The game console living room fortress will not be breached by cellphones & tablets.
- Thread starter Brimstone
- Start date
sorry I was referring to WC081
Here are the things to consider, on whether consoles and mobile devices are on a collision course.
1. MS and Sony both would like not only to sell more units than they did of the PS3 and 360 but the Wii, all combined. As noted in the video, they sold 250 million combined of all 3 consoles this generation.
2. MS and Sony would be happy if they ship 10 million units each in the first year. Tablets regularly sell that volume a month, with some brands like iPads reaching those volumes by themselves.
3. A lot of the people buying these tablets are among the tens of millions of casuals who bought the PS3, 360 or the Wii -- well mostly the Wii. A lot of these people may not bother to buy a console again, rather satisfied with the Candy Crush devices for the few games they will play.
4. As the developers in the video noted, mobile devices are closing the gap every year, while consoles are static for 5-10 years. They may never completely close the gap but they will reach a point where they're "good enough" even for some core gamers. The analogy that one guy made in the video about consoles reaching a point where they closely replicated the arcade graphics being similar to mobile devices eventually coming close to reproducing the graphics experience of consoles.
Many households can't afford to buy both a console and a mobile device in a given year. They have to choose one or the other. "Good enough" may get many people to choose the mobile device.
5. With the pent-up demand, consoles should sell well for a couple of years. But then you have mobile devices getting better and then you have what the developers noted that tens or hundreds of millions of mobile devices are sold every year.
Those kinds of numbers will be impossible for publishers and developers to ignore, so some kind of AAA games will migrate to mobile devices which grow more powerful every year.
7. Even with the pent-up demand, iPads alone will probably outsell both the X1 and PS4. In fact in the Christmas quarter, more iPads may be sold than both the X1 and PS4 combined over the next 12 months.
That's hundreds of dollars per sale and tens of billions of dollars not going to Sony and MS.
1. MS and Sony both would like not only to sell more units than they did of the PS3 and 360 but the Wii, all combined. As noted in the video, they sold 250 million combined of all 3 consoles this generation.
2. MS and Sony would be happy if they ship 10 million units each in the first year. Tablets regularly sell that volume a month, with some brands like iPads reaching those volumes by themselves.
3. A lot of the people buying these tablets are among the tens of millions of casuals who bought the PS3, 360 or the Wii -- well mostly the Wii. A lot of these people may not bother to buy a console again, rather satisfied with the Candy Crush devices for the few games they will play.
4. As the developers in the video noted, mobile devices are closing the gap every year, while consoles are static for 5-10 years. They may never completely close the gap but they will reach a point where they're "good enough" even for some core gamers. The analogy that one guy made in the video about consoles reaching a point where they closely replicated the arcade graphics being similar to mobile devices eventually coming close to reproducing the graphics experience of consoles.
Many households can't afford to buy both a console and a mobile device in a given year. They have to choose one or the other. "Good enough" may get many people to choose the mobile device.
5. With the pent-up demand, consoles should sell well for a couple of years. But then you have mobile devices getting better and then you have what the developers noted that tens or hundreds of millions of mobile devices are sold every year.
Those kinds of numbers will be impossible for publishers and developers to ignore, so some kind of AAA games will migrate to mobile devices which grow more powerful every year.
7. Even with the pent-up demand, iPads alone will probably outsell both the X1 and PS4. In fact in the Christmas quarter, more iPads may be sold than both the X1 and PS4 combined over the next 12 months.
That's hundreds of dollars per sale and tens of billions of dollars not going to Sony and MS.
It's odd to assert that sales volumes cannot be compared in a thread that is named "The game console living room fortress will not be breached by cellphones & tablets."
The fact of the matter is that just under a billion Android and iOS devices are sold per year, vs. 20 million or so stationary consoles. In terms of volume and revenue, the game is already over. In terms of game revenue and profit explicitly, iOS alone dominates the entire console business.
The only ones who give a damn are console fans who feel threatened by the success of other platforms.
Although correct, you're somewhat missing the point. The concern is whether the core gamer experience is going the way of the dodo, to be displaced by mobiles. Console gaming is bigger than ever. Compared to previous generations, this generation has sold more devices in total. As long as people value the multi-button, dual-stick, COD+FIFA+everything else experiences, consoles (or at least their equivalent) will have their audience.
No need to be sorry
Though I was wondering if I was not getting the joke or if I was not able to get the initials of ones of the guys right.Thanks for clearing that up.
OTish I was reading the topic about the ps4 news, and saw this nice demo of Assassin Creed being remotely played on PSV, it made me think about what the guys stated in the video (they are not alone Nvidia stated so too), soon embedded devices are to catch up with the ps360.
Did anybody here tried this with its "Shield":
Play for example BF4 on the the Shield using PS360 type of setting and then again using ps4 setting.
I'm getting interested in what would be their "subjective" take on the matter. Anything I see on those tiny (and still underpowered) devices looks pretty neat, most likely due to the screen quality and pixel density. I would think that the "perceived" difference is lesser than on a monitor or a tv.
If one have time he could try playing with various slider: textures quality, AA, etc.
Now I don't think that Cellphone and tablet (I would add "proper" netbook) are to replace consoles, it is just for the ref.
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Ah.
Of course, as long as there is a viable business in supplying a "core gamer experience" (which I find to be a dodgy concept, but what the heck), there will be publishers and developers doing just that.
The markets aren't mutually exclusive. You could even make a case for some synergistic effects along with the obvious competitive. But the living room fortress is
a, already taken, and
b, not all that interesting any more
Personally I see the fact that media consumption has gone mobile as something that is healthy for game consoles in terms of focus. Microsoft obviously doesn't agree. I personally own seven devices that can stream Netflix to our TV, including the TV being able to do so itself without any outside device whatsoever. God knows how many there are in the family as a whole. Why on earth we should buy a stationary device for media consumption, which would limit access not only to our home, but in practise to the same room unless I make otherwise unnecessary efforts, is beyond me. It's some corporate wet dream whose time has come and went long ago. The positive side of that is that if you are interested in gaming, there is some hope for game consoles getting their focus back.
Is that true? When GTA5 grosses a billion in the first year or first week, it's hard to imagine that being the case.
Of course you can dismiss it as a once in every 3-5 year thing but doesn't COD gross several hundred million at launch every year?
I know the app. store generates a lot of revenues and most of it is from games but hard to reach 9 or 10 digits with those 99 cents games.
I think the video made a stark contrast. Addressable market for consoles is 250 million (and they may not reach that this generation unless one of the players an replicate the success of the Wii in drawing casuals). But the addressable market for mobile devices is several times that per year, not over a console generation of 5-10 years.
ArcticCircle
Newcomer
I agree. I think overall MS (if they choose to stay in the console biz) and Sony sell about the same as in this generation (something like 60-80 million each), but Nintendo's poor console sales will drop overall console numbers bellow 200 million. If MS is correct, and resolution and framerate don't matter to the general public, tablets and smart phones will be powerful enough to compete with next gen consoles in few years. If Sony is correct, and public chooses to demand at least 1080p native, then it'll take maybe another year more. But before the 7-10 year generation is over, tablets and phones are way past the PS4 and Xbone. TV + Tablet/phone + controller might be the future for the majority of the gamers.
Yeah I also think its BS as much as I'ld love it to be true.
I think mobiles generate at a fraction of what consoles do
Estimated Game only revenue from the App Store this year is at just over $14Billion.
None of that is taken by physical production/distribution/import networks/retail.
Even looking at just a tech perspective:
Since the rate at which the industry is shrinking transistors to smaller nodes is slowing don't expect nextgen level cpu/gpu performance on a cellphone anythime soon. Thats the only way they could create a device that doesn't kill the lithium battery and can passively cooled.
Even the latest Iphone is inferior in maany ways to Xbox 360. Now with the economy slowing and node shrinking slowing no way. People who say well get PS4 level level performance are ignorant.
Since the rate at which the industry is shrinking transistors to smaller nodes is slowing don't expect nextgen level cpu/gpu performance on a cellphone anythime soon. Thats the only way they could create a device that doesn't kill the lithium battery and can passively cooled.
Even the latest Iphone is inferior in maany ways to Xbox 360. Now with the economy slowing and node shrinking slowing no way. People who say well get PS4 level level performance are ignorant.
IMO, it isn't an arguement how "powerful" mobile devices get. It's convinience. Tablets, smartphones - they are not being bought as gaming devices. They are being bought as convinience, lifestyle, to a certain degree media and socialy integrated and connected hi-tech devices. Sure, just because of that 1 billion market, a large percentage happen to have downloaded Angry Birds or some other simplistic game, doesn't make those people "gamers".
And just because there are overlapping markets of probably the majority of current console owners who also happen to own a tablet and occasionaly do game on that device, does not mean they would give one up for the other. A consoles advantage is not necessarely the technical superiority, but it offering a convinient way to its buyers to play video games in the livingroom on the big screen, offlien and online with a dedicated controller and be immersed or entertained in a way that is not possible on a mobile device.
Sure, the Vita and its successors might be losing their ground because mobile devices are catching up and ultimately there will be less of a point to get a dedicated mobile gaming device, if the experience on a smartphone or tablet can get close to it. That's precisely why Sony is integrating Vita into their PS4 strategy and offering something that's unique. Sooner or later though, I expect them to give that up in favour of an Android/iOS app and offer that kind of connectivity with their future console (perhaps PS5?).
But consoles being breached by cellphones? Not seeing it. The only thing I see happening is less casuals that were suckered into buying a console for their mainly very occasional gaming habbits. They are the ones that might have bought a console in the past and only got a single game, if even that - and the device mainly sitting there collecting dust. These people effectively are better off getting a hi-tech smartphone or tablet to download the occasional mini game. This will have an impact on console sales, but not necessarely software sales - and that's where all the big profits and revenues are made.
Also as another point: Most games on smartphone devices are quite cheap. As technology moves forward and games become more complex, so will development costs. To really match it up with the console games, games on mobile devices will become increasingly expensive. Even if on a technical level it were possible to create a game such as CoD on the tablet, I definately would not chose to play it on that device over my livingroom set-up on a console.
TV didn't kill the movie theater and taco bell didn't kill authentic mexican restaurants. Mobile won't kill console gaming. Console gaming hasn't killed PC gaming and thats with a smaller performance gap between the two markets and cross platform ports.
Regardless of how fast performance is growing in the mobile space, storage is growing no where near as fast. And at the levels of storage needed by games this gen, mobile devices trying to cater to game apps that require 10s of GBs of storage would be akin to an ipod only being able to hold one album, which is so 1980s.
Mobile devices will probably be co-opted into the console space versus replacing the consoles. Acting as media extenders versus the center of a home gaming ecoystem.
Regardless of how fast performance is growing in the mobile space, storage is growing no where near as fast. And at the levels of storage needed by games this gen, mobile devices trying to cater to game apps that require 10s of GBs of storage would be akin to an ipod only being able to hold one album, which is so 1980s.
Mobile devices will probably be co-opted into the console space versus replacing the consoles. Acting as media extenders versus the center of a home gaming ecoystem.
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Gamestop issues lower guidance for the Christmas quarter, despite the launch of new consoles:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303653004579211751488185862
Seems like they've already had discounts on next-gen games to boost sales and there are sure to be more discounts leading up to Christmas.
So other than blockbuster launches like GTAV, it seems a struggle to sell $60 games, which certainly seems like an indication of the impact mobile games have had on the games pricing expectations.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303653004579211751488185862
Seems like they've already had discounts on next-gen games to boost sales and there are sure to be more discounts leading up to Christmas.
So other than blockbuster launches like GTAV, it seems a struggle to sell $60 games, which certainly seems like an indication of the impact mobile games have had on the games pricing expectations.
That's a product of a generation on its last leg not a move to mobile. Console sales and associated software don't grow to a point and then plateau. Whereby only declining the introduction of the next gen hardware. There is an apex followed by a decline that gets exacerbated by the release of newer hardware.
Gaming consoles brought in over 40 billion. So what?
If a someone casually plays a game or 2 to kill time, then those are people aren't really into consoles. If they are into consoles, then it's for your annual installments of shooters and/or sports games.
What are the metrics for thinking consoles are dying? Slowing sales on the PS3/360? I'm pretty sure the majority of those who want the consoles already have one (minus the bargain holdouts).
Larger install-base in smartphones than consoles? You'd be talking about a potential audience to sell to, but an audience with extremely varied and fragmented use-cases. An audience that shows little-to-no investment in games, where most games have to be really cheap or have exploitative tactics like free-to-play to make a profit.
What are the metrics for thinking consoles are dying? Slowing sales on the PS3/360? I'm pretty sure the majority of those who want the consoles already have one (minus the bargain holdouts).
Larger install-base in smartphones than consoles? You'd be talking about a potential audience to sell to, but an audience with extremely varied and fragmented use-cases. An audience that shows little-to-no investment in games, where most games have to be really cheap or have exploitative tactics like free-to-play to make a profit.
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