The death of Consoles

cherryghost

Before you come in barging and shouting and pointing the finger at me, like 'omgggg you monster! consoles will never die!', this is a presentation by a developer on a mobile platform. Taken from Kotaku today, I sat down and watched on.

Opinions expressed in this presentation are mine and don’t represent the official views of ngmoco or DeNA.

Everything dies, eventually. Our industry is in a period of rapid, tumultuous change as social games, iOS/Android and PC free-to-play grow from nothing to hundreds of millions of users right before our eyes. Meanwhile, consumer technology is trending away from the use of specialized devices like MP3 players, digital cameras and GPS receivers towards multi-use devices like a laptop computers, tablets or smartphones.

What could these two trends mean for the central hardware platform and business model of the current games industry - the PS3, Xbox 360 or Wii sitting under your TV? Is the games console as we know it under threat? In this talk Ben Cousins examines questions that many are beginning to ask - will the console die? If so, what will kill it and when? What can console developers do to avoid their jobs dying with the platform?

Presentation is here.

Kotaku's post:

Ben Cousins, who works for a company called ngmoco that makes video games mostly for cell phones and tablets, has a vested interest in telling you that PlayStations, Xboxes and Nintendo Whatevers are a few pistons away from horse-and-buggy obsolescence. It would be so easy to dismiss him, because game consoles are such impressive and entertaining machines.

Game consoles helped slay the arcades. Some stupid Apple machine is going to squash them?
Come on.
Before you dismiss Cousins as a mobile gaming shill or before you nominate him as a prophet, clear 26 minutes from your schedule. Use those 26 minutes to watch and listen to a presentation, embedded below, of Cousins' talk from last week's Game Developers Conference.
It was the most provocative talk I attended at GDC.
I loved it (points for praising Kotaku, Ben!).
Cousins is on to something. He's got enough evidence to support many of his assertions: Console companies are struggling. Game sales on consoles are slumping. Tablets and phones are swelling in power. People are playing video games away from their consoles like they haven't since the days when arcades were waiting to defeated by the Nintendo Entertainment System and PlayStation.
Has Ben Cousins seen the future? He just might be showing it to you.

Now to my personal opinion. I somewhat agree that console and mobile gaming is currently going through a phase of change. That's all it is. CHANGE. Not the DEATH of something. As Ben pointed out in the presentation, TV crushed cinema, but the companies moved around it and provided alternative mediums. The VCR comes to mind as a 'saviour' of major companies. At the end of the day, the VCR provided the same information on a screen as the cinema has, ie essentially the same thing in a different form. Ben points out that cinema attendance has dived from 60% to 10% in as many years.


Arcade has dropped from 35% to 5% today.



Ben goes on to compare console and mobile gaming, and how the different ranges of gaming have already been overcome by 'disruptive technology'. He firmly believes that companies need to change their model in order to survive this CHANGE. I've got a question to put forward to boardsies; do you believe that interface and interaction will change? Did the Wii alter how you play games? Did Kinect and Move dominate the market? I don't think so. These were feeble attempts at introducing a 'change'. The controller has been around around for 40 years now. It's survived change and honestly, when you take a look at things, barely anything has essentially 'changed'.



Do you think a mobile platform with touch-screen capabilities will ever dominate the market? I personally think that there will be change. However, the mobile market is still not at an acceptable level for many gamers who want to sit down and spend many hours on the big screen, engaging themselves in games. Mobile games will surely rise to the top, right now and indeed in the next 5 or so years at LEAST, there will be no mobile design that'll change the way we think of games. Again, Ben stipulates that software is down, hardware is down etc etc, have you ever heard of a recession? How about that of the 400 million plus Android devices activated, the majority of them are entry level phones that are not capable of 3D rendering? Mobile gaming will need a standard platform and will need standardized hardware if it has any chance of killing the console.


Right now, I don't see it. Hardware manufacturers roadmaps for up to 2017/18, I don't see it. My estimates that it will be MUCH later for anything to happen. Even at that, consoles will be hard to flick off, if at all. Mobile gaming needs a revolution, not evolution, in order to just put a dent in console gaming.


Thoughts?

richymcdermott

Only way consoles can die is by their own doing ..
I think consoles these days are moving towards been what pc are cept just not as powerful. I dont know what pc gaming was like before but i can imagine consoles had a purpose to the family room cause you couldnt get experinces with the likes of mario, sonic , metroid, crash bandicoot but due to recession companies deciding to go multiplat i can see consoles becoming obselete and everyone will be on together on one network imo..
With mobile gaming i think will be another alternative for people to play games , its bringing in people who arent gamers so i think its a great addition to the gaming globe, will it turn into something big in the future ? That remains to be seen.
Thats what i think anyways :pac:

Blowfish

It's just the way computing in general is heading rather than just consoles. I agree fully with him that the concept of a dedicated box under the TV is outmoded and will fade to obscurity.

For a long while it's been the case that we are moving away from the full blown proprietary platform segregation that we've pretty much always had.

The way I see it, further down the road, content will be hardware independant and available across all platforms. The only hardware that people will base their buying decisions on will be screen size and input device. Regardless of these, the content available on various devices will be the same.

The most obivous example where we are already beginning to see this is OnLive. You've exactly the same games on PC, Tablets and phones. There's no reason any of these devices couldn't be used to drive your giant TV either, just throw in a bluetooth controller and you are doing everything a console is doing.

ShadowHearth

they can shove their touchscreen "always" ipads up their holes. touchscreen is very limited way of control. something like ps vita proved that there is a place for a device that has bouth: normal controls and touch screen, but there is no way there will be a touch screen only proper gaming experience.

i own iphone and have good few games on it, but i havent played or bought any games for more then a year on it.on the other hand my ps vita is going full blast everyday! and i dont mind paying 35-40eu for games as those are high quality stuff, not like garbage on iphone for 99c

i think he is just trying to be " OMFG, LOOK AT ME, I JUST SAID SOMETHING VERY PROVOKING! SO NOW LISTEN YA PEASANTS!


he is trying to compare apples to oranges as proper house gaming to mobile gaming.


* thats what i figured out from cherries narrative, if something wrong blame him!

Retr0gamer

The industry is definitely going through a massive change at the moment and all signs also point to a crash. However all this doom and gloom is absolute nonsense.

Back in 1983 when the videogame market crashed for the first time in the US investors and companies just completely videogames. However it took Nintendo to notice that all that happened was the market became saturated but people were still buying games in the US and that the Japanese and European market was still going strong. Since people were still buying games there was still a market to exploit.

In 1993 the market crashed as well but we never hear much about it because this time investors and companies knew it was a phase just like in 1983 brought on by the shift to multimedia and CD formats. They chose to ride it out because, as in 1983, people want videogames, there's always that market.

There's probably another crash coming but I doubt 'distruptive' controllers are the way forward. Consoles might come out of it badly but if they do, they'll be replaced by move integrated multimedia devices, not too dissimilar from the way the PS3 and 360 are going at the moment. I bet most people will still use them mostly for games. In fact I'd be very much surprised if the next consoles are built around offering streaming music and video services that also just happen to play games. I'd still call them consoles.

Magill

Can't believe i listened to that ****e. Clearly the mobile and web market is growing massively.. but its a completely different market... comparing the arcade/homeconsole market change to what he is going on about with console/mobile is retarded.

Also.. i really can't believe that MS and Sony have made that much of a loss, is that hardware sales only ?

Also.. his comparsion with EA/Activision etc is retarded aswel, besides the initial fall in stock prices (Which practically every company including his own had a huge drop), they've not fallen since. He makes it sound as if they're stock prices have been falling constantly. Yes his company has increased their own value but thats entirely because of the boom in smartphones, this has nothing to do with the games industry at all.

Mehhh... proper gamers will never prefer a ****ty smartphone game on a 3 inch screen over a console/PC on a big screen, the demand will always be there. Most of the people who play those facebook zynga games are NOT people who would be playing on a console otherwise.

Retr0gamer

All the reports I've been hearing is that the mobile market boom is going to end quite soon and the facebook gaming market is crashing at the moment. As for Sony and MS making losses, well he should look at where the losses are coming from because the games divisions of those two companies are doing quite well.

Blowfish

Magill wrote: »

Mehhh... proper gamers will never prefer a ****ty smartphone game on a 3 inch screen over a console/PC on a big screen, the demand will always be there. Most of the people who play those facebook zynga games are NOT people who would be playing on a console otherwise.

I think you've missed the point he was making.

I'm pretty sure there were arcade players who said that 'proper gamers' wouldn't play with crap graphics and controls on a TV rather than the much superior arcade machines. The same with film fans who said that 'proper film fans' wouldn't watch films on the miniscule TV's with crap sound when they could watch it on giant cinema screens. Both were wrong.

The difference between then and now is that the mobile devices he's talking about will be able to stream to TV's etc. giving you the best of both worlds.

ShadowHearth

Retr0gamer wrote: »

All the reports I've been hearing is that the mobile market boom is going to end quite soon and the facebook gaming market is crashing at the moment. As for Sony and MS making losses, well he should look at where the losses are coming from because the games divisions of those two companies are doing quite well.

the the right word you mentioned m8 - BOOM. mobile app market is like a carbon copy of irish property market. it is not having a steady climbing up, it just goes it to bubble, which will pop soon.
i can say it from myself, when i got iphone i was mad in to apps and games, but now i dont even bother updating stuff on my iphone as i dont use it. Its a flavour of the month, where's original gaming will always have demand.

Antar Bolaeisk

Great, so not only will us PC gamers get crap consoles ports we'll now get crap console ports which were crap mobile device (or movices if you will) ports with rubbish retro fit controller/keyboard/mouse support though you can tell it was only ever designed with touch screen interfaces in mind.






I think it's just a different way of gaming, a lot of the games on mobile devices tend to be short and snappy, things you can play and complete in the minute or two you're waiting at the doctors. I don't think the form factor lends itself to extended gaming no matter how big an upheaval the industry goes through.

Magill

Blowfish wrote: »

I think you've missed the point he was making.

I'm pretty sure there were arcade players who said that 'proper gamers' wouldn't play with crap graphics and controls on a TV rather than the much superior arcade machines. The same with film fans who said that 'proper film fans' wouldn't watch films on the miniscule TV's with crap sound when they could watch it on giant cinema screens. Both were wrong.

The difference between then and now is that the mobile devices he's talking about will be able to stream to TV's etc. giving you the best of both worlds.

But not really, the smartphone industry isn't having an impact on home consoles or REAL game sales. Unless they can offer an equal or better gaming experience then it'll remain like this. The handheld market is a different story tho.

The arcade/cinema argument is flawed because in both cases you had to leave you home, they were both much more social dependant activities. Consoles aren't restricted like cinema/arcade was either. They're much more than just dedicated gaming platforms. Im all for mobile development (I've had a year long module dedicated on android development which is interesting) and theres no doubt in my mind that the industry has been booming.. but as a replacement for console/pc gaming.. not a chance.

NTMK

Ive a couple of reasons to believe that mobile gaming will never takeover from consoles :

1. how many people here have a phone with an adequate that can handle playing a game like gta III for 2-3hrs my phone cant and its 4 months old with a very good battery. also the tiny screen drives me mad i only play when im on a bus even then its usually a 3ds or my psp im playing or on the jacks:pac:

2. touch controls are crap for gaming the simply cant keep up with physical button press

3. way too many varieties of phone to optimise for. granted ios is pretty uniform android on the other hand is a mess

4. games have to be cheap charging more than €5 for a mobile game is not a wise plan. biggest game i believe so far has been angry birds which is free

5. console gaming is still huge the xbox/gamecube/ps2 sold a combined total of ~200mill units. The big 3 this gen have sold ~220mill with a world wide recession more than lightly hurting sales. PC gaming last year had one of its best sales years to date

There is probably more reasons but ive forgotten them in the course of writing this

but i dont see mobile games being the end of consoles its more likely spelling the end of portable consoles but its a bit early to say

penev10

It's like saying books are dead because a lot of people are quite content reading the free magazine supplement they get with their Sunday paper!

ghostchant

Like everyone else here, I don't think consoles are going to die off, but mobile devices are certainly capable of 'proper' gaming experiences. I've been playing through Machinarium on the ipad, something I probably never would've gotten around to on a PC at home. When Doublefine's new kickstarter-funded game eventually sees release it'll be on an ipad/iphone that I'll be playing it on, again due to the ability to play it on the move. I've been messing around with GTA3 on both devices too, and have easily gotten value for money out of it. Shooters like DoDonpachi and Darius Burst have also found themselves lending well to the format, in particular due to the controls and the decent leaderboard implementation of Game Centre on iOS.

When people think of smartphone/tablet games they think of Angry Birds, Cut the Rope etc. There are plenty of scope for deep gaming experiences beyond titles like those on the devices, and there already are, but they should be necessarily different to console/PC games to get the most from the devices. I think they're more a complementary device in gaming rather than a disruptive one.

FoxT

Touch devices work great for 'fun' games like angry Birds etc - and I think this market will continue to be active.

More immersive games like like CoD, Gran Turismo, etc - will always lose some playability on a touchscreen device. I think there will always be a demand for an immersive (TV-screen, decent speakers) gaming experience with good quality ergonomic controls.

However - I expect that the way this demand is met, is going to change. Over the next few years, homes will have broadband speeds in the 50-100Mb/s range available & this will facilitate the movement of games processing to the cloud. With this architecture you will, in principle, be able to play your games on your TV, or whatever touch device you have handy, with rendering etc being optimised in the cloud for the device in use.

I expect that we will need some kind of a box that plugs into the TV (or connects to it via wifi) for some time to come, until the technology gets standardised & TVs come with it built in.

I dont know how long this will take, and there will be many ( & varied0 intermediate steps on the way, but I think this will be the end state.

-FoxT

Paparazzo

Magill wrote: »

Can't believe i listened to that ****e. Clearly the mobile and web market is growing massively.. but its a completely different market... comparing the arcade/homeconsole market change to what he is going on about with console/mobile is retarded.

Also.. i really can't believe that MS and Sony have made that much of a loss, is that hardware sales only ?

Also.. his comparsion with EA/Activision etc is retarded aswel, besides the initial fall in stock prices (Which practically every company including his own had a huge drop), they've not fallen since. He makes it sound as if they're stock prices have been falling constantly. Yes his company has increased their own value but thats entirely because of the boom in smartphones, this has nothing to do with the games industry at all.

Mehhh... proper gamers will never prefer a ****ty smartphone game on a 3 inch screen over a console/PC on a big screen, the demand will always be there. Most of the people who play those facebook zynga games are NOT people who would be playing on a console otherwise.

Basically everything I was going to say!
Smartphone games are a gimmick that you use to pass the time on a bus. I don't know anyone that thinks: "great, I've a bit of free time tonight at home, I'm going to use that playing angry birds".

Blowfish

Magill wrote: »

But not really, the smartphone industry isn't having an impact on home consoles or REAL game sales. Unless they can offer an equal or better gaming experience then it'll remain like this. The handheld market is a different story tho.

Which again is the point he is making. Handheld/smartphone's are already pulling the 'casual' gamers away from consoles. They also eventually will provide equal or better gaming experience, it's just a matter of time.

FoxT wrote: »

However - I expect that the way this demand is met, is going to change. Over the next few years, homes will have broadband speeds in the 50-100Mb/s range available & this will facilitate the movement of games processing to the cloud. With this architecture you will, in principle, be able to play your games on your TV, or whatever touch device you have handy, with rendering etc being optimised in the cloud for the device in use.

I expect that we will need some kind of a box that plugs into the TV (or connects to it via wifi) for some time to come, until the technology gets standardised & TVs come with it built in.

I dont know how long this will take, and there will be many ( & varied0 intermediate steps on the way, but I think this will be the end state.

This is exactly the way I see it too, you'll still have your large screen in the corner at home, your lightweight mobile device while on the move and likely a laptop/tablet format to have some portability, but also a bit more screen real estate and better input methods.

All of the devices functionality will be the same though, they'll all be able to browse the web, make phone/video calls, watch videos/TV, use email/social networks, use more 'work' oriented applications and (in the context of this discussion) they'll all play the same games.

This is why the 'death' of single purpose consoles is actually a good thing for gaming. Naturally though, all this is a fair bit down the line.

sink

TV and films are also available on smart phones but I don't see people ever switching from their 30"+ TV to 3-10" portable device as their primary device for consuming video media, the same thing can be said for games.

Deano7788

I don't think smartphones will ever be able to replace consoles unless they start incorporating analogue sticks and buttons, but that would reduce its ability as a mobile phone (who wants an analogue stick sticking into their leg all the time) so I couldn't see it happening. Touch screens are just too imprecise for most proper games.

Blowfish

sink wrote: »

TV and films are also available on smart phones but I don't see people ever switching from their 30"+ TV to 3-10" portable device as their primary device for consuming video media, the same thing can be said for games.

And what if their mobile device could power the same games as a console, but could do it on both their 3" screen and their 30" TV? Why would you need a console then?

ShadowHearth

Blowfish wrote: »

And what if their mobile device could power the same games as a console, but could do it on both their 3" screen and their 30" TV? Why would you need a console then?

If I would have 18inch gentleman sausage, then I would be very popular with ladies.

Blowfish

ShadowHearth wrote: »

If I would have 18inch gentleman sausage, then I would be very popular with ladies.

You do realise that what I mentioned above can pretty much already be done?

ShadowHearth

Blowfish wrote: »

You do realise that what I mentioned above can pretty much already be done?

Really? Which mobile phone can run bf3 with 64 people map on ultra settings. Or atleast high, or even medium. Low?
Then have a controls, which would let me play properly and not getting bottlenecked by controls?

Blowfish

ShadowHearth wrote: »

Really? Which mobile phone can run bf3 with 64 people map on ultra settings. Or atleast high, or even medium. Low?
Then have a controls, which would let me play properly and not getting bottlenecked by controls?

If BF3 was released on OnLive, pretty much any of them could.

Mobiles/Tablets can already stream to TV. They can also power bluetooth controllers. They can also run OnLive. Put these together and you get a 'proper' gaming setup.

DarkJager

This is just not going to happen. How many years are consoles around now? Much much longer than smartphones. These kind of guys piss me off with the bull**** they spout. Give anybody a choice between playing a game on console or on their phone and there will only be 1 winner.

sink

Blowfish wrote: »

And what if their mobile device could power the same games as a console, but could do it on both their 3" screen and their 30" TV? Why would you need a console then?

I just don't see people plugging their mobile device into a TV. It's messy and inconvenient. People don't want to mess around with cables.

I see consoles instead becoming more like integrated media centres. We've already seen the expansion of the generation of consoles into video and music streaming services and I expect that trend to continue. Apple will continue to expand the functionality of Apple TV and eventually it will support games with dedicated controllers, download only of course.

ghostchant

I've played iphone games on my tv through apple tv. No cables required. Don't do it regularly, but just did it to see if it worked, and it does.

Blowfish

sink wrote: »

I just don't see people plugging their mobile device into a TV. It's messy and inconvenient. People don't want to mess around with cables.

You don't need cables, it can be done wirelessly.

sink wrote:

I see consoles instead becoming more like integrated media centres. We've already seen the expansion of the generation of consoles into video and music streaming services and I expect that trend to continue. Apple will continue to expand the functionality of Apple TV and eventually it will support games with dedicated controllers, download only of course.

TV's are becoming integrated media centres too. Eventually, there's no reason why all of this can't just be done by the TV itself as I mentioned earlier, including gaming. This brings us to the point mentioned by the presentation in the OP. The concept of dedicated hardware under the TV for playing games will be irrelevant.

ShadowHearth

Blowfish wrote: »

If BF3 was released on OnLive, pretty much any of them could.

Mobiles/Tablets can already stream to TV. They can also power bluetooth controllers. They can also run OnLive. Put these together and you get a 'proper' gaming setup.

Right, that's why I said such a lovely word "IF".

I tried onlive and I got a very stable 10mbit connection. It looked like shiet and had huge input lag. Keep In mind 10mbit connection is actually very good for Ireland. That was a single player games I tried. So let's put online on top of onlive stream... Oh my god.
What will happen: consoles will have more and more functions. Look at ps3. How many people bough them as Blu ray movie players? It's a media centre, which can play kick ass games. Look now at new rumoured Xbox which wount have any sort of disc drive, but some sort of unique ad card reader. It is already limiting it functions as device and can destroy console.
There are so many IFs, which make consoles and current gaming in very solid spot.

sink

Blowfish wrote: »

You don't need cables, it can be done wirelessly.
TV's are becoming integrated media centres too. Eventually, there's no reason why all of this can't just be done by the TV itself as I mentioned earlier, including gaming. This brings us to the point mentioned by the presentation in the OP. The concept of dedicated hardware under the TV for playing games will be irrelevant.

Ok, point taken but then you still have the issue of battery life and a lack of tactile control. I would agree that consoles may be replaced in the long term by smart TV's as the experience can be pretty well replicated, but the same can not be said of mobile devices with their small touch screens.

Blowfish

ShadowHearth wrote: »

I tried onlive and I got a very stable 10mbit connection. It looked like shiet and had huge input lag. Keep In mind 10mbit connection is actually very good for Ireland. That was a single player games I tried. So let's put online on top of onlive stream... Oh my god.

What do you think the 'hardcore' Arcade players would have thought of the first consoles they saw? I'm pretty sure their reaction would have been similar. Streaming services are very very much in their infancy. Everything mentioned in this thread is talking years out in the future when the technology has matured.

sink wrote: »

Ok, point taken but then you still have the issue of battery life and a lack of tactile control.

The tactile part isn't much of an issue as smart phones support controllers. Battery life definitely is, but with the proliferation of mobile devices, you can bet there's a hell of a lot of money being pumped into researching this at the minute.