HRTF solutions haven't really taken off elsewhere where they've been available for a long time, can console make the difference?
perhaps yes. I still don't have a definitive reason why the sound market just died out around 2000. IT's not like Atari bust where we can identify what happened. I still have figured it out, I suspect it was largely business related because the technology as you can see, and as
@ToTTenTranz points out, requires a great deal of processing. It made sense that we were using dedicated silicon back then to get good sound. It still makes sense to do it now.
With headphones as being the dominant audio setup now, the market for audio is significantly larger. Previously we needed to have 4-5 channel speakers to get that quality surround sound we're all looking for. Now every controller supports a stereo jack.
I'm really happy to see the return of audio, I'm really happy Sony is going this route, hoping that MS announces more on this front.
edit:nvm, seems people did write about it:
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/future-3d-graphics,2560-2.html
Great nostalgia in the article above.
ooof:
"Do the math and you realize that from 2000 to 2007, the sound card market collapsed by 80% over seven years. The recent stock market crash? That was only a 53% drop during the worst of it, and a 25% drop at current values."
Anyone know if this is still true today? Will it change?:
Audiophiles can argue over the subtle nuances that one DAC has over another in terms of musicality or noise floor, and point to the increasing popularity of HDD-based music servers as proof that PC audio has the potential to offer reference-quality audio. While I don't disagree, the majority of games and consumer applications already sound great with today's sound cards
because the software isn't designed to take advantage of high-resolution audio.
No game developer is going to take the time and money to properly record, mix, master, and distribute a soundtrack in 24-bit/96 kHz. In fact, many Hollywood films today are done at 24-bit/48 kHz. For the software developer, the money is better spent on adding new levels or artwork to a game, and the computational horsepower better put into graphics or physics.