NPD January 2012

[dlm]

They don't need anything revolutionary, the normal evolution of technology will EOL current consoles in the near future. My laptop will kick the crap out of a console in performance, runs for about 2 hours off of battery, but I can plug it in and still use it. It won't be that long before that much power is in a more portable device with a longer battery life.

I simply do not agree with this assessment. We'll have to agree to disagree here.

You seem to be operating under the delusion that what you can get on your phone won't ever exceed what you can get on a console, it will. Probably not before MS and Sony actually launch a new product, because they aren't stupid. You don't wait for the threat to hit the market and build momentum before you try to deal with it. That time might be too late.

I'm arguing that it won't any time in the near future and that it does not represent a current threat to the current console ecosystem based on power alone. I feel like you and I are simply not having the same argument here.

Wrong. Investors (major shareholders) are very growth driven. They want to hear about expanding markets and growth in revenue. They'll be much more tolerant of a negative balance sheet than a receding revenue base. Yes they want a positive bottom line as well, but if they see negative growth they are going to be electing new board members shortly. Look at a company like RIM which hasn't posted a negative quarter in forever, but their market share is threatened so their stock prices have plummeted and their CEO's were forced out.

Except that all of these companies are in many more businesses than just gaming. And the vast majority of their revenue comes from sales of games, not sales of hardware. That's why hardware sales are immaterial.

YOU'RE IN AN NPD THREAD, try looking in their press releases.

Which tells us exactly zero about how profitable the XBox or Playstation divisions of MS and Sony are.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

There's no might about it, it will happen, just a matter of when. Perhaps on 28nm, but not likely, 22 quite possibly. Denying that tech will continue to advance isn't new, people have been making that claim for years, perhaps someday they will be right, I don't expect it will be in my lifetime.

4-5 years from now perhaps, but not in the near future and not in any timeframe MS or Sony have to worry about.

Not to mention the whole problem of storage. I'm sure people would be ecstatic to download an 8 GB game (which likely exceeds their monthly mobile data plan cap) onto their ipad with 16 or 32 GB of total memory. At least they can skirt the data cap via Wifi. Storage on a system with non-expandable storage is a bit of a problem however. Imagine attempting to download an 8 GB game through free wifi at something like McDonalds. Fun...

Granted they don't need multi-channel sound for a mobile device so you can save some space there. Movies can be encoded at a lower resolution and same for textures. Less complex geometry could be used.

But at that point you start getting to the point where the game will end up looking like arse if you hook it up to a big screen TV and the whole comparison to a home console ends up falling apart.

Regards,
SB

 

[AlphaWolf]

Wifi + cloud

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I'm pretty sure streaming from the cloud won't do you any favors. And downloading the game from the cloud everytime you might want to play it would get a bit tedious after a while.

Regards,
SB

 

[AlphaWolf]

I'm pretty sure streaming from the cloud won't do you any favors. And downloading the game from the cloud everytime you might want to play it would get a bit tedious after a while.

Have you heard of the kindle fire? Anyway, flash memory is cheap. Phones already ship with 64GB, I expect that number to go up. And streaming is a proven technology despite your protests a number of games already do this, obviously it wouldn't be ideal for people with bandwidth caps, but neither is games on demand or netflix or a number of other services, it hasn't stopped them.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Have you heard of the kindle fire? Anyway, flash memory is cheap. Phones already ship with 64GB, I expect that number to go up. And streaming is a proven technology despite your protests a number of games already do this, obviously it wouldn't be ideal for people with bandwidth caps, but neither is games on demand or netflix or a number of other services, it hasn't stopped them.

Your original comparison was that these devices will make the home HD consoles obsolete soon-ish (in that MS and Sony should be worried about them surpassing them in quality before their replacements are out).

Streaming texture assets in time to maintain a 30 FPS render rate at HD console quality will not only require more bandwidth than the vast majority of users have available but also significantly lower latencies without the variability in latency that internet infrastructure imposes.

In other words, going by your original claim, the cloud is just not capable of streaming assets fast enough to challenge, even remotely, the rendering quality of games available on the HD consoles. If you want to stream small tablet apps the cloud is fine. As most of the tablet apps are significantly less than 100 MB in size with some of the AAA ones going quite a fair bit higher, but also becoming less amenable to streaming off the cloud. Heck the Kindle Fire you mentioned assumes that apps designed for the device are on average less than 100 MB in size as they claim 8 GB is enough storage for up to 80 apps.

Upping storage is a much better solution. Or better yet allowing for external storage (hopefully better than the horribly anemic USB speed on the Kindle Fire). If you had 128 GB of flash storage you could hold up to 15x 8 GB games while still leaving some space for the OS and stuff. Then again adding 128 GB of flash memory is going to potentially add a few hundred dollars to the price of the device. Which then makes it far less attractive to either of the home HD consoles.

External storage would be good. Especially if it's USB 3.0. Something I can see happening with Android or MS based mobile devices. But Apple is unlikely to deviate from their walled garden approach to application developement and sales on their mobiles devices.

Regards,
SB

 

[eastmen]

Well we are getting micro usb 3.0 on phones sometime in 2013 from what i understand . Primarly for faster charging time.


But apple would simply use their own plug to micro usb 3.0 to the storage. its the apple way. As for graphics , late this year i expect the vita to get over run , but it will stil lbe 4-5 years after the next gen starts before i'd worry about phones catching up to them graphicly . Esp if the resolution keeps going up on phones

 

[scooby_dooby]

I agree with the idea that this gen is winding down, but much of this simply has to be the tablet effect. As a mobile developer, I saw app sales off the charts from Xmas all the way through till the first week in Feb.

Everything was selling, Kindle Fire sales came alive for the first time, Playbook surged, iPad was massive. All together there were probably 10-15million tablets moved in December, like 90% the US. Not to mention tons and tons of highend phones like Galaxy S2 and iPhone4s.

Then a report comes out saying that no one is buying consoles in Jan. For me it's hard not to see a correlation here.

Truth is, consoles sales are probably never going to be as good as they once were. NPD is predicting like 115million tablets sold yearly by 2015. And tablets in 2015 are going to have some pretty insane hardware. Not to mention, software is only $1-3 on these platforms, and quite easy to pirate as well.

It's gonna be a tough road for some of these companies in this next gen I think.

 

[Rangers]

I agree with the idea that this gen is winding down, but much of this simply has to be the tablet effect. As a mobile developer, I saw app sales off the charts from Xmas all the way through till the first week in Feb.

Everything was selling, Kindle Fire sales came alive for the first time, Playbook surged, iPad was massive. All together there were probably 10-15million tablets moved in December, like 90% the US. Not to mention tons and tons of highend phones like Galaxy S2 and iPhone4s.

Then a report comes out saying that no one is buying consoles in Jan. For me it's hard not to see a correlation here.

Truth is, consoles sales are probably never going to be as good as they once were. NPD is predicting like 115million tablets sold yearly by 2015. And tablets in 2015 are going to have some pretty insane hardware. Not to mention, software is only $1-3 on these platforms, and quite easy to pirate as well.

It's gonna be a tough road for some of these companies in this next gen I think.

That's what I've wondered too, if it's not the gen winding down, if it's that smartphones and tablets arent just taking over handheld gaming, but also console.

I still dont think so though, there will always be a market for complex graphically sophisticated gaming aimed at young males imo. The first powerful next gen console that comes out is going to fly off the shelves imo and sell out, etc.

 

[TheChefO]

I agree with the idea that this gen is winding down, but much of this simply has to be the tablet effect....

With 2005 spec in the boxes, and tablets upgrading daily, just imagine how much worse it will be when the power gap doesn't exist. I'd say Wii already fit that criteria with the ipad2 launch and we see how their sales are doing.

But that's ok, I'm sure some new waggle will interest consumers ... I hope all this talk of nextgen 1.5 is really just that and Sony/MS don't stroll in with the hopes that plastic (not silicon) is what will save the day.

 

[scooby_dooby]

That's what I've wondered too, if it's not the gen winding down, if it's that smartphones and tablets arent just taking over handheld gaming, but also console.

I still dont think so though, there will always be a market for complex graphically sophisticated gaming aimed at young males imo. The first powerful next gen console that comes out is going to fly off the shelves imo and sell out, etc.

Right. It's not like console gaming goes away or anything, but people expecting to see YOY growth on par with the ps2/x360 era, might be in for a surprise.

 

[Acert93]

Btw, nice to cya Scoobs.

 

[eastmen]

Right. It's not like console gaming goes away or anything, but people expecting to see YOY growth on par with the ps2/x360 era, might be in for a surprise.

I dunno , if done pro perly we can easily see that type of growth. cell phone gaming has gotten big only in the last two or so years and its also as cell phone hardware has begun to catch up to consoles.

Once a new gen of consoles comes out we may see a reset button hit and consoles jump way out of reach of phones for another half a decade or more. If next gen consoles can run the unreal 4 demo well it will bring alot of people into the fold.

Lets also not forget that for some reason monitors and tvs are stuck at 1080p while it looks like the ipad 3 will double the amount of pixels over 1080p in just a few days . If consoles only need to target 1080p while phones and tablets have to target higher resolutions we can see alot of phone's processing power burn up there

 

[dlm]

I think that console games will eventually be entirely obsolete. Probably not next gen, but quite possibly the generation following.

Honestly, looking very long term, I would be shocked if the glass that we use to display things is directly connected to the hardware used to present the images anymore.

It seems likely to me that eventually, your personal computing needs will all live on a device you carry in your pocket that interacts wirelessly with whatever nearby interface devices you choose. At the point that the power of that device exceeds the cost/benefit ratio of developing more graphical fidelity in the software, consoles and PCs will both be obsolete by default.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Call me when they come out with wireless z++.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

It seems likely to me that eventually, your personal computing needs will all live on a device you carry in your pocket that interacts wirelessly with whatever nearby interface devices you choose. At the point that the power of that device exceeds the cost/benefit ratio of developing more graphical fidelity in the software, consoles and PCs will both be obsolete by default.

This is an interesting and plausible scenario. With Windows 8, Microsoft is bringing a "mobile" OS to the mainstream with "Windows to Go." You've been able to do this with Linux for years now, but that's hardly a mainstream consumer oriented OS.

Why is that important? Well, let's consider the possibility of a HDTV including an ARM processor with graphics core, AMD APU, or Intel APU...

In theory you could just stick in your USB flash drive with Windows 8 installed on it and start computing away on your TV directly without the need of a desktop or mobile computer. You could do the same with a set top box. Even a refrigerator with a display panel. Perhaps an oven where you can plug in your OS and compute on it while you cook.

Basically you have your storage medium with your OS and applications in your pocket and the hardware is in whatever device you happen to be near. Going on vacation? Just take your flash drive and plug it into a "computing enabled" TV or other device and voila you have your home computer, games, and apps on the go.

Considering that Win8 is targetted at mobile devices as well, and the potential is there for MS to transition from a dedicated console into something along these lines. Xbox 2025 suddenly is just a flash device that uses the hardware capabilities of whatever you plug it into? Interesting thought.

But as you said, it likely won't be for another generation or two. Microsoft would first have to convince hardware makers (TV, mobile device, set top box, etc.) to including computing hardware in their devices.

It certainly is something that has me mildly excited about the possibilities, however.

Best thing is. Since the OS is on the portable storage medium, your hardware can theoretically never get infected or hacked. Only the OS on your portable medium. So if it gets hacked, take it out. Then plug in a "clean" one.

Regards,
SB