Current console sales prove consoles aren't doomed afterall *spawn

You've generalised everyone who plays games as demanding the best experience, yet we all know that isn't true. I've seen kids play some god-awful 'press the screen to get a high score' 'game' on mobile. We'd have never played that in my day, but despite it being a game completely lacking in gameplay, it was good enough for them.

Just because a game might look bad to you does not mean it is bad. Also, if you experience something new (which most kids do all the time) your quality reference frame is lacking. But if these people do not move on to "better" experiences I believe they will quit gaming.
 
We all know the sort of time wasters like Diablo 3 that you fire up and play, and it's fun, but it's not a challenge and it's not the most rewarding experience. Hell, a good D3 timewaster on mobile and I probably wouldn't need another games platform for another year!

A lot of people seem to really like D3. Playing it in a group with other people who has higher levels was also really challenging for me, but I assume the greatest lure of the game is to power-grind and build your character.

(Note, power-grinding is not really grinding....)
 
I don't see the logic in looking at a landscape with more competition and expecting it to remain exactly the same. Ask Nintendo why 60 million people bought a NES and why only 20 million bought a GC when GC offered exactly the same as NES but even better.

I do not think it will be the same! I think games will have to be better to compete with other forms of entertainment and those who don't will fail.
 
A lot of people seem to really like D3. Playing it in a group with other people who has higher levels was also really challenging for me, but I assume the greatest lure of the game is to power-grind and build your character.

(Note, power-grinding is not really grinding....)
I like playing D3. A game doesn't have to be truly rewarding to be entertaining. Plenty of people like Farmville and whatever and don't need to be playing something as in depth as Dark Souls to be entertained by a computer game.

And for article -
article said:
The developers of OnLive are on the same wavelength as Pachter. "This is the last major console cycle," OnLive's Steve Perlman said. "If not this one, then definitely the next one."

Pachter's peers, however, aren't as quick to jump to conclusions. Colin Sebastian of Lazard Capital argued that there'd be one more generation that would hit by 2012,
All of us said Pachter was wrong last gen, because things weren't changing fast enough, but that doesn't mean consoles will exist forever. I don't believe that this'll be the last console gen, but I see it could be if things have a sudden change. But I do also see that eventually discrete consoles won't make sense. As do Sony and MS who are investing in streaming services and even cross-device synergy.
 
Consoles may not last forever, but I hope the console like experience does. I'm not one to agree with the doom and gloom about it being the end for the console industry. I'm speculative of sales going into the future but for both the positive and negative. PS4 is selling strong and we haven't seen a price cut for it yet. With sales ging the way they are they could peak super early or it could be a sign of things to come. Clearly if sales remain strong for at least one of the consoles then it is likely that specific company will release a successor machine.

When it comes to mobile gaming and tablets intruding on the console space.........It's been touted for years now and we've yet to see it happen. If in a few years there's tablets that come along what rival the PS4 and Bone then I really hope there is an order of magnitude performance increase for hardware to power new consoles. If not then maybe it will be the demise of the console. People choosing laptops over gaming consoles is an interesting concept. If it becomes convenient enough then it could sway many customers. I'll play a wait and see approach in terms of how much and when mobile gaming starts seriously encroaching on the console space. Time will tell.

As long as the console market\ is healthy and can sustain development of new content is what matters to me. If the console market can grow as well as PC and mobile gaming that would be best. If the console market shrinks this generation, disregarding Wii, then that will be the best sign of a declining console market.
 
I like playing D3. A game doesn't have to be truly rewarding to be entertaining. Plenty of people like Farmville and whatever and don't need to be playing something as in depth as Dark Souls to be entertained by a computer game.

And for article -
All of us said Pachter was wrong last gen, because things weren't changing fast enough, but that doesn't mean consoles will exist forever. I don't believe that this'll be the last console gen, but I see it could be if things have a sudden change. But I do also see that eventually discrete consoles won't make sense. As do Sony and MS who are investing in streaming services and even cross-device synergy.

But the question isn't if the consoles will go away at some point, everything will go away at some point. The interesting question is when :)
Imho, smudge gaming has shown us what it can do, everything from here is a enhancement/evolution of something we have already seen on those platforms. Streaming games, well we already know how they work, play and look, again it will be incremental upgrades as technology gets better, but the revolution was done with Onlive. And lets be honest, the next gaming consoles will be 4K and VR ready, so just full filling the current consoles is not a end goal.

As for the, gamer laptops,it has been the norm around me for the past 2-3 years, that is what young people use when they play on their PC's now. My kids friend brings a Laptop, i use half an hour moving his stationary PC when they have play sessions :)
Again, nothing new, it is the norm for kids. When the play on the console i rarely have to help them, on the PC they are glad they have a professional PC support on hand.
 
The main thing to me is that people need tablets and PCs. Even if you have a console, you need a tablet or a PC at home.

All I 'need' is a slow & cheap PC/Laptop/tablet for emails, homework, news/forums and shopping and you can pick those up for ~£100...and the thing is we can use that while people play on the console. Sure for one person one solution may work, but really - for families multiple solutions make sense.
 
Btw, movie ticket sales were at their lowest in 20 years for 2014. The price of tickets has just gone way up. The people who are going are paying more, but less people are going to the movies.

I don't doubt this but movies are still making more than ever! I personally think cinemas have the pricing all wrong, it's like the food when you get there also - heck a night out for the family watching a film for £100!?
 
Consoles may not last forever, but I hope the console like experience does.

Consoles will be around for a very long time - there will always be some need. All this talk about mobile gaming closing the gap is fine, we have 'acceptable' solutions today and still PS4/XBO are selling fine, let's say in 2 years something like PS4 power comes out - no doubt by then Sony will start rumbling about PS5. Another thing being touted is the PC gaming - well there are those android boxes and they are your perfect example of simple and affordable PC gaming boxes - any they are not selling.
 
Useless fact, with 2 kids that have access to every present console and pc game, well right now they are playing on friv.com
Browser games are killing consoles!, at least in my home :)
 
Just not sure how anyone can make the argument that as mobile devices and low-end PCs/laptops begin to offer similar performance at similar pricepoints that there won't be competition for consoles. It's basically inevitable. Right now, there is no competition because mobile devices don't have anywhere near similar performance and are more expensive, and PCs are far more expensive for the same performance. But the trend has been each year the performance and price move closer together. It wasn't until Intil Iris Pro that there was a serious integrated GPU for "cheap" laptops. Before that gaming on a cheap laptop wasn't even an option.
 
Unless someone figures out a way to successfully break away from the current pricing model of mobile games, all that fancy new tech is a big ol' waste anyway. Mobile gamers simply aren't willing to pay for their entertainment.
 
You don't need a new model. If console gamers are willing to pay $x up front for a game, and that game is available on a tablet instead of a console, why wouldn't that same customer be willing to pay $x up front? I've seen it in plenty of comments from gamers - they hate the obscured F2P model and just want an up front price. As we're talking about selling 'console' games to 'console' gamers on non-consoles, the pricing strategy should remain the same, I'd have thought.
 
The last couple of years did a lot of damage to serious gaming on mobile devices and left a shit load of "real" gamers who were looking forward to a resurgence of the old wild west style of game development utterly disillusioned, rightfully fed up and deeply cynical. So no, I don't think that this is a case of if-we-make-it-they'll-come anymore. I'm also most definitely not going to pay the equivalent of a console game's price point for a mobile game which was built around lowest-common-denominator-touch-controls, regardless if I can plug in an optional controller or not. Then there's the whole storage space issue. Current big scale games are huge.
 
I'm pretty certain before the PS4/XBO were released you could cheaply build a PC that easily out-performed PS360 or buy a tablet that outperformed, in fact prior to release there were plenty of magazines stating you could build a PC with 'similar specs for a similar price' to PS4/XBO - all solutions offered many more games (and many of the same) at substantially cheaper prices, yet here we are and consoles still selling well.

The only potential I see is the stream service...but even then it would be so I could play XBO exclusives without having to shell out for the hardware.
 
You don't need a new model. If console gamers are willing to pay $x up front for a game, and that game is available on a tablet instead of a console, why wouldn't that same customer be willing to pay $x up front? I've seen it in plenty of comments from gamers - they hate the obscured F2P model and just want an up front price. As we're talking about selling 'console' games to 'console' gamers on non-consoles, the pricing strategy should remain the same, I'd have thought.
Different market, different expectations you don't buy a Tablet to play but if you bought a console you knew you were going to pay for games.
There's a lot of piracy of popular yet dirt cheap games on Mobile/Tablet, like Monument Valley for 3.59€ which reachs 95% piracy rate on Android... (60% on iOS, and damn don't tell me those people buying Apple hardware can't purchase a 3.59€ game !)
 
@goonergaz You're talking about building a PC to match a console at the end of the consoles generation. There's no way I'd build a PC with console-like specs six or seven years after the console was released. But if I could build a PC or buy a laptop for maybe a few hundred mores at the start of a console generation, or first half, and expect similar performance from games, that's entirely different. There are obviously other things that have to happen. PC can still be a bit of a mess for me. Windows10 is on its way, and so are Directx12 and Mantle.

We're not talking about right now, where value for consoles is obviously very strong at their price point. We're talking about the future. The trend is that PC and laptop prices are dropping as they become more powerful and more capable gaming devices at low end specs. The trend is that tablet and mobile devices are increasing in performance as prices remain static. Then there's the hybrid like Surface Pro 3, which may be the big transformation of the tablet/laptop industry. The trend for consoles is that they're becoming relatively less powerful at launch. If it continues, next-gen, or the year after, there may be more competition between all of these devices if they offer similar prices for similar performance. Two and three generations from now, who knows, but if the trends continue, then we could be looking at a much different gaming industry. People will always want to game on big screen televisions (unless VR totally takes over, but I doubt it). The question is what's hooked up to the tv and how.
 
I would think people buy consoles because the games available on them aren't elsewhere, or if they are the ease of use is so much higher that it's worth it, or couch coop/vs, or having high quality graphics (although a competing platform does better.).
I can only see consoles playing on their strengths to keep being relevant, I'm not sure how much being a media HUB matters, but it's convenient at least. (Less relevant with smart TV though.)
 
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