Consoles are doomed within ten years
Console round-up WiiWare launches in Japan
IT'S BEEN A light week for console news, but the odd bit of interesting information has managed to leak out into the ether.
Xbox 360 Sandy Duncan, the former boss of Xbox Europe, has said he believes consoles will disappear very soon as everything gets "virtualised".
Speaking to ThatVideoGameBlog Duncan said, "The industry is fundamentally driven by technology. I think dedicated games devices, i.e. consoles and handhelds, will die [out] in the next five to ten years."
"There's hardly any technology difference between some hard disc video recorders and an Xbox 360, for example," Duncan stated.
"In fact in five to ten years I don’t think you’ll have any box at all under your TV; most of this stuff will be "virtualised" as web services by your content provider."
Duncan was with Microsoft for 15 years before leaving to co-found YoYo Games.
A spokesman from online video rental service Netflix has admitted that the company has recently polled its users on their potential interest in receiving streaming movie content via the Xbox 360, although the firm has refused to confirm any possible partnership with Microsoft.
HMV is offering 1000 free Xbox Live points for pre-ordering GTA IV. We've just done it as we're typing this sentence.
Speaking of GTA IV - the game will allow real-world music downloads from Amazon, it's a bit of a convoluted process including in-game text messages and email, but this sort of convergence is certainly the way forward for gaming.
PS3/PSP
Sony has undergone a couple of PR snafus this week, the first of which concerns
unauthorized access to some Playstation Network (PSN) accounts.
In a notice posted on the company's official Playstation website, Sony has acknowledged the possible unauthorised access of personal information on the Playstation Store.
"Although unlikely, it is possible that the passwords of a small percentage of PlayStation Network users may have been changed through unauthorised access, making it possible to view users' personal information and/or use the wallet for the PlayStation Store," the statement read.
The second hick-up concerned a PS3 owner complaining about customer service for his console, and losing his accessories - which is oddly familiar to recent Xbox 360 repair problems.
A reference to a PSP-3000 (the first PSP was named PSP-1000 and the slimmer version PSP-2000) has been found on Sony's online instruction manual website. While this could be a reference to some unheard of future iteration, it's more likely Sony already has something waiting in the wings for future release.
This could by why Sony has recently discussed the PSP having a 10-year life cycle.
The PSP-3000 won't make it for the recently unveiled God of War PSP bundle, which can be seen here.
Wii/DS
Nintendo has
launched
its WiiWare Channel in Japan, offering nine games for download.
Prices for the games range from 500 Wii Points (approx £3.50) up to 1500 Wii Points (approx £10.50). The full list can be seen here.
Nintendo also launched the Commodore 64 channel for Virtual Console with two initial games -Uridium and International Karate.
Fancy turning your Wiimote into a dual-shock contender? Check thisCyber Smash Grip add-on.
Eurogamer has its usual Wii Virtual Console round-ups here and here. µ
Comments
Yep, Just as they said in the 80's
I swear this is one of the oldest lines in the book. Ever consoles started coming out and games were installed on a cartridge or media format, they said that eventually you won't need a console.I disagree. The heart of the console might not be the same but the need for localized CPU processing and GPU processing will still be needed. Consumers are fussy in that like to have a hard copy backup. Digitally delivered content doesn't have the same feel if I can't hold onto it. Even Valves steam still needs some sort of local storage and processing.
Some things change, others don't but I will believe this one when I see it.
What?
Totally plausible - if we were all playing Ponglocal C/GPU power & hardcopies
I do agree that some local processing power will be necessary for 'virtual' consoles, but it certainly will not be 8 core cell processors. As to the hard copy comment from Viscountalpha: I consider myself a consumer, albeit technologically educated, and I do not have any need to for hard copies. I switch on my PS3 and I just want to play the latest game I downloaded (GT Prologue :-); I am reading a lot, but I am perfectly happy with my hundreds of ebooks (ahem, legally purchased and all). But I did virtualize computers used in the house (4) with the free VMware server software and some older pc's as terminals, at the fraction of the cost normally associated with so many machines.I think the potential of saved energy and natural resources alone - apart from any 'ease of use argument' - should be enough to convince us all; and hey, my books, my computers, etc. are all cheaper, and no need to drive my car around at all!
Malthusian Gloom Unwarranted: No. of cores growing faster than no. of people
Anyone predicting that future consoles will have LESS horsepower than a PS3 has today is nuts.Maybe future consoles will be built more on the Wii model (of less expensive parts), but those less expensive parts will be much more powerful than a Cell CPU. Because it will be the future.
DRM
@meikdahogoYour ideal world would be one without DRM, I think, so you could keep backups of your electronic data.
Without the backups, a hardware failure would leave you out in the cold. If you had your license information stored somewhere (perhaps on a piece of paper), you could probably re-download everything (assuming it was still avaialble).
I suppose if you have broadband, that's not a super huge issue.
In my case, I have no console, but I do have Steam and about 11GB worth of data in my Steam profile. Re-downloading that would be a chore even if though all I have to do to reclaim it is provide my user name and password to the tiny Steam Client on a new system.
As long as you can backup your data, a "paperless" world would be acceptable.
I don't understand consoles
On the surface they totally make no sense: why on earth would you put all that effort and capital into making a video game machine in order to LOSE MONEY! on it??? And that is a critical part of your BUSINESS PLAN!!???I guess the reason must be that whosoever owns the console calls the shot on the content creators; they are at the mercy. However, they also are the only ones in the equation that make any money. Now how the ??? does that work, the group that makes the money does not call the shots????? That is what is so baffling.
I am SO looking forward to something like a Google/Linux ***OPEN SOURCE*** video game system, for cripes sake. I would have no problem paying the true hardware cost for something like that, I literally would not, and you can believe all the software houses would be all over publishing for it. I have no interest in buying any PS3 or Xbox, thanks anyway bye.
Hard copies @viscountalpha
Why would you want hard copies? They just get destroyed by scratches, coffee spills, house burn downs, you name it. Digital copies can be backed up, or re-downloaded as needed. I can't think of one good reason for holding onto the DVDs.latency
it may be possible to send your game input to a datacenter and get the graphics back with latency you can tolerate.Wah?
""There's hardly any technology difference between some hard disc video recorders and an Xbox 360, for example," Duncan stated."Just goes to show you were a college education can get you. -badum-ching-
@meikdahogo
Yes, good luck playing 4 instances of COD4 on your 4 visualized computers.
Apparently VMware did a good job making their software nwb friendly, cause you just got pwnd.
There is open source consolles.
You have GP2x for one, and sadly, no, developers are not jumping all over it.There is however very good emulators on it for oldschool games and it is portable, also rather usable as a portable mediastation.
Besides perhaps having to deal with the owners of the consolle platforms being less then great at some times, there are also benefits outweighting that.
Copy protection, developer suport and SDKs, brandname recognition helping to boost sales and market size(There are fairly large numbers of owners of PS3, Wii, Xboxes out there to sell your games to.).
All of the above helps you out if you make games for a living, it makes those financing the development feel more inclined to invest and so on.
Who would you as an investor target your funds towards indirectly, an unknown brand of a very good product or something with a microsoft logo on it?
We as consumers buy what we know far more often then we spend a good deal of time to learn what is best and for us that actually do look around we usually find that following the stream is the wise move since that is where the future releases of good things are most likly to come.
Microsoft has by the way been a longtime believer in having all the consumer electronics somehow meld together, that you will use the inhouse computer for everything from listening to the radio, surfing, watching TV and playing the latest games.
But do we do that?
No, we still like to get the things suiting us best for every separate purpouse most often.
I personally think that the mainstream(meaning enough people for it to be a valid market to target) people having an "inhouse" computer doing just about everything good enough that you wouldn't feel the urge to buy a dedicated gamingconsole for instance is quite a good deal further away then a meager 10 years.
Looking in the trends of what people buy and what "killer apps" there is to push the needs for more power it looks like people don't feel very much need to be bleeding edge.
Onboard sound has reach a level where none enthusiasts can't find any fault at all even when trying to, CPU's are heading towards that point too, when the highest affordable reolution and size of monitors will be satured by the performance of a highend GPU.
Overall I look around and see that the industry as a whole seems content to make minor evolutions at best for now.
If someone invents a somewhat working holodeck or somesuch inovation and competition might take leaps instead of little steps again.
But for now, looks like highend, highvolume upgrade wholesale, be-oboslete-in-a-year-tempo doesn't tickle the fancy of as many poeple it used to.
I predict hard times ahead for more then a few consumer electronics Brands targeted to fit into that PCmarket.
And in view of that, I think for many picking up a console every four or so years that just plain works for it's lifecycle looks like a good deal, hence, I can't see gaming on consoles being the worry, it's highend gaming on the PC that is in trouble, you can allready see tendencies towards that.
Several pretigious game developers have made it clear they are rethinking how to target games towards the PC market and others make games primarily to consoles then porting them(often badly) to PC.
How long ago was it that we couldn't dream of "stupid console games" being ported to PC and the great hits of PC gaming was (often badly) ported to consoles?
Sorry about the language errors and being longwinded, english is not my first language and I do tend to overthink things. :)
tv
soon the console will be in the built in to the tvOh No Not Again
Things are not going to change that much.I would be wiling to bet in ten years we will just have the same sort of thing only faster.
one good reason for holding onto the DVDs
Make that several :1) You have no connection because it's a few buddies and you on a LAN, how do play ?
2) The web site is unavailable (DDOS, hardware issue, whatever) - how do you play ?
3) The company goes down - no CD means you never play that game any more
4) DRM - means that when you change your hardware, you've lost your right to play the game
Personally, the ONLY user-friendly software download application I have is Steam. With that one, I can swap components or change PC without any trouble. All it takes to reinstall everything is log on to Steam, and presto ! I have all my rights back and all that remains is to download the code again.
Then I have EA Games and its crappy, over-protected bundle of spite called EA Downloader. If I so much as update the video driver on my PC, that thing is liable to decide that I'm not who I said I was a while ago, and I have to go through a troublesome re-certification process (most often uninstalling the bloody app - which destroys all my local data - then reinstalling and re-certifying my good name).
So online downloads ? I prefer my DVD - I don't need no online authentication for it.