Not now, but in 2 years time it will. Before, it was the tail end of a generation before the PC could offer comparable performance at an entry level price.
Current console sales prove consoles aren't doomed afterall *spawn
- Thread starter London Geezer
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Ok, agree. But still, it's not a rule, it's just a coincidence that consoles had much bigger bandwidth back then.
I think current PC renaissance has much more to do with Steam that with them being "comparable" performance-wise.
Convenience is a big factor but, to stay in theme with the movie industry, cinema is now a very expensive endeavour in some places (£20 in a good one in London?? Madness!) yet it's doing as well if not better than ever.
Yes we download movies, we stream them, anything, but people still go to the movies and that market didn't suddenly die because it's more convenient to watch movies at home, or on a bloody tablet.
By the way I'm so sick of hearing about tablets apparently killing every single market out there, from games to movies to PC to sex.
If anything it's the tablet market which is now not growing as much as it was.
The notion that we will ultimately become a civilisation entirely served by tablets or bloody smartphones is not only ridiculous but also very shortsighted.
We all know we will become a civilisation of cybernetic and telepathic apes.
Yes we download movies, we stream them, anything, but people still go to the movies and that market didn't suddenly die because it's more convenient to watch movies at home, or on a bloody tablet.
By the way I'm so sick of hearing about tablets apparently killing every single market out there, from games to movies to PC to sex.
If anything it's the tablet market which is now not growing as much as it was.
The notion that we will ultimately become a civilisation entirely served by tablets or bloody smartphones is not only ridiculous but also very shortsighted.
We all know we will become a civilisation of cybernetic and telepathic apes.
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. At some point, say you buy a cheap PC for $600 USD and it can run games just about as well as a $200 console. Why would you buy the console? That's $200 you don't need to spend. Some people might, because of things like friends on a particular platform, or being tied to an ecosystem like Live or PS+. Even further down the road, suppose the same is true for a $500-600 tablet and a $200 console. When Skylake comes out, you're probably looking at closer to $800-1000 (just guessing) to build a new PC with a GT4e GPU, so that's obviously not going to grab a huge percentage of gamers, but there will be plenty of $1000-1500 laptops with that GPU. Another couple of years and suddenly that performance is in a more mass market price range.
I don't think consoles would go away, not for a very long time. But, they'll suddenly have stiff competition from the PC, tablet space, where they never did before. I can easily imagine consoles becoming more of a niche product.
I don't think consoles would go away, not for a very long time. But, they'll suddenly have stiff competition from the PC, tablet space, where they never did before. I can easily imagine consoles becoming more of a niche product.
it's available today and called a console
True dat!
Is this world wide?
Everybody notices lag. Whether or not people can articulate the feeling is another matter. Also, if you do not have anything to compare to it is extra difficult to articulate.
Because the experience is fundamentally different. What's different between playing FIFA on your TV on a console with a controller and playing FIFA on your TV on a tablet with a controller?
For those who want the latest, greatest graphics, consoles will trump other devices. For Joe Gamer, it might not make a difference. Then, for the core gamer who wants the latest, greatest graphics, PC now offers remarkable value. So you end with consoles appealing to gamers who want great graphics beyond a tablet but who also want a low price box. Can you not see how that is clearly a smaller audience than 10+ years ago where consoles appealed to anyone who wanted to play computer games and couldn't afford a £1000 PC?
That's not at all surprising. There are deals to get 45+ inch TVs for a few hundred quid. Had one the other day, a 42" 4k LG smart TV for £500! The cinema experience isn't as far removed from the home experience any more (the very existence of 'home cinema' testifies to this).
I disagree. People will all be aware of an uncomfortable delay in actions above a certain threshold, but at lower thresholds it's not noticed, depending on personal differences. As long as the latency isn't enough to bother you, it doesn't matter.
People know if the game is fun or not. For a lot of games, more latency == less fun. People will not understand what they miss but they will understand that they are not having fun.
Well...uh, sure. 
If the lag is too high so people aren't having fun, they won't like the game. But there are people with a high tolerance. Heck, anyone who's enjoyed waggle games with their motion smoothing has endured lots of lag. We've also had high latency on various shooters people have enjoyed. Some people have higher tolerances, and for these, streaming lag is less of an issue.
If the lag is too high so people aren't having fun, they won't like the game. But there are people with a high tolerance. Heck, anyone who's enjoyed waggle games with their motion smoothing has endured lots of lag. We've also had high latency on various shooters people have enjoyed. Some people have higher tolerances, and for these, streaming lag is less of an issue.I believe it's North America, where tickets were down 10-20% from last year to the lowest level in 20 years. I was trying to find the link, but haven't been able to. It was tweeted by one of the local arthouse cinemas near me.
The tablet would probably be a much crappier experience. I know you do not think it matters, but it does. When my friends and I were kids we could tell that NHL 94 on the SNES was much worse than the Mega Drive version and we did not want to play that. I still remember how sad my friend was....
Well...uh, sure.
I do not believe in this talk about "tolerance". In this day and age, if games do not deliver the most rewarding experience people will have something better to do with their time.
Right now that's obviously true, but say the gap closes and you could get a tablet as powerful as an Xbox One. How many people would buy the tablet instead of the PS4? There are a lot of issues to sort out with tablets, like storage, RAM, controllers. But I think that's the idea that Shifty and I are talking about in the future. What if you buy a new laptop and you can mirror the screen to your tv wirelessly, and the laptop is essentially as powerful as the current gen consoles? That's new competition for consoles that has never existed before, and it seems to be a reality that's approaching.
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. Tastes are diverse. The argument for the dwindlage of the console market isn't because people stop caring about the things that consoles do well, but that people with different tastes had no choice but to buy a console, and now they have viable choices. I can even cite some games as examples. 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!
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.
Well they would have bought another console, they wouldn't necessarily have left the market completely. That's the point.
Right. They won't leave the gaming market. They (who play computer games who historically only have the choice of PC or console, or handheld) will remain gaming but a proportion will find mobile a suitable place and ditch a console (they already own a tablet or want the tablet for its non-gaming aspects), and a proportion will find PC gaming better (better performance and greater versatility of the system) and ditch console, and a proportion will find streaming preferable (large library, playable on lots of devices) and ditch consoles. Leaving only the remaining proportion to play consoles.
The only way the console market can't be adversely affected is if these computing forms have zero appeal, which I think we can agree isn't true. Leaving only a question of how much the console market will be affected, and whether gaming is growing enough to make up the difference with new blood.
The only way the console market can't be adversely affected is if these computing forms have zero appeal, which I think we can agree isn't true. Leaving only a question of how much the console market will be affected, and whether gaming is growing enough to make up the difference with new blood.
The console playing FIFA is fundamentally feasible the other is not.
We have spent years with the PC being a viable replacement to console in terms of hardware. Yet it hasn't happen enough to drive consoles out the market.
Its not just a matter of hardware performance. Consoles are a product of billions upon billions of dollars invested to produce feature rich platforms that plays games well at an affordable price.
The problem with all these competitors you think will encroach on consoles is that they treat gaming as an ancillary feature.
How many of these device manufacturers are investing in standard hardware configurations strictly with gaming in mind. Is any large PC vendor willing to put gaming front and center and make sure their basic configs readily support high level gaming? How many devices do you know that provide a controller or headset in its standard sku? When do you think 500 GB or TB flash drives on tabs will be prevalent to accommodate the now typical size of a console game? Has Valve been willing to pour 100s of millions of dollars into marketing Steam PCs? Is Google or Apple front and center at E3 helping to push iOS and android gaming to the core markets? Are they willing to invest millions of marketing and development dollars on an individual products to ensure library competitiveness against consoles?
How do you expect these devices to substantially compete against consoles when many of the product owners aren't willing to incur the same level of risk that MS, Sony and Nintendo have been perfectly willing to incur with every new gen of consoles? Outside of Nvidia and AMD in the PC space, everybody else is basically trying to nickel and dime their way to gaming prominence.
Thats the problem with the initial scenario you present. MS and Sony are perfectly willing to design and configure their hardware to give you FIFA with performance that only niche PC hardware can outperform, while Apple, Google and other are perfectly okay with waiting until commoditized hardware gets to those performance levels. MS and Sony are also willing to invest in their relationship with pubs to make sure FIFA and other prominent titles comes to consoles, while at most the other players are going "Hey devs and pubs like at our huge userbases!!!".
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