are PC's & consoles merging? to what extent?

[Mr. Sexy Hat]

But there IS a cake. I could have sworn I saw it!! Portal is a world of win. Can't wait till 2 comes out.

 

PC games will rule one day... one day. We can start ONE child at a time.

 

Portal 2 is looking quite nice. I love the black comedy theme of Portal I hope the 2nd one keeps it up.

 

PC games have always ruled the roost. Its just that consoles always had a better marketing appeal to people in general.

It used to be shitty PC ports of games on Consoles. But now its shitty Console ports on PC's.

 

No mouse interface in the menus is a big one that most ports fuck up now days

Graphics aren't as good as they can because PC's can run monster resolutions and a lot more 3D enhancements.

and they all feel sort of rushed out for the PC port even though you wait 4 months after the consoles get them.

 

I'll stop before this turns into a PC vs. Console Debait.

[Yahve]

True, I've gone back and forth with this for ages with Nick. Truth be told, I do think the consoles will get more expensive and PC's ever cheaper... to the point of merging one day.

 

Compare a new 600 dollar ps3 with my personal PC build of 1000. Not as different as the 200 vs 2500 it used to be a few years ago.

 

People are playing Farmville on their PC's and Folding @ home on their consoles... what does that tell you

 

More importantly, did you all see this KID in action?? He can barely speak! lol mad skills for a 3 year old.

[Mr. Sexy Hat]

I think by next gen or after the Console will be more or less a PC. Music, Movies and Web Browsing have been all merged more and more into consoles since 1999. So the line is starting to blur. 360 and PS3 already have HDD upgrades. In a gen or 2 time, I wouldn't be surprised if Ram, Video, Sound and CPU could all be upgraded in a home console.

 

So the question is when does a console stop being a console and become a PC?

 

Remember they also have mouse and keyboard support.

 

Xbox 720 with windows 7 included? We will see.

 

Yeah I wish that was my kid. He can crouch jump at a Counter-Strike level.

[The NZA]

True, I've gone back and forth with this for ages with Nick. Truth be told, I do think the consoles will get more expensive and PC's ever cheaper... to the point of merging one day.

 

Compare a new 600 dollar ps3 with my personal PC build of 1000. Not as different as the 200 vs 2500 it used to be a few years ago.

 

People are playing Farmville on their PC's and Folding @ home on their consoles... what does that tell you

 

oh yahven. you never tire of being wrong.

 

1) all your favorite PC devs are primarily on console now. remember when we'd get crappy PC ports on consoles? tables turned a few years back, man.

 

2) do you consider me a fairly open-minded gamer? cause its taken at least a decade of point-and-click and some awesome sales to get me to really even try PC gaming. think about that.

 

3) no one is folding @ home. no one.

i did it for like a month. 2007 was a very, very slow year for sony.

 

 

4) PS3's are not $600, havent been for years. top-tier PC's arent 1k, havent been for years. update your info, man!

 

5) consoles will not get more expensive for many years. yeah, PS3 was 600...did you not see them go from being the market leader to struggling to not be in 3rd? do you really think that's got more to do with say XBL than the awful price tag?

ill back this up: if you're down, ill bet you $50 the next playstation launches with a model no more expensive than $399. seriously, we're gonna be at this gen for a while now cause they need to wait out production costs, much less try to make back some of the billions they hemorrhaged for that pricetag.

dont get me wrong; your call in '01 about them merging was on the money in a number of ways: patches, DLC, firmware updates, interchangable hard drives, etc....but its not as entire as i think you've envisioned; we're not yet able to extend a generation buy purchasing RAM packs (dont you dare bring up the N64, haha)...hell, like you guys said, we cant even really play with mice & keyboard yet. how far off do you think we are of user mods/content?

[Yahve]

Try as you may, you just end up agreeing with me

 

1) all your favorite PC devs are primarily on console now. remember when we'd get crappy PC ports on consoles? tables turned a few years back, man.

True, I haven't denied this.

 

2) do you consider me a fairly open-minded gamer? cause its taken at least a decade of point-and-click and some awesome sales to get me to really even try PC gaming. think about that.

Sadly true, but that doesn't really apply to the merging of markets. You're just stubborn

 

3) no one is folding @ home. no one. i did it for like a month. 2007 was a very, very slow year for sony.

 

Not true. LOL Well, most people aren't I know but you CAN. That's the whole point. From a technological perspective, at least consoles are milked more for their horsepower than PC's are.

 

4) PS3's are not $600, havent been for years. top-tier PC's arent 1k, havent been for years. update your info, man!

 

Reference point. New vs new. You can build a competent gaming comp for 500 vs your 300 ps3. I just built my new comp like a month ago. While not bleeding edge ( some parts are, others are just great ) I got it for around 1100. The best SSD ( x25) on the market and an almost top end graphics card. ati 5850. Cutting edge Mobo... cheap dvd drive lol. I'll leave the blu ray for my HTPC.

 

5) consoles will not get more expensive for many years. yeah, PS3 was 600...did you not see them go from being the market leader to struggling to not be in 3rd? do you really think that's got more to do with say XBL than the awful price tag?

 

well....

 

ill back this up: if you're down, ill bet you $50 the next playstation launches with a model no more expensive than $399.

 

done! I needs me some witnesses I think they'll hit 500 at least, with a free game or two if need be.

 

seriously, we're gonna be at this gen for a while now cause they need to wait out production costs, much less try to make back some of the billions they hemorrhaged for that price tag.

absolutely true, nobody really wants to be nextgen right now, except for maaaybe nintendo by the year's end.

 

dont get me wrong; your call in '01 about them merging was on the money in a number of ways: patches, DLC, firmware updates, interchangeable hard drives, etc....but its not as entire as i think you've envisioned;

 

oh I never said it would happen in a generation ( somethings do evolve faster than my imagination, just look at rock band 3. I predicted that would exist by rock band 4. I'm so happy to have been wrong )

 

we're not yet able to extend a generation buy purchasing RAM packs (dont you dare bring up the N64, haha)...hell, like you guys said, we cant even really play with mice & keyboard yet. how far off do you think we are of user mods/content?

 

Well, the xbox slim now uses usb sticks instead of mem cards. So gaming space is now even more portable. ( all those arcade games fit happily on one thumbdrive ) I thought some games supported the mouse and keyboard. The 2 main reasons mice are not favoured is because they want to 1) balance the playing field and 2) Mouse rotation speed would show the video card's weaknesses. Today's consoles are awesome little computers designed to look their best at "specific" framerates. Mice would fuck up their equations. Regarding user content... Halo 3 offered a degree of user content with level enhancements, so that's a start. Other games may offer this, I just don't know much about them nowadays. Mods really wont take off until they run some kind of punkbuster on consoles. A super authorized punkbuster with I-store level interactivity. A tough concept to create. That could be a Gold Acct feature that could be offered. Use that income to pay for a team of engineers to approve mods for global distribution. I don't think they'll want to mess with their market model though. A Platinum Acct would be more likely. Thus the additional income. I don't WANT this to happen but I don't see any other way around a good mod community for consoles. Hmmm maybe publishers could release approved mod community expansion packs... for a small fee of course lol.

[Mr. Sexy Hat]

All we need to know is that Starcraft 2 will be a PC exculsive.

 

Nintendo needs a extra gen to catch up with Sony and Micro$oft anyways :P

[The NZA]

you so hijacked this thread. i am so splitting this off into a PC talk one later.

 

Sadly true, but that doesn't really apply to the merging of markets. You're just stubborn

 

 

ok, you're right that i'm stubborn, but that image displays a chunk of what i (and presumably, you) think of when we say "PC gaming". now, WoW certainly counts, but do you really wanna extend Farmville and flash-based games to that? you can certainly make your odd analogies, but i see it as a different beast, specifically as far as most of those developers go.

so your implication that PC gaming is somehow growing, rather that becoming even more niche...eh, if you refer exclusively to WoW, there's something of an argument to be made. otherwise, im not sure how you're seeing this expand. Crysis 2, possibly Diablo 3...SC2 is like one of the only big PC exclusives upcoming, and that's likely due to RTS not having high demand (yet) on consoles.

 

Not true. LOL Well, most people aren't I know but you CAN. That's the whole point. From a technological perspective, at least consoles are milked more for their horsepower than PC's are.

 

right, but...we only have that option cause the cell processor sony chose is particularly good at it. you're grabbing an obscure example, man...its up there in my head with saying "see? AHA! you have screensavers now, too!".

 

Reference point. New vs new. You can build a competent gaming comp for 500 vs your 300 ps3. I just built my new comp like a month ago. While not bleeding edge ( some parts are, others are just great ) I got it for around 1100. The best SSD ( x25) on the market and an almost top end graphics card. ati 5850. Cutting edge Mobo... cheap dvd drive lol. I'll leave the blu ray for my HTPC.

 

..but you're comparing a new pricepoint that bombed horribly and the cost of piecemealing something together. this cant be stressed enough: the sweet spot for console pricing is still $200. that's where sony made most of their $ on the PS2, MS and sony both have been racing each other to shed development costs & get as close to that # as possible and start making anywhere nearly resembling the install base sony had last gen...im telling you, $600 launch will be taught in business classes as how to ruin a brand in 90 days or less. also, i keep being shown threads on building top-tier PCs for $500 or under! your reference point makes no sense, sir.

 

done! I needs me some witnesses I think they'll hit 500 at least, with a free game or two if need be.

 

easiest money i ever made, after our lest bet on the election

(still outstanding, last i checked...)

 

 

Well, the xbox slim now uses usb sticks instead of mem cards. So gaming space is now even more portable. ( all those arcade games fit happily on one thumbdrive ) I thought some games supported the mouse and keyboard. The 2 main reasons mice are not favoured is because they want to 1) balance the playing field and 2) Mouse rotation speed would show the video card's weaknesses. Today's consoles are awesome little computers designed to look their best at "specific" framerates. Mice would fuck up their equations. Regarding user content... Halo 3 offered a degree of user content with level enhancements, so that's a start. Other games may offer this, I just don't know much about them nowadays. Mods really wont take off until they run some kind of punkbuster on consoles. A super authorized punkbuster with I-store level interactivity. A tough concept to create. That could be a Gold Acct feature that could be offered. Use that income to pay for a team of engineers to approve mods for global distribution. I don't think they'll want to mess with their market model though. A Platinum Acct would be more likely. Thus the additional income. I don't WANT this to happen but I don't see any other way around a good mod community for consoles. Hmmm maybe publishers could release approved mod community expansion packs... for a small fee of course lol.

 

yeah, they're finally allowing outside memory devices....but sony's locked down gamesaves, and MS still wont let you use other hard drives: 1 step forward, 2 steps back.

 

im acknowledging the baby steps thing, and yeah, Halo 3's forge mode (you should really see LittleBigPlanet one day) is a step forward in user-content...what i was saying is that its not growing on your old model, sadly: despite the popularity of FPS', map packs and even guns (formerly free DLC when on PC) are now paid packages; MS particularly hates free things, and after making something like a billion a year on XBL gold, its safe to say they're not going back.

it's a very different scene from user mods/levels/total conversions that your PCs have enjoyed forever now, and i feel no closer to that even with all the advances forward, sadly. we're paying for peer-to-peer gameplay here; no talk of dedicated servers, so the idea of hosting free content strikes these companies as abhorrent. it sucks.

 

UT3 i wanna say allowed mouse & keyboard on PS3? there was talk of cross-play with PC people that i dont think panned out. i think a next-gen system could easily determine input devices, even wirelessly, and put you on a proper server (so as to not allow you freaks to massacre the gamepad kids, heh) but id not thought about what youre talking about with mice fucking up framerates, you mean because of speed of panning the camera or what specifically?

 

 

Sexy Hats: tech-wise, sure, but they're getting housed financially. 3DS isnt even dated yet, and im tempted to take a bet that it dwards the lifetime sales of both the PS3 & 360 when this gen's over.

[Yahve]

Sure, blame me for your shenanigans. I go with the flow oh great admin of lore.

 

I hate to admit it, but Farmville and its cohorts are part of the future of PC gaming. Casino gambling, virtual I-Racing, mmorpgs, steams. Time's are a changing as you correctly indicated. The classic PC is dying, but then again, so is the concept of a unit-ready offline console.

 

You seem to have difficulties with modern pricing ideas. They WANT to hit the 200 price point. But when initial production costs are almost 1000, it's going to take a LOT of cold hard cash to suck it in and be the loss leader for YEARS before payback. Remember that even at 600 a pop, they were losing money on each console sold. Sorry nick, new tech doesn't come cheap. Consoles do reach into the future and gamble to find a happy medium to support itself for as many years as possible before the inevitable outdated feel sinks in. Over time, production costs do go down and savings are passed on to the consumer. Or follow nintendo's example and sell shit hardware and actually MAKE money per console sold. Very sound biz tactic. Though their gamble is going to hurt them around this fiscal year when even the nintendo fans are feeling the outdated feel creep in. It is a feel kind of thing and they must fight it tooth and nail to avoid folks jumping ship by providing the best exclusives they can.

 

I do agree that folks hate price hikes. When they are just absurd, then it wld never take off. 700 for a 3DO was too much of a jump and was never even considered by the masses. Give them time to adjust and folks will reluctantly buy into it. Blaming the economy and all that jazz. Look at how a box of Little Debbies crept up from 80 cents to 1.60 and no one has even blinked about it. Slow and steady, if you ease it in, they won't cry about it. Push too hard, and they'll scream in pain. uhmm wait a min? D'oh. That came out wrong...

 

 

The folding gimmick was an example to show you how powerful consoles are becoming. The cell is an incredible little chip. Graphics cards have been evolving at a faster pace than CPU's because they have walked away from the speed game and more towards efficiency. We are nearing the point where the GPU is about to kick the CPU's ass as far as raw computing power. This is a new concept for everyone, and the best and the brightest can begin to use that big fat GPU to do tasks traditionally relegated to CPU cycles. Folding is just one example, but other programs are beginning to follow suit. ( imagine Word running faster because of your vid card and not your processor, things like that )

 

i keep being shown threads on building top-tier PCs for $500 or under! your reference point makes no sense, sir.

 

How the HELL can you build a top tier PC for 500?? A top tier graphics card is over 700 alone! That's not even thinking about Quad SLI. That's top tier, think Alienware with Apple prices. My second tier goodness lies in 300 vid cards, the enthusiast bang for your buck sweet spot. The competent all around true bang for the dollar is at the mid 100s. My build is thrifty but not unheard of in the prebuilt world. Check out this DELL desktop. Not too shabby for a prebuilt set. Competent PC's for 500 can be had, they can even play Starcraft 2. The PC has evolved quite nicely over the years. Competent is NOT top-tier.

 

 

easiest money i ever made, after our lest bet on the election

(still outstanding, last i checked...)

 

Check your paypal logs my friend.

 

id not thought about what youre talking about with mice fucking up framerates, you mean because of speed of panning the camera or what specifically?

 

When it renders the scene, it can only handle a certain fixed amount of "image" per second. If you mouse fast, you technically see more per second. This over taxes the capabilities consoles were designed for and results in choppy images. Remember how GoldenEye looked different splitscreen than just one person. It's basically the same idea. Too much "image" results in choppy play or reduced image quality. Consoles games are designed to be milking that poor hardware to the best of its capability, as time goes by, they get better at it and near 100%. Compare the 1st ps1 games to the last ps1 games made, big difference.

 

 

But, as one of our founders would say, we digress.

 

The new consoles ARE PC's. Open them up, they have PC hardware. Install an OS and you can write term papers on them. This is a conceptual argument. Blurring the lines of the purpose PC's have with the purpose consoles have. Think about what smartphones are doing to the PDA market ( killed it ) and the MP3 player market ( absorbing it ) . Lines are being blurred. The world is no longer black and white. Some would claim apocalypse, but where are his horsemen? My original claim implied that in the future, we would have one item to play video games on. Whether it's called a console or a PC is trivial. What I do see is that the markets are on a collision course. Developers want this to happen ( less porting hell ) and hardware providers don't. ( royalties galore )

 

What we now call a PC is being ripped apart. Part of its power is heading toward smartphones, another chunk toward netbooks, consoles are beating them up and cloud computing might consume us all. (think google apps or OnLive ) The only area I see the PC's making actual growth is into the previously untapped HTPC sectore, to the future demise of CD/DVD/BR standards. Unfortunately, consoles are also making a mad push here and they have a big head start. It's a dog eat dog world out there.

[The NZA]

fun post as ever; yahven analogies and all. how ive missed those.

 

You seem to have difficulties with modern pricing ideas. They WANT to hit the 200 price point. But when initial production costs are almost 1000, it's going to take a LOT of cold hard cash to suck it in and be the loss leader for YEARS before payback. Remember that even at 600 a pop, they were losing money on each console sold. Sorry nick, new tech doesn't come cheap. Consoles do reach into the future and gamble to find a happy medium to support itself for as many years as possible before the inevitable outdated feel sinks in. Over time, production costs do go down and savings are passed on to the consumer. Or follow nintendo's example and sell shit hardware and actually MAKE money per console sold. Very sound biz tactic. Though their gamble is going to hurt them around this fiscal year when even the nintendo fans are feeling the outdated feel creep in. It is a feel kind of thing and they must fight it tooth and nail to avoid folks jumping ship by providing the best exclusives they can.

 

I do agree that folks hate price hikes. When they are just absurd, then it wld never take off. 700 for a 3DO was too much of a jump and was never even considered by the masses. Give them time to adjust and folks will reluctantly buy into it.

 

thing is, you're pointing at the PS3, disregarding the billions sony shed, and saying that's how its gonna go: im saying its not.

sony presumably did so as a strategy of securing the blu-ray as the HD disc of choice (like how the PS2 was perfectly timed when the public was looking at DVDs, and it was a huge plus). problem here was a) the drive/blu-ray diodes were crazy expensive (you're absolutely right that they sold at a big loss), b) the format didnt really do much for gaming (this gen has MS still working with DVDs and not showing their age too bad - same argument can be used for the cell, though), and c) consumers weren't sold.

 

nintendo is my point, good yahven: if you cant sell bleeding-edge hardware at a reasonable price, dont. sony saying gamers should get 2 jobs to afford their system - and then leaving devs with a difficult setup to program for + tiny install base = no games for a while there...im telling you, that same strategy in 2012 would bomb just as hard as it did in 2006, and prior with your 3DO example.

for posterity: nintendo's problem has way more to do with 3rd parties right now than its hardware, though.

 

you draw the generation out, shit comes down in price - i wanna say someone from nintendo was saying putting a GPU in the wii to up it to 720p (still high for this gen's standard on consoles, to be honest) would cost them like a dollar a unit, if that. anyway, mebbe you think sony's trojan-horse strategy of getting blu-rays into homes will pay off in the end (despite your telling me that digital's the way to go, heh) but what im trying to establish is that price point youre looking at...its a death trap.

will consumers see $500+ as a sweet deal for a gaming console/media center/halfway PC? one day, sure, but no day soon, i think.

then again, i woudlntve thought $600 iphones/ipads would sell, so you might be $50 richer, but we'd all lose cause the world would be sadder.

 

 

@ the $500 top-tier PC: we're still talking piecemealing, right? ive been looking at this page a bit, they've got setups with some solid specs...closer to $600, but you know, less than your dirty 1k.

[Yahve]

Looking at your GAF's recommended ultimate budget gaming rig (US edition), I see a very good machine. Read budget=competent. You can play good new games on it and they'll look nice. This is NOT top-tier, and my 1k rig wld kick your arse Wait a minute, you wouldn't even notice the resolution difference would you... ( where'd the head to wall smiley go? ) I also used combo deals and rebates to milk my dollar. Gotta love the Egg.

 

 

Well, let's assume the hardware is built around mods with minor tech upgrades. Scrap the disk-reader. ( all downloadable content baby. following the nuPSP's footsteps ) Scrap the cables, ( it's all going to be cat 5e now didn't you know ) Put the rest into a big FAT 5 TB beast and you're set. I think they could sell that around 350 to 400 on release day.

 

This model does have some issues, the early demise of GameStop and the like, akin to the demise of Blockbuster ( they won't make it past this year ) . What services could gamestop provide to stay alive??

 

1) Datacenter. Bring in your thumbdrives and get free copies of all games. Like DS demos today. For those with poor net connections, this would be their way to go. Free copies with the purchase of a KEY of course, where the key looks like a giftcard and is what gamestop would actually sell to make their money. These KEYs could eventually be tradable too, deregister it on your console. Sell it to a gamestop to re-activate the KEY ( developer gets another cut, for the second time. Giving the devil its due ) Gamestop then sells the used KEY at a profit.

 

2) Loaning. It would be far more difficult to manage. This would involve sharing the free game that cannot be played unless the profile the KEY is registered to is online. Like the Steam model. Friend loaning could probably be enabled via a lengthy and painful Nintendo level online process that only permits a single friend's account temporary 48 hr access to the game while your own access is disabled. They have to make it painful so that it's not just indefinitely renewed.

 

3) Tradition. When you purchase a game, you collect the case and manual or any goodies it may come with. That is now gone, replaced by the new collectable scene sold at Gamestops. ( Comic Book Shop's cries would be heard around the world ) DLC via any medium today has shown that consumers are willing to do so, but I don't know if they'd be up to doing it exclusively.

 

It could happen... 20 years of cartridges gave way to 15 years of discs. This leading up to 10 years of DLC. Who knows what the hell would follow next. 5 years of instant streaming? 1 year of hive mind?

 

What if they hack into my ghost??? Will Kusanagi save me?

[The NZA]

haha, you're all over the place with this one.

 

1) you're looking for

 

2) 5 TB?! you moving into that thing or what? fucking hell.

in related news, i saw a 125GB SSD for $180 or so the other day (marked as negotiable). why not that (OS/programs) and a 1 or 2 TB as the "everything else"? holy shit, you must archive like spiffy.

 

people've been crying for the death of GS for years now, while they rake in record sales in the billions. sure, the model'll one day go largely digital and they'll mostly be ass-out, but how fast do you think this is gonna happen?

 

also, im intrigued by your blockbuster prediction. you honestly think they'll be closing up by 2011? you know we still have Radio Shack somehow, right?

 

as for # 3...i love packaging/manuals but yeah, theyre slowly turning into tutorials/in-game dictionaries or whatever, and bonuses are turning into in-game DLC. i love good physical extras (OST's, plushes, statues, whatever - long as its not a rip. still, specialty items can still be stocked or shipped from the devs themselves).

 

ps oh god i so hope i hack your first, ive owed you since that trojan you put into my mp3's in college

[Yahve]

haha, you're all over the place with this one.

 

But it's all tied so neatly by the central thread, like a pink bowtie on a preboxed Vicky's Secret teddy.

 

Ah there's the lil guy. ! Thx

 

Well, maybe 5TB is a little too big. But this is how I saw it. 10 GB per game, maybe 20 depending on Blu rayness of it all. With an active library of... oh let's say 40 games. That would be a TB or two. Toss in DVR features and jukebox of all your mp3s and that's how I allocated the rest. You know you're right. The entry level would probably be 1TB with HD upgrades available up to 5TB as aftermarket packs.

 

Radio shack has stayed in the game surprisingly as a glorified cell phone store. Tourist Fodder. No dignified local shops there... do they?

 

Blockbuster has one foot in the grave. They have no working market model anymore.

[bishopcruz]

But it's all tied so neatly by the central thread, like a pink bowtie on a preboxed Vicky's Secret teddy.

 

Ah there's the lil guy. ! Thx

 

Well, maybe 5TB is a little too big. But this is how I saw it. 10 GB per game, maybe 20 depending on Blu rayness of it all. With an active library of... oh let's say 40 games. That would be a TB or two. Toss in DVR features and jukebox of all your mp3s and that's how I allocated the rest. You know you're right. The entry level would probably be 1TB with HD upgrades available up to 5TB as aftermarket packs.

 

Radio shack has stayed in the game surprisingly as a glorified cell phone store. Tourist Fodder. No dignified local shops there... do they?

 

Blockbuster has one foot in the grave. They have no working market model anymore.

 

SC2 is bacK!

 

Ahem...

 

On the whole top-o the line PC thing, I actually would have to say that having anything approaching top of the line in the PC space is the east important it has ever been for gamng, a $200 card can pretty much eat any game that can be thrown at it at 1080p, and I have practically no issues using a 4 year or so old core 2 duo. Back in the day my PC would be coughing up blood, not so much anymore. PC gaming is evolving, it used to be the place where you could get the most refined graphics and gameplay, and to a certain extent that is true, but as every developer HAS to focus on consoles as well in order to actually make a profit on AAA titles, PC gaming will focus on having slightly prettier versions of games that are also out on consoles. Where PC gaming is currently kicking ass is in the indie market, the strategy market, and the adventure games market. Since it costs nothing to publish for the PC (licensing wise) indie devs can do whatever they want and see what sticks. Same with the other genre. But as a whole the days of exclusive high-budget games on PC are behind us, unless you are say, a Blizzard.