I feel really dirty saying that.)
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Casual games will kill console games the same way pop music killed classical music. It won't.
With an industry as large as the videogame industry, you'd think they'd be able to distinguish separate market segments like all forms of art and entertainment before it.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
First off, Cyan did actually port Myst and Riven to iOS and are working on a port of realMyst.
As for the fast movement, you can hook up an iPad to a TV via HDMI just like any other console, and you can use an iPod Touch as a touch controller like Nintendo thinks is a good idea to do with the Wii-U. There aren't that many games that are made with this in mind right now, presumably because customers aren't really interested in doing it, but it's what I think will happen. Consoles will disappear and people will instead hook up their current mobile phone to a TV set and a controller.
Well if you are gonna go by just raw usage data then i'm sure they would tell you that office and accounting programs are being replaced by this incredible new technology called "the fart app' since its number of users i'm sure makes Quicken, Quickbooks, and all the office suites look like penny ante apps.
But of course that just highlights what's wrong with using this kind of data, the "games' they describe are simply what is called 'time wasters" that someone can use at the average office without installing anything and thus getting fired. The boss at the last shop i worked at loved to fire up freecell on any machine brought in and see how many hours had been spent in it, some machines had literally thousands of hours in it. did that mean these people were prepping for some freecell tournament? that they just REALLY loved that card game? nope it meant the IT dept had blocked the web based time wasters but the MSFT standard games were accessible so that is what they used to waste time.
In the end these "games" are having little to no money spent on them by the users, who rarely have any loyalty to the games at all and will walk away at the drop of a hat for the next time waster that catches their eye. Just because a shitload of people run something doesn't mean they WANT to run that thing, it may simply mean that is all they can get past the IT dept at work. My GF has hundreds of hours in those FB games but that doesn't mean she gives a crap about them or would spend a single cent for the whole lot, it just means she has a lot of down time in between busy periods at work so she uses them to kill time, that's all. In the end they are for her no more worth caring about than solitaire, its just something to do that's all. if youtube wasn't blocked at her work she'd probably be watching videos instead.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Adventure games rock on an iPad. I really enjoyed playing through Monkey Island 1 and 2 again on mine. I really want to try Sam & Max for iPad too but I haven't found the time yet.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
PC gaming is dying. Well bugger, better switch to consoles then.
Oh wait... consoles are dying. Well shit, at least I can still amuse myself with music and 3D development software on my desktop.
Oh wait... desktops are dying. Well fuck...
Better blow my brains out and find another hobby. Probably not in that order.
I remember when Linux was good... too...
Wonder if Game Group's problems are related to this. As the UK's biggest high street game retailer the decline in console and PC games on disk can't be doing much for its income.
There are four sorts of people in the world: fools, lunatics, idiots and morons. - Umberto Eco, Foucaut's pendulum.
I know a LOT of gamers, and yes while a lot more games are sold on tablets.... You don't see ANY tablet games selling for $60.00 in fact you will not sell one copy if you try that extortion level pricing that these scumbags get on consoles.
Plus, have you tried to play a FPS on a tablet? it sucks. Driving games suck on a tablet. Even games like geometry wars suck on a tablet. Tablets are great for slow interaction games, Adventure games rock on a tablet.
Twitch games and rapid interaction games will never sell on a tablet unless we get some decent controls. and even then I doubt it. The best handheld for FPS was the Sony PSP and on that platform it sucked to play.
FPS are a big chunk of the market, Battlefield 3 and MW3 sell far more copies of their old games than this developer has ever sold in his lifetime, and will ever sell.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You can hook up a game controller to a tablet and some interesting games even support them. I can totally see quite a lot of indies who as of late have been developing AMAZING games(Bastion, Trine...) move to tablets which you can hook up to a TV via HDMI.
Often not all the buttons work, or the analog controls either. And well, it's a mess to hook those things up just to play something, especially if you're going to have a several-hour gaming session because then you have to add a charger into the mix, too. And what if you get a phonecall in the middle of gaming? You have to tear everything off only to have to plug it all back in afterwards.
Generally, I find 'statistics' on the gaming industry too liable to ... er, "gaming" to be useful. Generally it has to do with the breadth of how they define 'computer game'.
As the op referenced, there were dire warnings that 'pc gaming was dying'. Then it was apparent that the huge bulk of units/sales - the majority of the discussion, in fact - was considering products that many "gamers" wouldn't even be likely to include in the "gaming ouevre", ie Barbie Fashion Designer, or Exxtreme Deer Hunter 3D.*
*granted, they are played on a computer, and they are games, so perhaps it was just a sort of cliquish snobbiness that excluded them. But on the other hand by that same definition I'm pretty sure the dominant 'computer game' ever would be Minesweeper or Freecell.
This is further setting aside that it's still common that to broader audiences, 'computer games' can interchangeably refer to consoles or computers.
Finally now we're once again subjected to PCs vs consoles, which starts to sort of sound like a debate between "Surrey or Fiacre" when compared to the explosive growth of mobile/phone games. But does the growth of these mobile platforms have anything to do with consoles or PCs? I'd contend its completely independent - thus really irrelevant; if I have a gaming inclination that wants to be satisfied by something engaging and complex for hours, I'm probably not going to play Tetris. But if I have 15 mins until the bus I doubt I'm going to turn on my computer or even Xbox.
FWIW I personally believe that consoles are most likely the genre that has a finite product lifespan. As mobile platforms are now truly handheld computers, and computers meanwhile get amazingly cheap, it seems that consoles are getting squeezed out. Ultimately, I suspect anything that can access the web's infinite flashgames is going to kill the game market for anything casual.
-Styopa
This is essentially exactly what I was going to say. This stats are bogus and in no way are these little hand held 1 minute games going to ever replace serious dedicated consoles for the true gaming experience. At best this shows that a new and popular niche has appeared, but hardly a console killer. Now a portable console killer...maybe. There is already significant evidence to say tablets and phones are killing the portable dedicated gaming consoles. They were the traditional time wasters on the go.
In the industry dying = "not growing"
What is the deal with this prissy entitled fools?
The moment they see something that resembles competition, they cry doom and gloom and sometimes start calling their lawyers. (I'm looking at you **AA and BSA members)
Great, dynamics change. Disposable income (in a recession?!) and the demographic groups, the new trendy things distracting people from the established norms and all that. And even if it really were doom (which I doubt in this case) then that's the way it goes isn't it?
Anyway, I don't think consoles in general are going anywhere. I prefer them to PCs since I don't want to own a Windows computer and they tend to be more stable and reliable than general purpose PCs as well as being less expensive. If we can just get the cost of the games down to a reasonable price...
But of course that just highlights what's wrong with using this kind of data, the "games' they describe are simply what is called 'time wasters" that someone can use at the average office without installing anything and thus getting fired.
In the end these "games" are having little to no money spent on them by the users, who rarely have any loyalty to the games at all and will walk away at the drop of a hat for the next time waster that catches their eye.
People say these new "personal computers" are taking over the marketplace, but that's only because they can't afford mainframes! In the end they don't have any real investment, these things are toys compared to real iron!
Well heck yes, it is credible. Consoles are dedicated devices, whilst Google et al. develop for smartphones. Historically, dedicated devices are losers as soon as all-rounders begin to overwhelm the market.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
So a dev that works on "this technology' says "that technology" he doesn't work on is dying. I'm shocked, shocked I tells ya. I imagine consoles are "dying" right now simply because the lifespan has been extended due to the costs associated with moving to HD assests and the economy being fudged up. People (speaking about friends both in rl and online) have either become bored and aren't wow'd anymore so they have gone primarily pc or have just found better things to spend time and money on. It will be interesting to see what happens when people get a look at the new offerings in the flesh and not just a bunch of numbers on paper and rumors.
I used to be with IT..now IT seems strange and scary to me.
1) Mobile devices sell games to a different audience, people who want distractions on their mobile devices. Consoles sell games to people who want an immersive experience.
2) Of course mobile devices sell more games than consoles. Everyone has a cell phone these days and games range from free to $10. In other words, you're bored on your couch or the doctors office, you impulse buy cheap distractions. Console games cost much more, but also offer much more. While a mobile user might buy 3 games every month or so, a console owner might only buy a new game every few months. With games that take upwards of 40 hours to beat, they last a while. Not to mention the most popular console games now are online games with huge replay value.
3) There is plenty of room on the market for portable consoles. The iPhone isn't going to kill them. Gamers want games with depth, your average mobile user wants a distraction. Completely different audience.
I don't know why people can't wrap their heads around the fact that mobile users and gamers are two different audiences. Remember, core distinction: distraction vs. game with depth.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
We're nearing the end of a console cycle that was extended much longer then it normally has been. Some of this guys graphs even show it when you look over the last 30 years there is always a dip just as the market hits saturation and people are waiting for the next system to come out. What he is seeing is that dip coupled with a growing market. Consoles are dying in the same way the 8 bit, and 16 bit consoles died. Facebook and iOS games can be viewed as a bubble market right now as well. There are going to be a few that make money like Angry Birds, but they have to prove that they are long term profitable, and when it's proven that most of them will fail you'll see that market deflat. Minecraft is nice, but the entire decade the PC games have been dying Warcraft was still profitable. 1 or 2 very popular and profitable games won't revive the PC.
High DPI isn't a huge deal for games.
Reading, web browsing, content creation... sure. But not for games.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Often not all the buttons work, or the analog controls either. And well, it's a mess to hook those things up just to play something, especially if you're going to have a several-hour gaming session because then you have to add a charger into the mix, too. And what if you get a phonecall in the middle of gaming? You have to tear everything off only to have to plug it all back in afterwards.
That's why you use a dock, a tablet and wireless controllers (with loading docks so you don't need to check batteries). Yes, those are not there yet, but if you consider the hardware of the latest iPad I can't see why you'd want to build a dedicated platform that provides about the same kind of computing capacity. The iPad for mobile use has already a quad core chip that does both the graphics and the computing and does it well. Consider the resolution that stuff runs on and how smoothly it does (just go and look at the infinity blade dungeons demo during the intro) tells you that as dedicated hardware goes it's nicely on par. If Apple or some third party publisher were to come out with the addons that are needed you'd have a viable console replacement that doubles also as your everyday tablet. win-win.
More at Eleven...
AJ Henderson
These days? Power console up, firmware update required to sign into gaming network. Once you download that, you fire up the game, which then also needs a patch before it will let you sign into the network (and if you don't sign in, it keeps bugging you or just plain won't work).
I'm sorry, but if i wanted to deal with that sort of bullshit, I'd just play games on my PC. The whole point of console gaming is that you can be up and running and in a game in no time flat.
I turned my PS3 on for the first time in a couple of months on the weekend. I needed to do a firmware update plus 1.5gigs of GT5 updates before I could play without constantly being pestered to sign into PSN (but unable to do so without the updates).
I may as well fire up my PC.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
You are incredibly inaccurate in your assumption that the new processor and screen resolution will give the Ipad 3rd gen a competing chance against dedicated gaming consoles. Even our current generation, which is now over 6 years old, still blows away the graphics from the 3rd gen ipad. The fact is the ARM architecture, while gaining an impressive following and getting more powerful with each iteration, simply doesn't have the power to actually compete. These are low power devices with limited batteries and you are trying to say they stand up to or even beat the console. The consoles of course are very high wattage devices designed to use every bit of juice they want to run circles around your little ipad with its 3 core 3.2ghz xenon processor and dedicated graphics card at 500mhz. The only thing the ipad has over the current console generation is memory. The xbox tops out at 512mb at 700mhz. This is probably the single most limiting factor of the current console generation, but not limiting enough for the puny ipad to have a chance. Full disclosure, I prepordered the ipad 3. I love the little device, but there is just no justifiable leg to stand on to say it has anywhere close to the graphic capability of a dedicated home console.
Mainframes sell BETTER now than when they were the only thing you could buy. There are more mainframes out there now than ever. Still a tiny, tiny fraction of the desktops of course, but desktops didn't kill mainframes, if anything they helped them.
Well same shit with mobiles and desktops/laptops. Yes, smartphones are going to be a bigger market, if they aren't already. The are going to be the kind of thing that every person in a family has, whereas they may only have one or two computers. So what? Doesn't mean that mobiles are set to become the one and only thing. There are all kinds of reasons that isn't happening.
Same deal with game consoles. The consoles as they stand now may die out, they may simply become computers with nice graphics cards that you attach to your TV or something, but they aren't going anywhere. Why? Well big reason is we like playing games on a large screen on the couch. This idea that everyone is going to want to play on a tiny screen with a shitty battery life all the time is silly. Equally silly is the "Well they'll just dock it," ya right because I want to give up my phone just so that I or others can play games. No, I'll get a device for that. It is like saying people will give up ovens for microwaves (or vice versa).
Some people just get way too obsessed with the Next Big Shiny Thing and thing that it is what everything will be about. They think that everything older will magically go away. Ya well that is almost never the case.
The problem is that these "mobiles and portables" tend not to have gaming controls. Let me know when Xperia Play isn't the only Android phone with a physical directional pad and physical buttons that give your thumbs physical feedback as to which button the player is pressing. A completely flat touch screen just can't do that; try playing a platformer like Super Mario Bros. or a twitch puzzle game like high-speed Tetris with just touch controls. Or let me know when one of the dedicated gaming handhelds has a developer program open to individuals like the major smartphone platforms have.
He seems to forget that Angry Birds already happened. There will likely never be another game that big. Rovio had the right combination of timing, luck, and what people wanted and it exploded. That probably won't have a second time. So yes, Rovio made eleventy kajillion dollars on a small investment. Wonderful. Doesn't mean it'll happen again. There are plenty of games out there which struggle to make anything. Developers have talked about how polarized it can be between something that makes it on to top lists and something that doesn't.
It seems the "OMG so much money in mobile!" is more wishful thinking than objective reality. Developers would like to think with a low amount of effort and money up front they can make a shitload. Ya, probably not, that sort of thing usually doesn't work.
This article is particularly funny in light of the Kickstarter announcement for a new Wasteland project yesterday. They've already got $600,000 in funding, in one day, from gamers who just want to see a new version of this game. Also a few days ago EA released that they had shipped 3.5 million units of Mass Effect 3 in less than a week, that's $210 million gross sales (probably $120-150ish net to EA when you take in to account more expensive collectors edition versions and sales on Origin where they keep all the gross). Then of course there's Call of Duty, the most recent of which did about a billion in sales.
All that has happened is gaming has expanded. In my lifetime it has gone from something only us strange geeks did to something everyone does. It has done this by growing and having more kinds of games. Some people want simple, 5 minute games, and the mobile market is great for those. Some want games they can play on Facebook while pretending to work. Others want bigass hardcore shooters, which maybe don't work so well on mobile platforms.
I have no doubt mobile gaming will be a big market, but if this idiot thinks it'll kill consoles, kill people wanting to sack out in front of their TV and play a game on the big screen, he's dead wrong.
1) I am not a console gamer, nor even a casual gamer of any kind. I have an othello app and that's it. 2) Just because grandma or non-gamers can get some fun out of a $1 game app or $5 app pack on their droid doesn't mean the average gamer is going to abandon its focus on PC and console games to play shitty racing games on the ipad. 3) "statistics can be used to prove anything" ... doesn't mean what they "prove" is true, it means literally a lot of people who use the statistics aren't understanding the big picture.
Who want something simple for some situations. I've been a gamer since I was 4, grandpa had an Atari 2600 I liked. I'm really in to big, complex, computer games. I've got, literally, hundreds between physical games, digital downloads, and so on. However for all that, I have mobile games too. My smartphone has a whole page of games loaded on it. They are by and large simple, quick games. Doodle Jump, Collapse, Plants vs Zombies, Peggle, and so on. I've got a complex more complex ones, but not many and I rarely play them.
So why do I have this? Because the smartphone always rides with me, and it gives me something I can do when waiting. I go to the doctors office and have to wait for the lab tech to take my blood sample. I can pull out the phone, play a quick game, and set it aside easily when it is time.
However that doesn't mean it is going to replace more traditional games for me. The amount of entertainment I get form Doodle Jump is not even close to the entertainment I get from Total War: Shogun 2 or the like. Yes that game costs 60x the price but it is more than 60x the entertainment, WAY more.
Also another problem I've found with the cheap mobile games is that ripoffs are a big thing. I snuff around the Android market looking for new stuff sometimes and I am amazed at how much is "just rip off the idea that these other guys made money on." I don't mean games just being similar, nothing exists in a vacuum, I mean things that are the same damn game but with slightly different graphics.
I'm sure some developers would like to think that is the way forward because it is minimal effort, but I'm going to say traditional games still have a big, big place.
The consoles as they stand now may die out, they may simply become computers with nice graphics cards that you attach to your TV or something
I don't see the "home theater PC revolution" happening any time soon. FunkSoulBrother, CronoCloud, and Altrag are under the impression that apart from devout geeks, so few people connect a PC to a TV that home theater PCs might as well not exist (1 2 3 4). The public believes computers are for desks and consoles are for TVs, and never the twain shall meet, according to hawguy and Endo13 (5 6 7), especially when people already have enough trouble plugging in a DVD player (8 9).
screen resolution != 3d horsepower. Game consoles are optimized for ...games. Tablets are optimized for general display, like rendering webpages or streaming video.
The ipad3's gpu is about 1/10th the ps3's...so no the iPad3 is not even close. If you are making an argument that the direction of consoles/mobile gaming is headed towards a consolidated platform, I don't disagree, but that's not what you said.
In that case, the advantage of a console is the combination of guaranteed processing with guaranteed physical buttons that the player can locate by feel. An iPad just has a flat surface, which doesn't work so well for some genres.
Consoles need to die.
Consoles are proprietary to one company and are ruled over with an iron fist by said company.
On the other hand my BlueRay player has very basic (crappy) gaming ability built in, and the same apps that work on it will work on the TV's that run the same firmware. Android is already going into set-top boxes and have the potential to really take over the generic system gaming market. Bluetooth support is in the life blood of Android and is a great way to put game controls and other interfaces into the mix.
If gaming become part of the TV itself because the TV is running Android (especially if modularly upgradable TV's actually do happen) and the on-board processors, memory, and graphics can handle it - not far of a stretch from what we have today, I'm all for the console croaking. This concept isn't that far out.
We will know we've won when Nintendo becomes a game designer and content provider, like they were in the early Donkey Kong days and like Sega did years ago post Dream Cast.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
I would also lay odds that he PS3 is STILL better than the budget boxes in many people's homes (many are still single core with GPU's nowhere near the capability of the Nvidia chip in the PS3)
That all depends on how fast these budget boxes get replaced with Ivy Bridge boxes, whose integrated GPU runs a PS3-class PC game (Skyrim) at a playable frame rate according to AnandTech.
M$ is the name for a string variable in BASIC. It is also an abbreviation of "Microsoft" that calls to mind Microsoft's beginning as a publisher of BASIC interpreters. In a comment body, it might be considered childish, but it saves space in subject lines (<= 50 characters), signatures (<= 120 characters), and tweets (<= 140 characters).
Developer couldn't sell his crappy games, says consoles.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
When you have a house, playing games on spare TVs is for the kids
And unless a game is rated M, its developers are targeting kids at least in part.
hell, becoming more niche would be a good thing to this PC gamer
Hell yes. The latest Mass Effect has sticky walls and maps every damn player action to the space bar. If I wanted everything mapped to one button I'd get a console. Game makers, if you're going to charge more than $20, please don't cripple the game so it plays on consoles.
and at least the PI can be connected to a keyboard and mouse, and run a real OS (linux).
You can do all of that with ATV or the PS3
With a PS3, however, you need to find one of the dwindling supply of PS3s whose hardware still works and whose firmware hasn't been updated to 3.21 or later. Would you consider that easier than buying a Raspberry Pi once production gets ramped up?
And they just launched the full edition on the Xbox
"Full edition"? That's a rather ambiguous term considering that the Xbox version will be several iterations behind the PC version on release.
Where is the line drawn for full exactly? Survival mode?
Fear is the mind killer.
RTS? I dunno. Certainly RTS games don't take a lot of horsepower. But players eschew the mouse for as much as possible because it's not as fast as the keyboard. Fat fingering an RTS would really be very painful.
I don't mean games just being similar, nothing exists in a vacuum, I mean things that are the same damn game but with slightly different graphics.
That's been going on since cinema, if not earlier. Home Alone is the same thing as Die Hard. (Overview | Details)
Casual games will kill console games the same way pop music killed classical music. It won't.
But since pop music came out, the market shifted such that there's no money in classical music anymore.
if I have a gaming inclination that wants to be satisfied by something engaging and complex for hours, I'm probably not going to play Tetris.
Dozens of regulars on forums such as HardDrop.com and TetrisConcept.net would disagree with you, as well as anybody who routinely plays the game this fast. Try keeping up with that on a tablet.
As mobile platforms are now truly handheld computers, and computers meanwhile get amazingly cheap, it seems that consoles are getting squeezed out.
Let me know when smartphone and tablet platforms come with input devices as suitable for twitch games as those that come with a PC or console.
You can hook up a game controller to a tablet
Controllers marketed for use with tablets were still very expensive the last time I looked.
and some interesting games even support them.
But if the game you want to play happens not to support the controller you happen to own, you have to buy another.
everybody has a cell phone anyway which is easily tethered to a tablet.
Budget dumbphones, such as anything on Virgin Mobile's $7/mo plan, aren't "easily tethered to a tablet". Smartphones on plans that forbid tethering aren't "easily tethered to a tablet". Smartphone plans that allow tethering aren't affordable yet in the United States, which is Slashdot's home country and the biggest monolingual industrialized market for video games outside China.
First off, Cyan did actually port Myst and Riven to iOS and are working on a port of realMyst.
Point-and-click games are ideal for iPad. Twitch games like Super Mario Bros. and Tetris are not.
and you can use an iPod Touch as a touch controller
An iPod touch is still completely flat, making it impossible to feel with your thumbs whether your thumbs are over the right on-screen buttons. There's a reason that Nintendo has been making buttons easy to distinguish by touch since 1991, such as the concave and convex buttons on the Super NES controllers and the different sized buttons on the N64 and GameCube controllers. But more importantly, they're buttons, and they're raised, and they go in when you press them.
like Nintendo thinks is a good idea to do with the Wii-U.
The Wii U controller has physical buttons on each side, just like the Dreamcast controller that Nintendo's designers allegedly started with, for a reason.
people will instead hook up their current mobile phone to a TV set and a controller
Let me know when such controllers become affordable.
I have a PS3. I play Tekken 6 online, among other games. The online part of the game is frustrating and very primitive, especially compared to PC games with MP support.
That's because fighting games are twitch games. In FPS, RPS, and MMORPG, it's fairly easy to dead-reckon what's going to happen over the next few frames. Dead reckoning isn't so effective for fighting games, and the games compensate by delaying the keypresses until the other player's keypresses for the same frame have come back to you. This means any ping more than a couple frames (33 ms) is going to result in noticeable delays. Fighting games are really designed for the use case where you plug in two gamepads, or four if you're playing Smash Bros., and play on the same machine with the same screen with latencies in the single digit milliseconds.
That's because consoles are holding back PC gaming. People can try and dance around the issue but that's all there is to it. 8 years ago what pushed PC's was gaming itself, since more developers shifted over to the hot-shit of consoles, hardware cycles have lengthened quite a lot. Used to be 3-6mo on a new product, now it's almost a year if not a year.
Om, nomnomnom...
the new generation of gaming platform manufacturers: Intel, Nvidia, AMD
Let me know when Intel, Nvidia, and AMD start encouraging PC game developers to support gamepads properly and provide for multiplayer on a single PC. (Yeah, some genres would a problem with screen-peeking, but that's not a problem in co-op or in e.g. fighting games.) Until then, PC game publishers are going to stay greedy, requiring a separate PC and (more importantly) a separate copy of the game per player.
Indeed. This is especially true of processors. Most games tend to be GPU-bound, so at worst you'll have to upgrade your GPU once during the lifetime of your computer. A good 5-year old processor can easily play most games at fairly high fidelity as long as it's paired with a good GPU. RAM can be another upgrade, but it's so cheap it's not really a deal-breaker.
Thing is, for some reason people believe that if your brand new PC can play a game at maximum graphics, then it should also be able to do the same five years down the line, otherwise it needs to be replaced. That's just bad logic; if you lower the settings to get a good frame rate, you'll end up with similar (or better) fidelity than you did when you first purchased your computer, just like consoles. The top option of a PC game released in recent years is something no console could run, so it's not all that surprising a PC from the same time can't either.
Sadly, wrong expectations like that are keeping the myth that gaming PCs have a short useful life very much alive.
Call me crazy, but are we really going to assume that someone in-charge of a MOBILE GAME COMPANY is going to tell the absolute truth when it comes to his competition?
I have to agree with some of the posts above; mobile gaming can keep their time-sinks, I'll stick with my MMOs!...Er..
Consistency is only a virtue if you're not a screw-up.
Consoles are BECOMING PCs.
This happened the moment they got hard drives.
The advantages to consoles used to be:
Always worked, no patching required.
dedicated to games,
Cheap enough to not really be concerned when they are outdated in 3 years, and
Easy to set up an maintain..is in plug in and forget.
All of that is now gone from all the consoles except the Wii. At the same time, they have NONE of the advantages of a PC.
Open, configurable, 3rd party mods, quicker response, and you can move your character in tighter circles.
Then developing for each console, and the PC? PITA.
Will there be a machine of some sort in the living room? yes, but that doesn't make it a console in the traditional sense.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Not to mention one could having a gaming PC AND a console for the price of the iPad 3 which in a dead economy means it sure as hell isn't gonna get the mass market appeal of either gaming PCs nor consoles. ya know, THIS, this right here, is the part that always amaze me about Apple hipsters. just because they think its nothing to plonk $700 down for a new iShiny they automatically think that the world MUST be like them and therefor able to plonk $700 down for an iShiny.
News flash: the world isn't like you, hell the United States is more and more not like you as factory work has been replaced by McJobs and construction taken over by illegals. i work with the normal folks 6 days a week, folks like Suzy the checkout girl, Brian the backhoe operator, Lisa the bank teller. Ask these people how much money they make and then find out if they would plonk down $700 for an iShiny and see how quickly they laugh you out of the room.
The simple fact is the X360 starts on amazon at $135, I can build a casual gaming PC while still making a profit for around $350 and a monster gamer for around $575 so you could literally buy the monster AND the X360 for less than the ipad 3 before you even figure in the docks and keyboards and all the other accessories you'll want for the thing. Not saying it isn't a nice device, its a damned nice device, but to use a /. car analogy a Ferrari is a damned nice car but it'll never be a replacement for a Ford, anymore than the iShiny will replace gaming Pcs and consoles.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Also, trends don't continue forever. People who write headlines love to do that, but it doesn't make any sense. Mobile gaming increased 400% last year? Yes, you can make a graph implying that in 5 years, we will all be playing "Angry Birds" 24 hours a day, but that's not going to happen.
Xbox, wii, and PS3 sales may be going down, and facebook games going up. But people who like playing "real" videogames (whatever you choose to call them, the $60 big titles like mass effect 3) are not going to say "Hey, you know what's really big right now? Farmville! Fuck Modern Warfare 27, I'm just going to plant wheat!" Facebook is not going to replace gaming.
Prediction: in a few years, we're going to see stories on slashdot about "Why the mobile/facebook gaming bubble burst." And I'm going to say "I told you so" to all those people totally surprised their facebook game developing company went belly up.
Jesus, any gaming PC you can build for $350 is one /I/ don't want. But even at that, the /realistic/ price for a 360 on Amazon is at least $200, so you're already at $550. You can have the iPad 3 for $499.
I'll take that over a piece of shit $350 pc thanks. Any PC I own will be a long sight better than that.
Hell that is what i love about my EEE 1215B, as not only can it carry a couple of dozen movies easily, and all the music i care to listen to, but when i am stuck somewhere I can fire up GTA:VC or L4D or Crazy Taxi 3 and have me some fun without needing an extra device. I need to carry the netbook anyway for service calls so why bother having a handheld like my old GBA? Of course you'd probably laugh your ass off if you saw me in the doctor's office as I have all these 'backseat drivers' going "Look out, watch out for the truck! the cops are chasing you, head down the alley!", its like trying to drive with my mother in the truck LOL!
That is why i couldn't believe that NOW of all times Sony releases the Vita gimped all to hell with Vita cards and Vita memory and Vita connectors, talk about the absolutely WORST time to try to gimp everyone with lock in, when everyone and their dog has cells and tablets and netbooks to choose from that use bog standard and cheap hardware. if they would have used standard SDHC or miniSD i could have seen it, but why would anyone want to deal with another memory stick assraping?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
1) Ease of use. Connects easily into nearly any home AV setup. 2) A functional and useable control scheme. 3) Common Platform means games work out of the box. The iPhone and iPad technically have the third advantage due to Apple's excessive control, while every other smart phone OS does not. A PC has the second advantage but not the rest. I wouldn't think either group of devices has a chance against the consoles unless they can offer all three, but even then a hidden advantage of a console is that it just sits there ready to go. I wouldn't want to un-dock my smart device only to lose it/drop it on the sidewalk and be out of business at home too. I suppose I could just buy one and leave it connected but guess what ? Then it's just a console.
Call of Duty STILL breaking pre-order records for each iteration would beg to differ about this. I consider myself a huge gamer and know far too many people who are also into games, and only 1 of them plays smartphone/tablet/Apple games. Maybe if all you do is hang around people who play games on occasion or are very casual gamers, then sure, it would make sense. Just because that is all you are around does not mean that your conclusion should be that everybody is like you or everybody around you sums up everybody on the planet. Way to stereotype there based only on what is around you
The world is how you make it
Those things have become amazing in their raw computing power. The games are not quite there yet but taking a look at Glowball, Riptide or Shadowgun on a Tegra3 device you get the message.
Sadly the Transformer Prime seems to be made of Unobtanium. Slaughter more blue people!
Also it has been advertised that those things support this nVidia 3D shutter glass thingie although on such a small screen I don't think it is actually worth it. Since I have a pair of those anyway I will gladly hook them up once Asus has sorted out that Unobtanium problem.
My phone came with a 3G/WiFi hotspot tethering app preinstalled. Seems like T-Mobile/Germany is very relaxed about the tethering issue.
20 minutes into the future
With all this talk about graphics performance, I'd say the best weapon consoles have at the moment is physical gaming controls Touch Screens are wonderful for many things but unless the ipad 3 generation are a massive improvement, then any game that plays best with d-pad and buttons will still lack something on tablet/phone.
triple core WITH SSD is $199 after MIR, if you look around you can find an OEM Win 7 HP for around $60-$70, an HD4850 at geeks is $50. That leaves me roughly $60 for putting it together which with the software installs being unattended takes less than an hour. and that $499 ipad is worthless without all the other crap, the docks and adapters and keyboards and crap, and while you can slap on Steam and have literally hundred of F2P games you ain't getting shit worth having in Appleland for free.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Saying Console's are dying because of an increase in Table sales is a flawed analysis.
http://www.vgchartz.com/analysis/platform_totals/
If you look back over history, game console sell about 200 million units in any given generation, give or take
In this generation of consoles, there where 3 major contenders, Wii, PS3, and X Box360, total sales of all game consoles exceed 200 million.
Throwing in hand-held game devices, you see there are over 250 million between DS, PSP, Vita and 3DS.
The flaw is to assume that game console sales MUST match tablet tor mobile platform sales in order to succeed. This is wrong.
Just because
a) tablet and phones sales are growing and exceed game console sales
AND
b) software sales on tablet and phones exceed game console sales
does NOT conclude that game consoles are dying.
What the idiots are not understanding is that Game Console HAVE and ALWAYS will be a "NICHE" market.
Generation over Generation growth of units in this NICHE market have increased. The PS3/360/Wii generation sold more units then the PS2/Xbox/GameCube generation. However grown in game consoles HAVE NEVER matched growth of PC's or Tablets or Phones. Game consoles sales have grown year over year, but you will never see 1 billion units sold in any generation. It is wrong to look at unit totals and declare one market segment is in decline.
Also wrong is the idea that someone who owns a tablet will not want a game console, both provide DIFFERENT experiences. A tablet or phone does not replace ALL experiences offered by a console, and vice versa.
Also wrong is the idea that game developers will not support new game consoles. Again, game developers will develop software titles that will match the experience of the target platform. Unique games will be created for Tablets, unique games will be developed for consoles.
When Sony/MS/Nintendo release a new generation of product, the niche market consumers will buy these consoles, I would only declare that game consoles are dying if a new generation of game consoles do not sell as much as the previous generation.
Comparing Tablet and Phone sales to game console sales is ignorant, and this presentation was performed by a complete idiot.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
It's the other way around, a lot of recent games are developed for consoles and ported to the PC.
I wasn't implying otherwise. But uncripling the interface should be part of the port, particularly if the publisher is charging fifty or sixty bucks.
These people are going all gaga over mobile and tablet games, but let's look at the numbers for a moment. I'll quote this NeoGAF post:
So what is my point?
The point here is that the guy with a vested interest in mobile and tablet gaming is implying that these games are eating into the profits of "traditional" gaming companies. But I do not believe this for a second.
The reason sales on dedicated consoles are falling is that the games are not of sufficiently high quality. They do not appeal to a wide enough audience. However, were Nintendo to start making games that do appeal to a wider audience, they would sell very well indeed.
In other words: The enemy of dedicated gaming consoles is not games on mobile phones, but rather the lack of quality software on these dedicated gaming devices.
And yes, the revenue from these minigames on phones is tiny compared to the big sellers on dedicated consoles.
Clever signature text goes here.
Hate to point this out, but your great deal requires a keyboard too. No thanks, ain't touching that thing with a 10 foot pole. And what 'crap' (besides -possibly- a keyboard) is it you think you need with an iPad without which, it's worthless? No genius, no one thinks that you can slap Steam on an iPad and play literally hundreds of F2P games. On the other hand, Apple sold something on the order of 50 million tablets this past year, and something on the order of 320 million units when you wrap that together with the iPhone and the iPod touch. Possibly something developers might be paying attention to.
Except M$ doesn't also mean multiple sclerosis.
"MS" has several different meanings. One is a debilitating and surprisingly widespread affliction that renders the sufferer barely able to perform the simplest task. Another is a disease. At least both connotations of "M$" (greed and old BASIC) clearly say Microsoft.
Is that not the case?
The case in question is Sony Computer Entertainment v. Hotz.
The reality is that hacking your PS3 to run Linux is spectacularly unlikely to get you into any trouble
But will it get the person who sold me the tool that makes it possible to hack my PS3 to run Linux into trouble?
putting legal issues aside
I forgot to mention: If you do that, why not illegally copy the proprietary commercial games too? If you break the small law, why not break the big law?
Not if that person lives in China
Until these Chinese modchips start getting stopped at the border.
it's about running Linux is my right
"Of course you have the right to run Linux. That's why we sell VAIO PCs."
Dealextreme appears to be well in bed with the government as they regularly lie blatantly on their customs declarations
I have ordered from DX a couple times in the past, and I haven't noticed as much "lying" as vagueness in describing these developer tools as a "video game accessory". I'm just afraid of the next crackdown, like the old crackdowns on R4 card dealers.
Two words: Cow Clicker
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
So a company that makes games for Apple Istuff and Android says consoles are dying?
Why am I not surprised?
Of course console games are dying to him. They have to because that is the only way he can prop up the market he is in. If he came out and said that things were hunky dory with consoles then people would probably think he is high.
Bottom line: This guy is shooting off an opinion and a biased one at that.
Tetris is far from the only puzzle game. Take any game in the pipe-panic genre [or] Bejeweled
I've split puzzle games into building games and switching games. Apart from Pipe Dream and its clones, the games that work well on a touch screen are switching games like Bejeweled. Anything using the falling blocks paradigm of Tetris, Columns, Dr. Mario, Puyo Pop, or Lumines will fail. I just want to make sure that you're not trying to imply that Pipe Dream and switching games are the only worthwhile puzzle games and that falling block games deserve to wither.
But what you are doing is asking how particular games designed with indirect control through buttons and joysticks would work on a touch screen.
I agree that the control scheme would differ. But how exactly should it work in some of the genres more commonly associated with gamepads? Donkey Kong and every other platformer since would have handled very differently had they been designed for a touch screen instead of a joystick. How would you have designed a control scheme for a touch-only platformer?
The best games are designed with the particular platform's control method(s) in mind.
So how should an indie developer earn the right to develop on a platform that includes physical buttons, without having to move the whole family to Seattle, Austin, or Boston just to find a job as an intern in a developer that's established enough to qualify for a PSVita or 3DS license? The association of gamepads with established developers just seems so arbitrary and artificial to me.