Long term future of console gaming, its last days *spawn

[tongue_of_colicab]

I don't see consoles going anywhere for a long time. Ignoring the technical limitations of streaming games, its also a bad investment for gamers. A console is 500~600 eurobucks and easily lasts 5~6 years. So at the end of the day you are paying less than 10 eurobucks a month for the hardware. Are streaming providers going to offer a better experience for the same/less? And that is ignorning the possibility that consoles at least offer some possibilities of making some money back by selling old hardware/games.

At the end of the day I think the market as a whole benefits from consoles. Low barrier of entry that offers the same quality everywhere (regardless of internet connection, proximity to a data center etc.) for ~5 years. Its not just the users either, I can image devs also like the idea of having 2~3 spec devices they can develop for as a baseline.

 

[Nesh]

If you want to feel that you're winning some kind of argument....

I m above this immature take of a discussion of platform wars that you are attempting.
If that makes you feel better, ok PCs will win the gaming wars and lets carry on.

 

[techuse]

maybe but who knows. I didn't think people would buy gigantic super expensive records anymore. But the world proved me wrong

Are hundreds of millions of people buying them?

 

[eastmen]

Are hundreds of millions of people buying them?

It's a growing market at 30 year highs and still going

https://mixmag.net/read/vinyl-sales-19-million-2022-6-months-new-albums-news/

This figure is somewhat higher than the 19.2 million sales from the same consumers in 2021, which was a 108% rise in vinyl sales from the same time in 2020 and a 30-year high for vinyl sales.

According to data from the Recording Industry Association of America, 2021 revenues increased 61% from 2020 to $1 billion. The last time this was seen was in 1986.

To give more context

https://mixmag.net/feature/vinyl-industry-record-breaking-point-manufacturing

t isn’t showing much sign of slowing down, the Global Record Sales Market report 2021-2026 has predicted that the vinyl industry is expected to be worth $481.5 million by 2026, as opposed to its valuation of $179 million in 2019

Pressing plant capacity can't keep up with the demand. An anonymous source told Billboard that worldwide there was the capacity to manufacture just 160 million records a year, but to meet current demand that capacity would need to rise to between 300-400 million. It’s thought that there are only 100 pressing plants worldwide currently, with just 10 that have the capacity to produce large amounts of records. The majority of which are either owned by labels themselves, have specific links to industry leaders or cannot take on smaller orders.

They can't even keep up with current demand due to capacity issues. You can read more even the fact that 1 in 5 buyers don't even have a record player and just buy the records to collect. So if people are willing to take up space in their home with albums they can't even listen too I think you'd be surprised at how many people will buy a larger console

In fact you can look at the 180 playstation fans have done from last gen to this gen. Last gen the xbox one was too big and bulky and looked like a vcr. Now many of them have happily gone out and bought a ps5 which is even bigger



Sony is now shipping their largest console ever and people haven't stopped buying it . I believe the ps5 is the largest console ever made

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Eventually the technical limitations will disappear and cloud gaming will be fast enough to eliminate local computation. One day we will have <1 ms latency - 10GB/s Internet in 95% of homes. We'll also need more than 640kb RAM for those of you who doubt.

The advantages of MS/Sony controlling everything from server farms and essentially eliminating hardware barriers to entry, no more generations, just subscriptions and AAA game releases, these are too huge to be avoided IMO.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Uh, what I mean is... what platform does the streaming device connect to... which is to say what platform is the game built for?

Obviously MS sticks with their platform.. and if you're a developer or publisher making games, why would you make multiple builds of a game on different platforms when you can make one and distribute it everywhere?

The cloud.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Developers would be building the game for PC... and deploy it on PCs and in their servers for streaming. Like that, developers could create one build of the game and deploy it across all devices. PCs, "Consoles" (prebuilt generic PCs) and Cloud.

I mean, if cloud gaming really takes off... which versions of games do you think developers are going to put into the cloud for streaming???

PC == personal computer. A game running in the cloud is not running on a PC. At that point the platform is OS, not hardware, so builds will be for Linux or Windows or Android Enterprise Server or whatever. As discussed on 'cloud gaming', conceptually the thin client model affords the best efficiencies for hardware use so a return to the 'mainframe' model seems likely. We also see productivity managing to move to cloud compute so long term, that seems a pretty solid prediction.

 

[Remij]

PC == personal computer. A game running in the cloud is not running on a PC. At that point the platform is OS, not hardware, so builds will be for Linux or Windows or Android Enterprise Server or whatever. As discussed on 'cloud gaming', conceptually the thin client model affords the best efficiencies for hardware use so a return to the 'mainframe' model seems likely. We also see productivity managing to move to cloud compute so long term, that seems a pretty solid prediction.

A game running on the cloud would be running the game built on PC, using APIs and OS which function on PC...

Essentially.... they would be building the game for PC... because they would be supporting PCs... as well as servers. The cloud allows them to deploy their "PC" game... to cloud streaming devices.

Again... unless you think that MS is going to drop windows, drop PC support, and build a completely new "platform" with new OS and new APIs that are server/cloud specific, which doesn't support ANY of their entire back catalog of games.....

 

[Silent_Buddha]

A game running on the cloud would be running the game built on PC, using APIs and OS which function on PC...

Essentially.... they would be building the game for PC... because they would be supporting PCs... as well as servers. The cloud allows them to deploy their "PC" game... to cloud streaming devices.

Again... unless you think that MS is going to drop windows, drop PC support, and build a completely new "platform" with new OS and new APIs that are server/cloud specific, which doesn't support ANY of their entire back catalog of games.....

While currently a game that is streamed is built on X consumer platform (console or PC), that wouldn't necessarily be the case in some future where streaming gain an equal or dominant share of the gaming market. At that point it might be more economically feasible to develop a game targeting that specific server based hardware configuration along with a specific streaming friendly lite OS. Said OS might share the kernel with a consumer OS (such as Windows on a consumer device [PC]) but that doesn't necessarily make it in any way similar to a consumer OS running on consumer hardware.

Again, currently it's more cost effective for developers to target an established consumer devices. Hypothetically if streaming becomes the dominant method of serving games, then at that point it's likely to be far more cost efficient to develop specifically for the server hardware and OS which might bear only passing resemblance to consumer hardware and OS.

Regards,
SB

 

[Remij]

While currently a game that is streamed is built on X consumer platform (console or PC), that wouldn't necessarily be the case in some future where streaming gain an equal or dominant share of the gaming market. At that point it might be more economically feasible to develop a game targeting that specific server based hardware configuration along with a specific streaming friendly lite OS. Said OS might share the kernel with a consumer OS (such as Windows on a consumer device [PC]) but that doesn't necessarily make it in any way similar to a consumer OS running on consumer hardware.

Again, currently it's more cost effective for developers to target an established consumer devices. Hypothetically if streaming becomes the dominant method of serving games, then at that point it's likely to be far more cost efficient to develop specifically for the server hardware and OS which might bear only passing resemblance to consumer hardware and OS.

Regards,
SB

Oh, at some point it certainly will turn to that... I've never denied it.

That's long after traditional consoles disappear though.

 

[techuse]

It's a growing market at 30 year highs and still going

https://mixmag.net/read/vinyl-sales-19-million-2022-6-months-new-albums-news/

To give more context

https://mixmag.net/feature/vinyl-industry-record-breaking-point-manufacturing

They can't even keep up with current demand due to capacity issues. You can read more even the fact that 1 in 5 buyers don't even have a record player and just buy the records to collect. So if people are willing to take up space in their home with albums they can't even listen too I think you'd be surprised at how many people will buy a larger console

In fact you can look at the 180 playstation fans have done from last gen to this gen. Last gen the xbox one was too big and bulky and looked like a vcr. Now many of them have happily gone out and bought a ps5 which is even bigger

View attachment 7474

Sony is now shipping their largest console ever and people haven't stopped buying it . I believe the ps5 is the largest console ever made

What are the typical selling prices of these records? I'd imagine if Walmart is selling out they can't be comparable to a console potentially costing 1000$ which doesn't even factor in the games you must also purchase for additional money. PS5 is nowhere near the size of a mini fridge exhausting 1000 or more watts of heat into your living room. Without statistics on how many of those 19 million records sold were to different people we can't draw a parallel to hundreds of millions of individual people who buy consoles.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Oh, at some point it certainly will turn to that... I've never denied it.

That's long after traditional consoles disappear though.

We have no timelines here. If your point is PC will survive after consoles are dead, you are correct. But at some point they will possibly die too and everyone will use tablets and thin-clients.

 

[Remij]

We have no timelines here. If your point is PC will survive after consoles are dead, you are correct. But at some point they will possibly die too and everyone will use tablets and thin-clients.

Of course that will happen. There's an entire generation of people coming up who don't give a single damn about console or traditional PCs. All they care about are their phones and cloud based services.

MS will eventually do the same thing with personal computing.. however that eventuality will take a fair bit longer to be adopted. There are entire industries which depend on PCs existing... those will be slow to adopt. Whereas on the console side, it will happen relatively quick.

I'm not system warring here... I'm simply stating what I think will happen. For consoles, I think you get one more generation after this one... then it becomes just a generic pre-built PC... then it's cloud based after that.

 

[Nesh]

I get a sense that as long as there is demand for gaming on PCs so there will be gaming on consoles.

 

[iroboto]

Oh, at some point it certainly will turn to that... I've never denied it.

That's long after traditional consoles disappear though.

No. Local hardware won’t leave until cloud reaches parity in terms of latency performance.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I'm not system warring here... I'm simply stating what I think will happen. For consoles, I think you get one more generation after this one... then it becomes just a generic pre-built PC... then it's cloud based after that.

I'm not clear on what your saying though. You talk about APIs and PC where they aren't the same thing, and you haven't mentioned any order of events. We all agree consoles will one day disappear. We agree all computing will likely go to the cloud. Where does 'PC' fit in with that? What does it even matter? Even if Windows PCs are around, people who used to game on consoles who now game on thin-client HDMI sticks plugged in the back of their TV will be using cloud builds.

I don't think at any point I've disagreed with what you've said. I just really understand what your argument is and am pointing out some particulars to the probable future.

 

[Inuhanyou]

I have heard about the death of x replaced by some arbitrary thing of the month for a long time now.

As long as convenience and ease of access makes going out and buying hardware more convenient than dealing with trash internet to direct the player experience we will have console.

And that goes for Nintendo, MS and Sony all, who all will find purpose and success in having their own hardware and ecosystem this gen and that assuredly means the next

I will go as far as saying if everyone switches to cloud only, PC users will also reckon with their way of playing games also unfortunately changing. The market will decide the majority priority. PC gaming won't be safe.

With that in mind, I think as long as there is a shippable local version of game available to sell, the market will not become intangible as a whole. The interactivity factor makes games different than just watching a movie where the barriers aren't as wide and the content nowhere near as in depth or long to require full audience participation

 

[Shifty Geezer]

No. Local hardware won’t leave until cloud reaches parity in terms of latency performance.

Indeed. When the cloud can provide an experience suitable for the console, it can do the same for everything. Only obvious limitation I can see is getting data there to work with. If I shoot 3 hours of 8k120 stereoscopic footage on my phone, what's the upload speed to get this onto the cloud so I can edit it?

 

[eastmen]

What are the typical selling prices of these records? I'd imagine if Walmart is selling out they can't be comparable to a console potentially costing 1000$ which doesn't even factor in the games you must also purchase for additional money. PS5 is nowhere near the size of a mini fridge exhausting 1000 or more watts of heat into your living room. Without statistics on how many of those 19 million records sold were to different people we can't draw a parallel to hundreds of millions of individual people who buy consoles.

Robot or human?

Looks like the beatles album they have is the most expensive at $45 (currently on sale for $40) and goes down to about $15 from what I can see. I also know some albums will go for over $100 esp if they are a limit run. More to the point record players cost anywher from $15 to $1500 (maybe even more)

Record players are large , the media is large. People don't mind having them in their living room because they are used. The big difference between a record player and a console is you can hide the console in furniture or other places because you don't actually have to touch it to change content. Every time a record is done or you want to hear a new song you have to physically get up , get the new record , remove the old one and put it away and put the new record on.

People don't mind items taking up space if they get enjoyment over it. People don't mind a ps5 sized console vs a ps4 sized console. Would they mind something double the size of a ps5? We don't know but I don't see the average console buyer really caring

 

[MfA]

The economics of streaming are hard enough (console loss leading pales in comparison to streaming up front investments) without the user experience being ass except for the lucky few super high quality fiber subscribers, it's going to remain niche for the foreseeable future.

The only immediate danger to classical consoles is Apple getting in on the game big, if they launch a high end Apple TV and buy some major game publishers then I hope you have shorts on Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft.