You keep saying this but how does that approach make money? i.e. the reason consoles exist in the first place. If exclusives are so profitable why is Sony releasing on PC too?
Is there a future for consoles without a return to exotic hardware? *spawn
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You keep saying this but how does that approach make money? i.e. the reason consoles exist in the first place. If exclusives are so profitable why is Sony releasing on PC too?
Yes but they do it out of ideology however it's apparently not good enough for the industry to only be content with expensive standardized hardware to exclusively develop content for it so they throw that out of the window and do multiplatform releases w/ parity too ...
What else are console vendors going to do ? Sell the EXACT SAME GENERATION as before to consumers ? At least with a true reset, you can force/deprioritize developers off of the other/older platforms out of necessity!
How are consoles NOT competing with PCs at this point would be my question ? They have no upper hand in perf/cost (since they don't have the better APIs anymore), becoming ever more expensive HW setups, and no exclusives so does anyone going to think they're just going to plop down all this cash for a diminishingly better user experience in comparison to PCs ?
Console vendors are supposed to make money by GROWING THEIR OWN platform's userbase. How does it help them that there's nearly NOTHING to be gained by owning their platforms ? Go take a look at Microsoft's console business for instance and tell anyone else with a straight face how well they've been able thrive alone with multiplatform games ...
All of the console vendors also make money from selling games and they are looking at the total picture. Clearly Sony believes that they will make more money releasing their games on PC than they will make on incremental console sales by maintaining exclusivity. So yes they can make more money by growing their hardware base. They also make more money by releasing their games on multiple platforms. We know which option is currently winning.
In order for your strategy to work they would need to expand the hardware base enough to compensate for lost multi platform sales.
Consoles still provide unique value that PCs can’t match. The ecosystem and user experience in theory should be much more streamlined and painless. Arguably consoles haven’t delivered on that front with all of the broken releases but the potential is still there to attract console users even without game exclusivity.
You never answer the business question.
If you are a third party, why are you going to make a platform exclusive and lose out on an additional 100-200+M machines if you include PC and other consoles?If you are a platform holder, how many more units are you going to have to shift on a single platform to make up for lost revenue selling to 100-200+M other potential users? Particularly as consoles are no longer cheap and can't sell to the <$300 audience as they used to?
The only company that has made sense with that model is Nintendo, who is using off-the-shelf parts but presenting them 1) in a novel package, the handheld hybrid, and 2) continues to maintain a stellar software output that achieves bonkers adoption, making cheaper games limited to a 'cartoon' aesthetic and not spending big on photorealism or typical AAA values.
That's only true if they can make money growing their install base. How many more PS5s would be sold at >$400 if Sony weren't selling titles on PC? Probably none. So selling to PC then gets additional revenue. Ultimately these companies are about making money, not making consoles. Consoles was just a way to do that. With a shifting technological and economic landscape, that model starts to make less sense.
The full extension of your proposition is
1) Esoteric hardware that's harder to use making third parties probably avoid your platform
2) Needs to look so amazing people won't care that their other games no longer work and are happy for a choice of only 8 games at launch and up to 20 in the first year like consoles used to have
3) A dependence on massive adoption to establish a large userbase for selling exclusives to, so...
3a) A necessity to either use cheap hardware t have a low price, or sell with significant losses, the latter of which is shown to just burn money.
There's no reality where a new machine is released at $400, has hardware so unique it puts PC to shame, has a software library that shows it off, has games so appealing people are happy to leave BC behind, and sells 25 million in its first year and every year after until reaching 150+ million and being so lucrative in its software that devs will design for it instead of the other 200+ million PC, PS5s, Switches, and heck, even mobiles, that their multiplatforms can sell to.
The only way you will get a machine where exclusives are hugely appealing is experience, such as Wii, that sold so much so fast that devs were happy to target its input. And that's not dependent on exotic graphics hardware or processor designs, but on interface and general functionality.
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Nintendo essentially did this with Wii, and they won that generations as well.
That's not going to last as long as you think it will when the end goal of the industry is hardware convergence thus PCs will eventually reach a similar enough user experience with new releases and new hardware but that alone is not going to prevent the collapse of consoles in the face of worse value proposition like no perf/cost advantage, no cheap hardware upgrade, and absolutely no exclusives compared to PC!
Sony isn't clever enough to look further down on the road of problems they're going to face later on as evidenced by their recent dumb GaaS push ...
I must not be of sound mind but how exactly does inviting MORE COMPETITION help out a platform owner like Sony when they effectively lose out on the ability to provide exclusive services and take revenue cuts for a captive set of audiences/developers respectively and especially set their own standards ?You never answer the business question.
If you are a platform holder, how many more units are you going to have to shift on a single platform to make up for lost revenue selling to 100-200+M other potential users? Particularly as consoles are no longer cheap and can't sell to the <$300 audience as they used to?
THAT wasn't the strategy that Sony took with respect to Microsoft's Xbox and in fact have blocked them at every opportunity for it! Sometimes having MORE CONTROL (the concept that people overlook the most) of your own future or business is better than making higher profits or do you prefer operating by the rules or whims of other corporations ? I know Nintendo would never accept the latter that you and everyone else here seem to be in awe about ...
You overstate the importance of backwards compatibility. A new console cycle is defined by the new experiences that they have to offer and never the old experiences that are available in the previous cycle thus the 'reset' that comes with it. Virtually ALL of the most successful systems out there either don't feature backwards compatibility or didn't attribute/factor much into their wide appeal based on it. The PS3 arguably gained MORE APPEAL by ditching backwards compatibility in their later models since it helped Sony increased their sales of their platform and they dominated the last generation wo/ ever featuring it ...
Mobile software development is VASTLY different from the rest (PC/consoles) and developers are somehow willing to tolerate this gap so that MUST MEAN that there exists some CAPACITY for hardware differentiation! Often times the biggest/common complaint I hear from graphics programmers is that they wished that Khronos would design a different gfx API JUST FOR mobile gfx hardware rather than a unified desktop/mobile gfx API much like Vulkan is now ...
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raytracingfan
Newcomer
Now that AAA games take 5+ years to make, backwards compatibility is more important than ever. In many cases you can't even play all the games of a trilogy on a single console if it wasn't for backwards compatibility. It also imposes customer lock-in. With backwards compatibility, console gamers can keep their existing library and ditch the old console when they upgrade to a new generation, but have to keep the old console or rebuy their old games (if they are even available) if they switch to a different brand or PC. Without backwards compatibility they have to keep the old console or rebuy either way. Customer lock-in is even more effective in the digital age since old games can't even be sold anymore.
@Bold So what exactly happened to Sony after the PS2, or Nintendo after the Wii, and Microsoft after the Xbox 360 ? How were Sony able to regain their footing with the PS4 or Nintendo with the Switch despite both of them not featuring any BC ?
BC is ultimately shown to be an irrelevant factor to a console platforms success ...
This is just rhetoric and you don't address any of the issues to spell out a workable plan. You've yet to describe a piece of hardware that can be made and supported with adequate software at whatever price. You just keep referring to history when things were very different for lots of reasons.
Yes, but you're living in the past here. the next gen was always something outlandishly awesome that people wanted to move on to. The next-gen now isn't going to be transformative but an incremental improvement, at which point BC has increased value.
See discussion on this board. Around PS3 era polls said people were happy to have a clean break, but now less so. Especially as loved games quite often don't get a remake or sequel and to enjoy them you have to revisit the original. There are PS3 games that aren't playable now at all, where many a PS5 owner would rather they were playable on their new console.
I'm not sure what your argument here is. There are billions of mobile devices. As a dev you'll do whatever you have to, mostly using cross-platform engines that do all the work for you and run inefficiently versus to-the-metal native coding that doesn't net you much more sales. A console with weird hardware that adds to development complexity and time won't be appealing to any devs unless it can offer a crazy large/rich install base that generates huge revenues to offset the reduced market size and added complexity.
You need to expand on your argument beyond "I want it to be like it used to be" to spelling out how that's feasible. What is the hardware design, how does it improve on just using PC parts, what would it cost, what would the software be, and why should we believe it'll sell gangbusters and be viable?
raytracingfan
Newcomer
My claim is that backwards compatibility is more important going forwards than at the launch of the 8th gen consoles. We already know that Sony and Microsoft picked AMD again for the 10th generation, which means there will be three straight generations of backwards compatibility. Gamers will be accustomed to that expectation, and if the 11th gen breaks the trend it will provoke backlash.
Having great games is the most important selling point for a platform, and the more great games it can play, the better. In prior generations, games were developing quickly enough that a new console would get many games made for it quickly. That's not the case anymore, so having access to the previous generation's catalog is more important. It's especially important for attracting new gamers that want to play previous generation titles but haven't yet.
Consider a scenario where the PS7 breaks backwards compatibility and a new gamer has to pick what platform they want. If they go with PC they can effortlessly play the vast majority of popular PC games ever made that are not reliant on defunct servers. And every PC game not reliant on defunct servers can be played one way or another, and console titles from old generations can be emulated as well. If they pick PS7, they can only play PS7 titles, and they'll need to buy a PS6 as well to play games from the previous three generations (some of which will still be listed among the greatest games of all time even decades later). If Sony instead preserves backwards compatibility, PC still has the advantage, but it's far less lopsided.
@Bold Cherry picking so soon ?
Some things do change and some don't but new games (or audiences ?) has fundamentally ALWAYS driven a new console cycle and if the so called 'next-gen' "isn't going to be transformative" as you claim then there really isn't a point anymore to invoking a new console cycle is there, now ? Unless of course console vendors are looking to compete against their own predecessors ...
What does it really matter if the new systems had BC or not (since they aren't much of an improvement) when developers are just going to permanently release their games for the said old systems too from now on ? As an owner of a current gen console you're not really missing out on anything the so called new systems have to offer thus their collapse ...
@Bold You mean the bubble here that isn't really representative of the general populace ? It wasn't TOO LONG AGO (2017) that consumers ate up the Switch in droves despite having NO BC!
Now I'm interested to know how Nintendo will square around this BC conundrum that you yourself posit since every emulator developer has outright stated from their accounts that NVN is NOT binary compatible with newer Nvidia architectures ...
There maybe a lot of mobile devices out there but trust me when I say that developers evoke NO JOY in working with them and that it's universally agreed upon they're AWFUL platforms to work on but they're OFTEN the ones that need all sorts of micro-optimizations/driver workarounds otherwise developers will literally LOSE potential customers so it stands to reason that the same should apply for consoles too since they're the ones that also NEED IT THE MOST compared to PCs over there where you can just brute force everything ...
If something like mobile phones (especially unpleasant to developers) or even the Switch (NVN is not at all similar to D3D12) to a lesser extent can command the attention of big game developers, I don't see why the other dedicated gaming consoles can't earn some careful attention so that console manufacturers can SOMEHOW find away to OPTIMIZE the BoM for a GREATER market. Again it's the developer's JOB to make these things work with their given resources no matter how much their environment sucks ...
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So then make "PS7 games" instead to sell "PS7 consoles" and if it's games are GOOD then eventually the more skeptical observers WILL have a REASON pick up the new system! I don't see what's so hard about this since THIS HAS LITERALLY HAPPENED FOR EVERY CONSOLE CYCLE SO FAR!
If THERE is demand to see old content on newer platforms then the concept of ports/remasters/remakes/re-releases are a thing like the Switch has showed us. Engineering BC into something like the Switch WASN'T feasible at the time AND the system came out very much BETTER OFF FOR NOT DOING SO ...
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What Microsoft has done is less about "real" backwards compatibility and more about forwards entitlement. There was nothing stopping Nintendo from allowing people who purchased digital versions of Captain Toad for WiiU to have an entitlement for Captain Toad on Switch. Except, they wanted to sell it again. I don't know if Switch was better off for not doing this, but I know the consumer wasn't better off because they had to pay again to play. Nintendo, though, was better off because they had a steady stream of games to release that few people played.
There's only so many people that want to play games on a console... That market has been matured for generations now.. they know where their limits are.. regardless of whether the hardware and APIs are exotic or not. Consumers play games, they don't play APIs. Consoles don't exist to make developers happy and their lives easier.. Consoles have essentially peaked and they need to expand their games to other platforms.
You're not giving any indication of how some bespoke architecture and development APIs are going to result in different experiences that couldn't be done anywhere else. Computer graphics has matured the way it has for a reason too.. Consumers like backwards compatibility. They like being able to play what they want where they want.
The BEST way for consoles to differentiate themselves is through the INPUT method of the device. If you don't change the way games are played and controlled, then you're not changing anything that's worth losing all the benefits that comes with maintaining a similar architecture to PC.
I find a lot to agree with in @Remij 's post. Backwards compatibility is really interesting to aging gamers who want to remember and replay the games which really got them into gaming to begin with. This is highlighted by sales on remasters of old games back into current tech, and sales of the boutique emulators like the tiny NES which included a few dozen original NES games and was released a few years ago to decent sales. Obviously, there's only so much you can really sell in that space, so having a console which can simply play those old titles enables a non-trival number of easy sales with little additional cost to the software dev or console manufacturer.
Creating a new chunk of hardware requires some serious engineering talent to create the ISA, a dedicated fab to actually make the chips, and an army of hardcore nerds to create the OS and all the APIs necessary to get that new hardware into a state where 3rd parties can then write software to it. And now we're back to what has already been stated a half-dozen times: development shops are only going to write to it if there's any sort of reasonable guarantee their own immense learning curve (and related cost) will be outweighed handsomely by the quantity of customers.
The one thing I'm not really aligned with is differentiation based on input method. In my own view, a PC can (and does) take any input method a console can. Fortunately for the consoles, the reverse is almost true; support for modern USB keyboards and mice and even aftermarket controllers like pedals and joysticks (think flight or driving sim hardware) are becoming almost commonplace on the newest console gear. Hell, I've seen console support for aftermarket USB audio cards now, which honestly kinda blows me away.
I personally feel consoles differentiate themselves by ease of use, and by their game library. The entire reason you buy a console for gaming is you don't want the complexity of a PC, and honestly there IS complexity even if it's still a pretty low barrier (in my view, I'm biased, sorry) to entry. Being able to just grab an appliance off the shelf of your favorite brick-and-mortar store, drag it home, plug it in and turn it on and begin gaming literally within minutes is a very swanky customer-centric experience. Trying to decide between XBOX and PS (and Mintendo, I guess) really comes down to the games you want to play.
Finally, about phone games: the good news is, you really only have a few platforms to worry about. Android on ARM, and iPhone on ARM. Obviously the APIs differ between the two major players, and of course you can run into problems with varying capacity issues (older models will have less fillrate, texture rate, allocable "video memory", etc.) Yet the lowest common denominator for both mostly ends up being which OS you want to start with, which probably indirectly links to the lowest processor / GPU capability you want, and then you're mostly set. Turns out, Android and iPhone both pay a lot of attention to backwards compatibility (gasp!) which means the OS and hardware do a lot of lifting to ensure your mid-tier app can run on a LOT of extant and upcoming hardware with very little effort.
I'm beginning to think this conversation has run its course. We've pretty solidly answered why boutique isn't happening anymore, and we've pretty much beaten to death how the target demographic of consoles is making their decisions and how they likely hope + expect their gaming experience to unfold.
Creating a new chunk of hardware requires some serious engineering talent to create the ISA, a dedicated fab to actually make the chips, and an army of hardcore nerds to create the OS and all the APIs necessary to get that new hardware into a state where 3rd parties can then write software to it. And now we're back to what has already been stated a half-dozen times: development shops are only going to write to it if there's any sort of reasonable guarantee their own immense learning curve (and related cost) will be outweighed handsomely by the quantity of customers.
The one thing I'm not really aligned with is differentiation based on input method. In my own view, a PC can (and does) take any input method a console can. Fortunately for the consoles, the reverse is almost true; support for modern USB keyboards and mice and even aftermarket controllers like pedals and joysticks (think flight or driving sim hardware) are becoming almost commonplace on the newest console gear. Hell, I've seen console support for aftermarket USB audio cards now, which honestly kinda blows me away.
I personally feel consoles differentiate themselves by ease of use, and by their game library. The entire reason you buy a console for gaming is you don't want the complexity of a PC, and honestly there IS complexity even if it's still a pretty low barrier (in my view, I'm biased, sorry) to entry. Being able to just grab an appliance off the shelf of your favorite brick-and-mortar store, drag it home, plug it in and turn it on and begin gaming literally within minutes is a very swanky customer-centric experience. Trying to decide between XBOX and PS (and Mintendo, I guess) really comes down to the games you want to play.
Finally, about phone games: the good news is, you really only have a few platforms to worry about. Android on ARM, and iPhone on ARM. Obviously the APIs differ between the two major players, and of course you can run into problems with varying capacity issues (older models will have less fillrate, texture rate, allocable "video memory", etc.) Yet the lowest common denominator for both mostly ends up being which OS you want to start with, which probably indirectly links to the lowest processor / GPU capability you want, and then you're mostly set. Turns out, Android and iPhone both pay a lot of attention to backwards compatibility (gasp!) which means the OS and hardware do a lot of lifting to ensure your mid-tier app can run on a LOT of extant and upcoming hardware with very little effort.
I'm beginning to think this conversation has run its course. We've pretty solidly answered why boutique isn't happening anymore, and we've pretty much beaten to death how the target demographic of consoles is making their decisions and how they likely hope + expect their gaming experience to unfold.
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I still maintain that the Switch not featuring any BC was easily the best decision Nintendo has made for the platform since they wouldn't have been able to deliver the good games they've made before to a new audience. They've avoided a lot of hardware design cruft this way by just porting those titles that needed another chance. I don't think Nintendo were just going to get there alone by just taking advantage of more advanced transistor technology so they had to move to a hardware design that was better suited for portable form factors ...
I'm curious what they'll do next when their hardware supplier has already decided their Maxwell architecture has clearly ran it's course and that there's no known modern option for a 'mobile' Tegra design ...
If the only options left for a new console cycle are to repackage current generation consoles and market them as "next generation" or decimate it's own demographics with prices increases while not being able to maintain exclusivity on the backs of a 100M+ userbase then there is clearly something deeply disturbingly wrong that the industry is doing ...
@Bold If so then why hasn't both PC graphics technology or mobile graphics technology 'converged' yet and why does Microsoft let one of it's AI PC partners, Qualcomm keep floating non-DX12 Ultimate compliant hardware (Snapdragon) into the mix ?! I'll be waiting for your answer on that food for thought ...
I keep seeing this but much of the industry isn't very good at this since they largely saw those platforms as a dumping grounds for ports, spin-offs, or their other less ambitious projects handled by smaller studios which is very well reflected in their sales performance ...
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There absolutely is something deeply disturbingly wrong with the industry.. but it has nothing to do with consoles lacking exotic hardware. These consoles also don't have 100M+ userbase out of the gate.. The only way that happens is if you support both the last gen and current gen, for essentially most of the new gen.. and thus you're beholden to other architectures regardless. These companies cannot reset the generations anymore. It could literally kill their brands. People have invested too much money into these ecosystems for Sony or MS to now say "Ok, PS6 is not BC, you have a PS5 for that".. Some things are just more important than developers being able to satisfy their curiosities with exotic hardware and architectures. The people have told them time and time again what's more important to them.
You answered your own question.. Microsoft either does or doesn't allow things to happen. They push the industries in the direction which is most likely to benefit them in the future. Which is the exact same reason why Sony is essentially conforming and not doing some vastly different thing.
And that's because it's easier to just make the same games you've always made but with prettier graphics.. Path of least resistance and all that.
Game Console:
1st Run: power up, put in disc/cartridge, press start
Subsequent Runs: Power up, press start
Boot time 11sec (PS2)
Booting a PS5 takes almost twice as long (20sec) and playing games requires the same cluttered process as playing a game on a PC.
The console gaming experience hasn't evolved enough to warrant the added hassle and we're effectively long past peak console gaming.
Doing exotic hardware to play the same game(s) is a fools errand. You’re just taking on costs to be different. And in the event a games doesn’t sell and you’re trying to recoup costs by putting it on other platforms, you’re screwed. Game budgets have skyrocketed in past generations. Breaking even in the ps2 generation is a different reality than today.
Also, whoever signs up as Bold is gonna be very confused.
Also, whoever signs up as Bold is gonna be very confused.
That was the crucial moment which really damaged the console market.