Next gen gaming consoles

[Scuba_Steve]

However, this seems to be the minority view, With PC games their is generally an outcry when invasive DRM is used and then instead of a backlash in sales..well Diablo 3 has sold 8 million.

i was looking foward to the new Sim City untill DRM reared its ugly head.

I won't buy it, it will sell millions, and the same shit will be integrated into further titles.

My other concern regarding consoles is the rumors of registering a game to a machine in order to kill off the second hand game market.

PC gamers are the best at bitching no-doubt, & that bitching never translates to sales

I'm with you on Sim City, excited about it but upon hearing about DRM have sorta decided I'll wait a bit then offer to backup some other guys copy for him you know sorta round the time they managed to circumvent the DRM

Can't say the 2nd hand market affect me too much, I don't buy 2nd hand. But even tho I don't do 2nd hand, knowing how "reliable" DRM tends to be I can only see it fucking over the end user like always (hell DRM was the primary reason the old SNES cartridges were so temperamental)

If all the rumors round regrading "next gen" have substance to them, it's gonna be bad for all gamers PC & Console alike in fact more-so for PC because rumor says MS want to push them to xbox eventually & kill Windows gaming

... Linux to the rescue!

[Headbanger]

Yes well, The initial thrust of the first Xbox was meant to move games from PC to console (MS going as far as to shut down their own in house PC game development and kill off their line of PC game controllers), and while it did initially hit the numbers quite hard PC gaming is bigger then ever, as usual the people decide what suits them in the end, even with the massive loss taken by MS and Sony to move their hardware and expand their platform. I pretty sure MS are well aware that gaming is one of the major reasons people pick Windows over the competition.

Everything that MS primed the xbox to be as instead born fruit on the PC.

As for Simcity, the entire engine is built around the DRM and a live connection, It will be interesting to see if they do crack it, and if not we can expect a lot more games built around the technology.

Still, the people will decide, and it seems most of them are quite happy for their games to phone home.

I can see consoles dieing (Either by stock box PC's or being intergrated into the television) before PC games, and while I don't have the numbers on hand I did read that nvidia alone sell more game capable grapic chipsets yearly then the combined sales of consoles.

Its pretty obvious that the current model for consoles is a dead end, The massive losses, extended development cycle, attack on the used games market,and the low end hardware of the "next generation" says it all.

[SMOKEU]

Battlefield is a good example of how badly console gaming can hurt PC gaming... BF3 is utter tosh when compared to something like even Desert Combat, which should be so inferior in every regard as not to be funny. Really, to call BF3 a 'Battlefield' game is almost insulting to the original developers at DICE... it's now just scripted rubbish console fodder and nothing else.

Blasphemy! BF3 is the best FPS game evar!!!11

[Scuba_Steve]

I can see consoles dieing (Either by stock box PC's or being intergrated into the television) before PC games, and while I don't have the numbers on hand I did read that nvidia alone sell more game capable grapic chipsets yearly then the combined sales of consoles.

Its pretty obvious that the current model for consoles is a dead end, The massive losses, extended development cycle, attack on the used games market,and the low end hardware of the "next generation" says it all.

Gaming PC's are like records they'll always be round but will effectively become dead to all those not dedicated to them IMO, biggest threat to them is this new "cloud gaming" systems which even nvidia has moved to cash in on, followed by MS themselves.
I think gaming console will see a longer life than gaming PC's but I expect to also see a big rise in handhelds in the near future too, I think we've only got a gen or 2 before handhelds take the crown from home consoles as king

[bogan]

Gaming PC's are like records they'll always be round but will effectively become dead to all those not dedicated to them IMO, biggest threat to them is this new "cloud gaming" systems which even nvidia has moved to cash in on, followed by MS themselves.
I think gaming console will see a longer life than gaming PC's but I expect to also see a big rise in handhelds in the near future too, I think we've only got a gen or 2 before handhelds take the crown from home consoles as king

Cloud gaming is a long way off, and doesn't make sense to me anyway, why shift all the code execution away from the client PC, just putting extra load on the servers for the sake of DRM, and I'd bet at the expense of the user experience. Gaming PCs will always be around, until the lines between them and consoles are blurred out of existence. Its the way all electronics are going, TVs that can browse the internet, cellphone that you can watch movies on, laptops with a cell connection, consoles with media centers, computers with steam accounts and validation like the xbox live. How long until the hardware and DRM means you can just run anything on anything?

[Headbanger]

Granted everything gets superseded or reaches a dead end at some point, but 89 million PC's shipped last year.

As long as PC's exist, PC games will also. And no matter how you want to slice up the numbers (low end, high end, casual, whatever) they are the single biggest platform for gaming and are being used by 100's of millions of people, all without any companies having to lose 100's of millions to sustain the platform. 8 million sales of a single game demonstrates the folly of repeating the steam hardware survey.

[Scuba_Steve]

Cloud gaming is a long way off, and doesn't make sense to me anyway, why shift all the code execution away from the client PC, just putting extra load on the servers for the sake of DRM, and I'd bet at the expense of the user experience. Gaming PCs will always be around, until the lines between them and consoles are blurred out of existence. Its the way all electronics are going, TVs that can browse the internet, cellphone that you can watch movies on, laptops with a cell connection, consoles with media centers, computers with steam accounts and validation like the xbox live. How long until the hardware and DRM means you can just run anything on anything?

Cloud gaming's closer than you think, I expect it to be pretty common by 2020. The fact nvidia's started creating HW specifically for this area shows they think there's something to it too.
Currently OnLive has a $9.99 USD/mth deal at that price it's quite an attractive platform for many.
it's DRM for the publishers but convenience & savings for the end user. It allows people to play modern games at 2500$ gaming PC GFX on a 10yr old 200$ PC provided you have a 2Mbit interweb connection it's possibly a win win for both sides given that more & more games require always on interwebs anyways.

[bogan]

It allows people to play modern games at 2500$ gaming PC GFX on a 10yr old 200$ PC provided you have a 2Mbit interweb connection it's possibly a win win for both sides given that more & more games require always on interwebs anyways.

Got a link for those figures? Sounds a bit too good to be true.

[Headbanger]

It allows people to play modern games at 2500$ gaming PC GFX on a 10yr old 200$ PC provided you have a 2Mbit interweb connection

Even those championing games run from the "cloud" didn't believe anyone is that silly

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/12...-is-the-future

From the above link

While no one is ever going to claim that the OnLive experience is as good as glorious can’t-hear-yourself-think-over-the-GPU-fan desktop and console gaming, for many gamers it is good enough. For hardcore gamers, OnLive’s 150-250ms latency and 720p resolution is akin to gouging your eyes out

And Nintendo dont agree with you at all, but what would they know?

http://au.gamespot.com/news/cloud-ga...ntendo-6403414


Still, who knows?, Not me. The kids will decide the future.

[Headbanger]

Ouch

Cloud gaming service OnLive this week entered a form of bankruptcy and layed off "over half" of its employees. The usual internet kerfuffle broke out, with accusations flying in all directions, as employees discovered that receiving company shares isn't much of a benefit if that company is broke and will never reach the IPO. During the explanations some interesting numbers emerged, like the company having 2 millions registered users and 8,000 servers, but people actually playing were only between 800 and 1,800 depending on the time of day.

Recent reviews suggest that this might be due to OnLive only working well if you have a very good broadband connection to the internet of over 5 Mbps. Personally, I live in a densely populated country and have 30 Mbps VDSL (a technology in which broadband speed is not shared, thus doesn't diminish at peak time); but many people either have slower internet, or have cable internet, where your speed goes down when your neighbor starts surfing the internet. Other concerns cited by various reviewers were a limited library of games, and newer games being somewhat expensive. On the plus side the service enabled you to play PC games on a dedicated $99 microconsole, your iPad, your Mac, or even your smartphone.

http://tobolds.blogspot.com.au/2012/...or-onlive.html

[Scuba_Steve]

Got a link for those figures? Sounds a bit too good to be true.

nope thats sorta a "out of thin air" figures given the hype surrounding the service & the fact they were running crysis at max settings on 1st gen ipad when they where 1st showing themselves off
Best I can find is most games are 720p 60fps & you need a dual core CPU & 256MB GFX card capable of pixel shaders 2.0
There's footage of Gaikai running on Samsung smart TV's out there too incl witcher 2

[bogan]

nope thats sorta a "out of thin air" figures

thats alright, headbanger found some relevant ones...

[imdying]

It allows people to play modern games at 2500$ gaming PC GFX on a 10yr old 200$ PC provided you have a 2Mbit interweb connection

Even if you ignore latency issues, that is physically impossible. 1920 x 1080 x 24bit x 60fps is not going to fit down a 2mbit pipe, even if that pipe was constant rate and flawless, which it never ever can be. Sure you could super compress the arse out of it, but it won't be enough, and a 10 year old $200 PC isn't going to handle that. Then there's latency... it's already bad enough, and adding more processing to the pipeline is only going to make that significantly worse. Fine if you're playing Farmville or Civ 5 I suppose, but even in an RTS you'd notice it. Even if the average pipe here was 3 times fatter (which would take us up around 30mbps), that does not improve latency.

Samsung Smart TVs are utter shite... probably a fabulous example of why cloud computing rapes your customer experience



I had another think about it the other night Steve; I think it would be safe to say that consoles have been good at injecting bigger money into gaming. Then I realised that no matter how I tried to spin that into a positive, all it really gave us was more douche baggery and lowest common denominator bullshit


/edit: It could be interesting if Sony put a 'PSCloud' box into evey local FTTD exchange, that would about all that could be done though, you can't cheat time.

[Headbanger]

I went away and contemplated the concept of "cloud" gaming, and the only conclusion I kept coming back to is its completely fucked in the head.

Clearly the cost of infrastructure can not be recouped, Even when working its a huge waste of resources, and it delivers a sub-standard gaming experience, which you can already get on the console of your choice, and the cost is higher then the shelf price of the games available.

So clearly doomed to fail no matter how much money is thrown at it, I wouldn't be surprised if Jenny Shipley is sitting on the board of directors.

[imdying]

The Sims 3 makes mega bucks, and it's not really latency sensitive, so that's an example of cloud gaming that would work.

But you know, I don't want shitty hardware defining what games we get. Cloud gaming would ruin everything from racing sims to first person shooters, as it's all compromise all the time. GTA4, can't go inside many buildings (not enough memory), GT5, only 16 cars on the track at once (not enough memory so they chose 'pretty' over it), first person shooters are retarded on consoles because they refuse to let you plug your mouse in.

Consoles are nothing but compromise after compromise so they can be cheap, and the gaming experience be damned. It's that desire to make as money as possible that will see your gaming raped and a cloud based service rammed up your anus some time soon. Sad but true.