Gaming and gaming hardware trends

[Remij]

I'm making this it's own topic just so that I no longer derail the Digital Foundry topic with talks about industry trends.

Basically what I said in that thread was that younger generations aren't as attached to consoles/platforms as the older middle-aged generations are who grew up with them since their inceptions. These younger generations just expect their games, which are increasingly becoming platforms in their own right, to follow them and be available wherever they choose to play.. across multiple devices.

This conversation basically branched off the rumor/idea that Microsoft could push for consoles to be more open and allow other gaming stores to be integrated into them. Now I'm of the opinion that things are moving in that direction and have been for a while now. Others simply do not agree and that's fine. There's plenty of legit arguments against it.. for sure. But like anything else in this industry... there's those who don't and those who do.. and if you don't.. you risk getting left behind in an ever evolving world.

Ironically, Mat Piscatella from Circana (formerly NPD) posted this today, essentially reinforcing what I was saying. Older gamers are the diehard console fanboys.. GenZ don't care as much and just want to play where their friends are... and GenA don't care at all. These are the kids growing up on smartphones/tablets playing Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite... and building their identities on those platforms.. and they will expect them to be wherever they go.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1776274700337078410

(Mat also states in a response that that chart *IS NOT* adjusted for inflation.. which means it's far worse than it even looks there)

Now as rightly said, having an "open" console for 3rd parties to release their own clients and games is not the same as "cross play/progression" on games which just happen to be developed for every platform already. I completely understand that... but like I said.. look where the industry is heading. Publishers want more control, and quite frankly they have more power than ever before, with games that aren't just "games" anymore.. they're economies within themselves. These are the "platforms" which Epic and others like Microsoft will use to push the industry to change and adopt to suit them. We're already seeing that happening. And IMO, it's not a matter of IF.. but when. Games are costing too much to make, companies continually push for growth... something has to give.. and it's only a matter of time until enough of the gaming community is on general computing platforms to where the publishers simply say "ok, I'm not sharing 30% anymore".. we'll do it on our own.

I think it's best that console manufacturers ready up and adapt to that future reality.

 

[eastmen]

I think the old way of releasing a console every 5-7 years doesn't work anymore. Its too long of a gap for the hardware to remain a valid platform when you have other platforms like tablets and phones that people upgrade every year or two.


I have been a big proponent on a single rolling generation from a company like MS. My proposal is as follows. Xbox series in 2020 followed by a new console in 2024-26 and followed by another console in 2028-2030. With xcloud previous consoles will shift over to cloud gaming only on certain titles while games that can work on the console can release natively.

 

[Cyan]

as you mentioned in another post, a few years ago, no one would have said that Sony would publish their games on PC... Curiously enough though Sony published Wipeout, Destruction Derby, Lemmings 3D, etc, on PC back in the 90s.

Of those I had the first two. In Destruction Derby, the polygons flying around and the cars bending, the dents on cars, etc, was incredible at the time.

The first thing Sony did after releasing Playstation to the market was to release some of their games on PC.

Regarding the tweet, 2008 coincided with one of the golden eras of consoles. Steam wasn't as popular, Games for Windows was ok but didn't gain much traction nor MS continued to support it... PC gaming didn't have much going aside from Crysis and it was just much easier to play on consoles that were powerful enough to compete with most PCs.

 

[Cyan]

btw, what are zoomers and alphas? I get lost with that nomenclature. Just curious....

 

[Remij]

as you mentioned in another post, a few years ago, no one would have said that Sony would publish their games on PC... Curiously enough though Sony published Wipeout, Destruction Derby, Lemmings 3D, etc, on PC back in the 90s.

Of those I had the first two. In Destruction Derby, the polygons flying around and the cars bending, the dents on cars, etc, was incredible at the time.

The first thing Sony did after releasing Playstation to the market was to release some of their games on PC.

Regarding the tweet, 2008 coincided with one of the golden eras of consoles. Steam wasn't as popular, Games for Windows was ok but didn't gain much traction nor MS continued to support it... PC gaming didn't have much going aside from Crysis and it was just much easier to play on consoles that were powerful enough to compete with most PCs.

Yea. I think what these past couple generations have shown is that you can't rule anything out anymore. Microsoft has been forced to adopt changes in their strategy due to their inability to find success in the traditional console market. Sony and Nintendo are having to do it in spite of their successes.. Think of it this way. Sony and Nintendo have basically conquered their markets.. and there's nothing left but to expand into other markets. That includes movies, TV shows, PC (for Sony) and basically anything and everything.

My main point is that when these huge games, which are essentially platforms in their own right, have economies of their own, and people build up virtual identities within them.. then it gives them a lot of power to influence change in the industry. This is why you have Sony looking to get into them themselves.. They will need to be able to be capable of maintaining their own platform, should 3rd parties go off and do their own thing.

btw, what are zoomers and alphas? I get lost with that nomenclature. Just curious....

Basically just the demographics of people born at different times:

• The Greatest Generation – born 1901-1924.
• The Silent Generation – born 1925-1945.
• The Baby Boomer Generation – born 1946-1964.
• Generation X – born 1965-1979.
• Millennials – born 1980-1994.
• Generation Z – born 1995-2012.
• Gen Alpha – born 2013 – 2025.

 

[hughJ]

Curiously enough though Sony published Wipeout, Destruction Derby, Lemmings 3D, etc, on PC back in the 90s.

Back in the late 90s and early 00s they also had the SOE umbrella with Everquest, SWG, Planetside, etc. Sony's kind of always had its fingers in a lot of pies.

 

[metacore]

I think the old way of releasing a console every 5-7 years doesn't work anymore. Its too long of a gap for the hardware to remain a valid platform

Whats even worse is AAA(A) development of games takes so long that your shining studio might be lucky to release one ground up game in such window. Let alone days of making some successful trilogy and new IP on top of that. This throws wrench to creating gravity, new fanbase around the platform. Of course MBAs always have recipe "go wider, muddy the water" to have another excuse to push for gaas and recuring transaction. It will temporarily look better in quarterly earnings and at the same time accelerate fading of your main platform. I shudder to think how gaming will look like games will be build around Walmart laptop target like in all those open platform /market fantasies. It will be little bit better mobile crap (sorry if anyone offended). Certainly not good news for high end 3d enthusiasts.

Regarding the tweet, 2008 coincided with one of the golden eras of consoles. Steam wasn't as popular, Games for Windows was ok but didn't gain much traction nor MS continued to support it... PC gaming didn't have much going aside from Crysis and it was just much easier to play on consoles that were powerful enough to compete with most PCs.

Of course hardware "peaked" then. You had two hugely successful Nintendo consoles not one, successful PSP , 100$ ps2 still singing in emerging markets, guitar hero rock bands, Wii fits all contributing to this surge. As for Pc there was much more DIY PCs, much more sales of cheaper and better Dgpus than consoles and many more "halo" games than only Crysis which consoles couldn't handle. Steam was already quite big and rest of market was still on discs . It was certainly better times for pc fanboys so i would not lump pc to this.

All this report sounds a little bit of another " please publishers go wider we only know things on surface but we don't care, gotta sell those stocks prospects to casual investors somehow "

EDIT

And lets not forget about biggest 80s demographic peak( in console markets) contributing to 2008 hardware peak

 

[Cyan]

As for Pc there was much more DIY PCs, much more sales of cheaper and better Dgpus than consoles and many more "halo" games than only Crysis which consoles couldn't handle. Steam was already quite big and rest of market was still on discs . It was certainly better times for pc fanboys so i would not lump pc to this.

interesting point. Tbh back then I was into laptop PCs, which, as you surely know, weren't particularly fast at the time, so I just got a X360, my second console -first was the original Xbox- and except for games like the original The Witcher, I mostly played on consoles from 2007 to 2011, until Diablo 3 was launched.

Tbh, coming from the The Need for Speed -the first one- and Microsoft Golf era, which were my first games ever, and then RE1, Age of Empires, Diablo 2, etc etc and Age of Mythology, which was my last great game of that era on a desktop PC, before buying a console and starting to play on laptops with Intel integrated graphics, it was for me like that dark ages of PC gaming.

I had the original The Witcher and it played fine on my laptop, so I could play the game "anywhere". It was so fun for me, like rediscovering the PC gaming experience. It's been almost 10 years since I last played on a console, the Xbone fat, but the X360 era was fun, specially the online in Call of Juarez 1 and the small but nice community playint that game online.

 

[metacore]

interesting point. Tbh back then I was into laptop PCs, which, as you surely know, weren't particularly fast at the time, so I just got a X360, my second console -first was the original Xbox- and except for games like the original The Witcher, I mostly played on consoles from 2007 to 2011, until Diablo 3 was launched.

Tbh, coming from the The Need for Speed -the first one- and Microsoft Golf era, which were my first games ever, and then RE1, Age of Empires, Diablo 2, etc etc and Age of Mythology, which was my last great game of that era on a desktop PC, before buying a console and starting to play on laptops with Intel integrated graphics, it was for me like that dark ages of PC gaming.

I had the original The Witcher and it played fine on my laptop, so I could play the game "anywhere". It was so fun for me, like rediscovering the PC gaming experience. It's been almost 10 years since I last played on a console, the Xbone fat, but the X360 era was fun, specially the online in Call of Juarez 1 and the small but nice community playint that game online.

Well, That's your choices and experience. Im just saying I think overall back then PC still had more of its own personality, high end games in many genres targeting pc specifics, hardware leapfrogs every year and crazy price/performance progress, in the middle of gen gpus were on another planet compared to console all for 150-600$ , golden era of overclocking etc. I don't see some pc weakness then contributing to console hardware peak of 2008, reasons lay elsewhere IMO

 

[hughJ]

Trying to tease out any nuance from a single "video game hardware sales" bar chart seems dubious and likely to lead to misleading conclusions. The Wii and Guitar Hero period is not a market that the games industry should be expecting to recapture -- there was no market; it was a cultural bubble built on a technological novelty. It was like the Atari heyday where every upper-middle class American household bought one to play Ms Pacman, bought a couple other games out of guilt, and most of them stuck it in the closet a few months later. I recall my household having a Coleco Telstar in a closet and the only explanation I have is that it was bought on a whim out of curiosity; I wasn't born when it came out and neither of my parents ever showed the slightest interest in video games.

Chasing after that 2600/Wii-level zeitgeist sales bubble seems like a great way of expediting another video game crash. There's only so many people that want to play games, there's a finite amount of money to spend on entertainment, and I don't think competing forms of paid entertainment are exactly booming right now.

 

[eastmen]

Yea. I think what these past couple generations have shown is that you can't rule anything out anymore. Microsoft has been forced to adopt changes in their strategy due to their inability to find success in the traditional console market. Sony and Nintendo are having to do it in spite of their successes.. Think of it this way. Sony and Nintendo have basically conquered their markets.. and there's nothing left but to expand into other markets. That includes movies, TV shows, PC (for Sony) and basically anything and everything.

My main point is that when these huge games, which are essentially platforms in their own right, have economies of their own, and people build up virtual identities within them.. then it gives them a lot of power to influence change in the industry. This is why you have Sony looking to get into them themselves.. They will need to be able to be capable of maintaining their own platform, should 3rd parties go off and do their own thing.


Basically just the demographics of people born at different times:

• The Greatest Generation – born 1901-1924.
• The Silent Generation – born 1925-1945.
• The Baby Boomer Generation – born 1946-1964.
• Generation X – born 1965-1979.
• Millennials – born 1980-1994.
• Generation Z – born 1995-2012.
• Gen Alpha – born 2013 – 2025.

No

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xennials

I ain't no sticking Millennial

 

[eastmen]

Whats even worse is AAA(A) development of games takes so long that your shining studio might be lucky to release one ground up game in such window. Let alone days of making some successful trilogy and new IP on top of that. This throws wrench to creating gravity, new fanbase around the platform. Of course MBAs always have recipe "go wider, muddy the water" to have another excuse to push for gaas and recuring transaction. It will temporarily look better in quarterly earnings and at the same time accelerate fading of your main platform. I shudder to think how gaming will look like games will be build around Walmart laptop target like in all those open platform /market fantasies. It will be little bit better mobile crap (sorry if anyone offended). Certainly not good news for high end 3d enthusiasts.



Of course hardware "peaked" then. You had two hugely successful Nintendo consoles not one, successful PSP , 100$ ps2 still singing in emerging markets, guitar hero rock bands, Wii fits all contributing to this surge. As for Pc there was much more DIY PCs, much more sales of cheaper and better Dgpus than consoles and many more "halo" games than only Crysis which consoles couldn't handle. Steam was already quite big and rest of market was still on discs . It was certainly better times for pc fanboys so i would not lump pc to this.

All this report sounds a little bit of another " please publishers go wider we only know things on surface but we don't care, gotta sell those stocks prospects to casual investors somehow "

EDIT

And lets not forget about biggest 80s demographic peak( in console markets) contributing to 2008 hardware peak

The great thing about games is really anyone can make it. If AAA destroys it self with gass and micro transactions then teams of small developers can just start making games. Tools are also getting easier and easier to use.

 

[metacore]

The great thing about games is really anyone can make it. If AAA destroys it self with gass and micro transactions then teams of small developers can just start making games. Tools are also getting easier and easier to use.

This is also true. I'm just not entirely at peace with bleak views for leaps like for example "ps2 fall 2001" or "pc 2004". Blitzkrieg and jawdroping tectonic shifts in fidelity and ambition enabled by single pice of hardware and soon even one upping itself. Good times. Sony E3 2016 was also pretty good for that itch and now after 4 years we have colourful indies montages from them. I don't see indies recreating that to same extend, Afterall they must currently navigate the same muddy waters...

 

[eastmen]

This is also true. I'm just not entirely at peace with bleak views for leaps like for example "ps2 fall 2001" or "pc 2004". Blitzkrieg and jawdroping tectonic shifts in fidelity and ambition enabled by single pice of hardware and soon even one upping itself. Good times. Sony E3 2016 was also pretty good for that itch and now after 4 years we have colourful indies montages from them. I don't see indies recreating that to same extend, Afterall they must currently navigate the same muddy waters...

You remember that there was always ID. They pushed the industry forward so far with giant leaps on the back of really one man in the early days. That can happen again with another small team.

I think that AAA games just take too long to really blow people away because smaller more nimble studios make iterative changes too quickly and the same with the engine companies. This isn't the world where people were really used to Genesis and super nes games and then saturn/ps1/n64 came out that really pushed polygons in a way no one expected. The only way I can really see something like that happening is if AMD/Nvidia/Intel comes out of no where with some new tech that can like increase ray tracing performance 10-20 times over what is inside the xbox series and ps5 or they come out of no where with a new technology that no one has really seen before. But I think those days are over

I was in another discussion here saying that if MS launched a new console (not a refresh of the series) and put 24 gigs in it that be amazing and a person was arguing that devs wouldn't use it and ms couldn't waste the money to put it in.

But man just think of how much ram increased each generation back in the day.

PS1 had what 4 megs of total ram PS2 had 36 megs p3 512 , ps4 had 8gigs and ps5 has 16 gigs . so what 9 times , 14 times , 15 times and then double ? Ps5 pro is going to have the same 16 gigs of ram ? We are going to have to wait to another console generation maybe into 2028 for more than 16 gigs of ram ?

 

[hughJ]

Why stop at 10-20x RT. Even if there were infinite RT prowess such that Spiderman/GoW/AC:Whatever looked like they were rendered in Octane, I don't think the games are going to be any more engaging to their existing audience, or capture a new audience that were previously unconvinced. It would probably be a great excuse to re-release a bunch of path-traced remasters though, so that seems like a no-brainer.

Having more memory would be interesting provided AAA studios were going to do something interesting with it. They've spent the last couple decades remaking the same games that saw jumps from 512MB to 8GB to 16GB, so I don't see why 24GB or 32GB would be any different. I doubt any big studio has been at a fork in the road between making something new and ambitious or derivative and proven, and chose the latter because they were short a few GB of memory.

 

[eastmen]

Why stop at 10-20x RT. Even if there were infinite RT prowess such that Spiderman/GoW/AC:Whatever looked like they were rendered in Octane, I don't think the games are going to be any more engaging to their existing audience, or capture a new audience that were previously unconvinced. It would probably be a great excuse to re-release a bunch of path-traced remasters though, so that seems like a no-brainer.

Having more memory would be interesting provided AAA studios were going to do something interesting with it. They've spent the last couple decades remaking the same games that saw jumps from 512MB to 8GB to 16GB, so I don't see why 24GB or 32GB would be any different. I doubt any big studio has been at a fork in the road between making something new and ambitious or derivative and proven, and chose the latter because they were short a few GB of memory.

one of the issues is the amount of varied textures that can be displayed on screen at once. You get a super detailed character and then the rest of the world looks like the same texture over and over again and that is not how real life is. Even if I'm out on the path running there are some areas with more or less grass , some mostly dirt , some with stone and so on and so forth. until we start to mach that variation things will still be need to be pushed forward.

I think we can continue to get more interesting and engaging content.

If you look at video games as a whole we had a decade of everything looking like the original atari just slightly better and the nwe got a leap forward with the nes. Then another decade from the nes until really the 32bit machines in the fith generation did we really get any major change in games. 3d opened a whole new way to interact.

Its really from the ps1 onward that we have been kinda stuck in a refining holding pattern. But that doesn't mean there isn't something just over the horizon. It's jst going to take more effort and more pc power. I actually think if they are able to make ai generated story lines work well then MMOs can explode again . I see things like disney's omi treadmill and think hey vr can actually happen without people needing a ton of space.

But more to the point the genres I love could still use more graphical power. I want to see RPGs and MMMOs that look amazing. I want them to look even better than the unreal 5 demos. I don't think the machines we have now can do it.

 

[BRiT]

But more to the point the genres I love could still use more graphical power. I want to see RPGs and MMMOs that look amazing. I want them to look even better than the unreal 5 demos. I don't think the machines we have now can do it.

I think the biggest opposition to that happening is simply budget. Other game developers are not going to pull a Sony and quadruple their budget in order to get diminishing or barely noticeable returns.

What the gaming industry needs is advancements and changes in gameplay mechanics, not a push for shinier graphics.

 

[eastmen]

I think the biggest opposition to that happening is simply budget. Other game developers are not going to pull a Sony and quadruple their budget in order to get diminishing or barely noticeable returns.

What the gaming industry needs is advancements and changes in gameplay mechanics, not a push for shinier graphics.

I think market places like epic has with assets is a great way to mitigate costs along with using the same assets across projects. That's before we even get into AI art

 

[Remij]

I think the biggest opposition to that happening is simply budget. Other game developers are not going to pull a Sony and quadruple their budget in order to get diminishing or barely noticeable returns.

What the gaming industry needs is advancements and changes in gameplay mechanics, not a push for shinier graphics.

Yep. Gameplay mechanics and control input! Let's have one gen, or even half generation, of no compute/processing changes, but rather new innovative control devices which can enable new gameplay mechanics.. That's an area where gaming could advance drastically, and at the same time not break the bank for dev studios.

Not even limited to just that. Let's look at dramatically enhancing audio. Give the audio guys their time to shine. Let's look for new ways to improve game presentation. Meaning, innovation in dynamic camera systems, innovation in user interfaces, and so forth.

There's tons of potential improvements in so many other aspects of games which could really invigorate game design without the massive gen-on-gen cost increases.

 

[QPlayer]

Basically just the demographics of people born at different times:

• The Greatest Generation – born 1901-1924.
• The Silent Generation – born 1925-1945.
• The Baby Boomer Generation – born 1946-1964.
• Generation X – born 1965-1979.
• Millennials – born 1980-1994.
• Generation Z – born 1995-2012.
• Gen Alpha – born 2013 – 2025.

What is this? There are no generations here...

Mod edited