Decline PS4 wins the console war against XboxONE, yet it is a hollow victory as Consolesdämmerung is upon us

[Spectacle]

The problem with the Wii's "expanded audience" is that those people didn't buy all that many games in the long run. Nintendo made a lot of money selling the consoles, but profits tapered off sharply as more and more Wiis ended up collecting dust.

 

[TedNugent]

To be fair, Xbox360 had on it's release and for couple weeks after probably the strongest GPU of the market in it before the then next gen AMD/NVidia shipped out, outshining that crap even on mid-tiers. But dat 256mb RAM for real use. Hurrrr.

http://67.227.255.239/forum/showthread.php?p=101804828

 

[Turjan]

The problem with the Wii's "expanded audience" is that those people didn't buy all that many games in the long run. Nintendo made a lot of money selling the consoles, but profits tapered off sharply as more and more Wiis ended up collecting dust.

Indeed. Mario Kart, maybe a dance game, some Wii Sports (not necessarily used, but bought). I think I read something like that the average number of games per Wii user was something like 5 titles.

The problem is that the Wii users now use tablets. And I'm really hesitant to see many positives for the PC market here. The dedicated gamers may go to the PC, yes. I'm not sure that this is where the big money is, though. The AAA games may go the way of the dodo, but the replacement will probably have to run on a shitty tablet or mobile phone.

 

[Wilian]

Seems like my memories are clouded. For some reason I remembered Xbox launching early 2005 rather than at the end of the year.

 

[Xor]

Console CPUs are also less sophisticated than PC CPUs. Both the cell and the 360's xenon were heavily specialized for floating point operations, but the xenon doesn't even have out-of-order processing (which has been in the x86 architecture since around the Pentium 3) and the cell's multiple cores don't help games that much (game execution is largely linear and doesn't benefit that much from parallel processing, at least as far as I'm aware).

Edit:

The problem is that the Wii users now use tablets.

I still don't buy this. The Wii offered an entirely different experience than can be found in tablets - the unique control scheme, the motion games, etc. And considering that mobile games have been around for years without destroying the console market, I really think this is just a case of people shouting that the sky is falling.

And I'm really hesitant to see many positives for the PC market here. The dedicated gamers may go to the PC, yes. I'm not sure that this is where the big money is, though. The AAA games may go the way of the dodo, but the replacement will probably have to run on a shitty tablet or mobile phone.

What publishers need to do to weather this is scale back. Spend less money on individual games, start appealing to niches again without trying to target everybody at once, and fund games with small and medium budgets instead of trying to hit a home run with every swing. Even if the big publishers go bankrupt, we'll still see gaming survive on the PCs through indies, kickstarter, steam, and other digital distribution methods. It won't be the same as it is now, but it'll still be there.

 

[Average Manatee]

To be fair, Xbox360 had on it's release and for couple weeks after probably the strongest GPU of the market in it before the then next gen AMD/NVidia shipped out, outshining that crap even on mid-tiers. But dat 256mb RAM for real use. Hurrrr.

http://67.227.255.239/forum/showthread.php?p=101804828

You could make the case that, on release, the 360 and PS3 would output better graphics than anything but an SLI-setup for games that were very well optimized for the platform (bearing in mind that optimization costs a ton of time and money). Now the PS4 and especially the XBONE have no hope of competing with anything other than entry level gaming PCs or laptops.

 

[tuluse]

Those numbers look suspicious, TedNugent

The Xbox360 GPU was ATI's first unified shader archecture, which meant the programmer could choose if they wanted it to do. Also, Y-Axis with no label :rollseyes:

 

[TedNugent]

Those numbers look suspicious, TedNugent

The Xbox360 GPU was ATI's first unified shader archecture, which meant the programmer could choose if they wanted it to do. Also, Y-Axis with no label :rollseyes:

Link states "The graphs are normalized with Xenos as a baseline." E.G. the Y-axis is factors of Xenos. Notice how Xenos is on 1.00 on each subcategory on the X-axis.

Also, post stated "So really, the Xenos wasn’t some monster. Sure it had the Unified Shader Architecture and 10MB EDRAM but it was some technological leap in raw processing power. Keep in mind that for G70, I calculated the flops based on Nvidia’s documentation and not the BS figure of 400GFlops of the RSX/G71."

 

[tuluse]

Link states "The graphs are normalized with Xenos as a baseline."

This practice needs to die, and I find any graph that doesn't use proper Y-axes to be suspicious.

The graph also excludes many other useful measures of GPU power.

 

[MapMan]

That is what the idiots that thought that homogenizing all the games and turning them into the same cinematic thing and shitting out sequels after sequels was a good idea get.

Except it was a good idea. It was a great idea, to be precise. They milked the industry, made fortunes and now move on to other things. Business, plain and simple. Who cares if somewhere in a basement a nerd thinks that beth got the fallout lore wrong and that cazadores dont fit into the universe?

 

[DraQ]

(game execution is largely linear and doesn't benefit that much from parallel processing, at least as far as I'm aware).

Depends on game.
Stuff like (mechanically meaningful, not just eye candy) physics can benefit greatly from multicore, a lot of AI can also benefit from being offloaded from the core handling the basic stuff.

You could make the case that, on release, the 360 and PS3 would output better graphics than anything

Too bad that even best graphics doesn't look too good if it's only adorned with low res textures that can fit in very limited memory.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

Games sell hardware.

No "must play games", poor hardware sales.

 

[tuluse]

Depends on game.
Stuff like (mechanically meaningful, not just eye candy) physics can benefit greatly from multicore, a lot of AI can also benefit from being offloaded from the core handling the basic stuff.

Too bad that even best graphics doesn't look too good if it's only adorned with low res textures that can fit in very limited memory.

AI is really hard to spread to multiple cores actually. AI is very "branchy" code, which is the opposite of what's easy to split up.

 

[Cynic]

That is what the idiots that thought that homogenizing all the games and turning them into the same cinematic thing and shitting out sequels after sequels was a good idea get. Just look to the games released for Xbone and PS4 so far, the same old moron proof shit with not so much better graphics. Almost all them are sequels or sequels to other games but with a different name. That old shitty excuse of PC being terrible expensive in relation to consoles doesn't fly when this generation already started really outdated.

The AAA idiots chased the dudebros and general retards legion in hoping of them subsidizing their terrible inefficient model, now that they reached too big to fail status, they are desperate that the retard legion isn't enough to keep them afloat but to keep the retard legion engaged they need to continue selling them simplistic and easy games with better and better visuals as they don't like gamming, they just like playing movies but spectacle intensive games are terribly expensive to the point of the whole audience for them not being enough. They suddenly discovered that new ips are important as people are starting to abandon old franchises out of fatigue but guess what? They have none after denying for years the chance of one appearing.

They chased the "every AAA game should be a lowest common denominator blockbuster dream." and that is causing them serious problems now, that is ironic.

fucking lost it at dudebros

 

[Average Manatee]

Depends on game.
Stuff like (mechanically meaningful, not just eye candy) physics can benefit greatly from multicore, a lot of AI can also benefit from being offloaded from the core handling the basic stuff.

Too bad that even best graphics doesn't look too good if it's only adorned with low res textures that can fit in very limited memory.

AI is really hard to spread to multiple cores actually. AI is very "branchy" code, which is the opposite of what's easy to split up.

Depends a lot on what part of AI you talk about.

 

[CSM]

Over 150 million over its lifetime, and it's unlikely any console will ever top that. PS3 and XboX360 are both at ~80 million, and are unlikely to go much higher given their current monthly sales.

PS3 sales were about half at this point in his life cycle.

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/PlayStation_3

Just shut up.

Just putting things into perspective.

You're not, you're trying to win a pissing contest.

 

[Xor]

Odds are it's selling better because some 360 owners are transitioning to the PS4 instead of the XBO. That's not exactly a victory.

Plus, I shouldn't have to remind you (but apparently I do) that the PS3 had an absolutely awful launch with few games and retailing for a price nobody wanted to pay. It's not surprising it didn't pick up momentum until there were a decent number of games available and the price dropped. The PS4 doesn't have those problems.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

 

[Average Manatee]

Games sell hardware.

No "must play games", poor hardware sales.

Hardware drives games too. Next gen of consoles offers minimal noticeable improvement over the previous. Everyone expected to finally have native 1080p and 60 fps. Instead games look slightly better and are still struggling to maintain 720p 30 fps.

 

[TedNugent]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=782898

So I just got all set up after arguably making a dumb decision, and I'm obviously excited to get my Titanfall download going so I start getting my shoot on.

After twiddling my thumbs for about 15 minutes during the initial update, it's finally time to log in and enter my download code.

"Can't connect to Xbox Live. For a more complete description go to Xbox.com/status."

*checks website*

Wow!

What a wonderful $500 paperweight I have now!

EDIT (1): Just to be clear, I'm not complaining about not being able to download Titanfall. I'm complaining about not being able to do anything on my Xbox One because the console is brand new and has never had a user sign in. Apparently the Xbox One will play games just fine when you're not connected to the Internet – after you've signed in to XBL at least once. I obviously have not, so I can do jack shit with this $500 piece of equipment until the issue has been resolved.

This has been going on for roughly 5-6 hours now as of 7:15 PM CST.

 

[Azrael the cat]

The problem with the Wii's "expanded audience" is that those people didn't buy all that many games in the long run. Nintendo made a lot of money selling the consoles, but profits tapered off sharply as more and more Wiis ended up collecting dust.

I'm pretty sure the main thing that most of the Wii's 'expanded audience' took away from the experience was the realisation that they still don't like computer games all THAT much, and seeing as their old Wii is gathering dust there's no point buying a new one anytime soon.

These aren't customers likely to complain about the state of the graphics, or get particularly excited about graphical improvements or hardware upgrades. It's not like those things came into the picture when they were playing Wii sports, so it just wouldn't occur to them that they needed to upgrade. If you stop making games for their console, they'll just be resentful - to get EXCITED about your console no longer being supported, you've got to be already thinking that there's things you'd like games to include that the current console can't manage (otherwise you're just taking the hit of the property you paid good money for becoming useless, without getting anything in exchange).

Again, nobody playing Wii Sports was thinking 'I wish this was a photo-realistic FIFA simulation with amazing AI that not only plays well, but accurately reflects the different coaches' tactics and the players' temperaments'. And if you're aiming at a market that just wants simple pickup-n-play games, why would they ever bother upgrading their system?

 

[Azrael the cat]

I wonder whether the continuing 'new golden age' of television is having an impact upon the chase for casual/cinematic $$$?

 

[mondblut]

Best thing it can happen to us is the market crashing to a point where no exlusives remain and old titles get ported and re-released on PC.

Why would you want consoletard garbage being ported and re-released on PC?!

 

[skuphundaku]

The problem with the Wii's "expanded audience" is that those people didn't buy all that many games in the long run. Nintendo made a lot of money selling the consoles, but profits tapered off sharply as more and more Wiis ended up collecting dust.

Indeed. Mario Kart, maybe a dance game, some Wii Sports (not necessarily used, but bought). I think I read something like that the average number of games per Wii user was something like 5 titles.

The problem is that the Wii users now use tablets. And I'm really hesitant to see many positives for the PC market here. The dedicated gamers may go to the PC, yes. I'm not sure that this is where the big money is, though. The AAA games may go the way of the dodo, but the replacement will probably have to run on a shitty tablet or mobile phone.

It's obvious that the main console audience is heading to mobile devices, not PCs. However, like the crossover that happened between phones and tablets (phablets), a crossover between mobile devices and PCs isn't that far away. We're not there yet, but we're pretty close. It won't be tomorrow, maybe not even next year, but it's going to happen soon. Of course, in the world of technology, a few years could mean a huge amount of time. After all, the iPhone was released in 2007 (less than 7 years ago), Android in 2008 (less than 6 years ago) and the iPad in 2010 (almost 4 years ago). Things are moving fast in this business.

Think about the Ubuntu Edge, which they wanted to be used both as a mobile device and as a computer by hooking it up to regular desktop peripherals such as a display, keyboard and mouse. Also, check out Project Ara ( http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/project-ara.90205 ) and other similar endeavours, which have the potential of wiping out any differences between different classes of devices, leaving it all up to the user to decide how to use the device (and allowing him to easily move from use case to use case).

 

[skuphundaku]

Depends on game.
Stuff like (mechanically meaningful, not just eye candy) physics can benefit greatly from multicore, a lot of AI can also benefit from being offloaded from the core handling the basic stuff.

Too bad that even best graphics doesn't look too good if it's only adorned with low res textures that can fit in very limited memory.

AI is really hard to spread to multiple cores actually. AI is very "branchy" code, which is the opposite of what's easy to split up.

What is the last game with complex AI that you played? Now think about what is the last game with flashy expensive graphics that you played. AI isn't easily parallelizable but graphics are, and it's graphics that brings in the big bucks in the AAA world. AI isn't more than an afterthought in this context.