Video games used to push the PC market, I remember when you used to have to pay attention to minimum requirements. The last 10 years of video game development has focused on indie games (Minecraft, pubg, etc), and you can run these games on a potato. Why would anyone run out to get a new machine?
Same thing with smartphones. Until a killer app comes along that pushes hardware, there’s no reason to upgrade - any iPhone past the 5 does pretty much everything the XS does.
People have been saying that gaming will doom Apple since PC gaming really became a thing in the early 90s with Wolfenstein and Doom. The entire PC industry is minuscule compared to the phone industry. The PC game industry is even smaller.
The best selling consoles of each generation usually don’t sell more in their entirety than Apple sell’s iPhones in two or three quarters.
You can build a gaming PC for far less money than an iPhone, but the iPhone is still the most popular device in the world to play games on because so many people own them.
It's rather interesting that contrary to the popular wisdom around here, general purpose computers are still preferred over locked-down electronic appliances. This is precisely the reason why iPads, iPhones and Androids are probably going to eat into the gaming consoles market.
The biggest problem of PCs is the fast evolution of hardware. When you buy a game for PS3, you know it will work well on your PS3. And when you buy a PS3, you know you'll keep finding games for it, even in 3 years from now. And I bet there are still titles released for PS2. That's the only advantage of console gaming and is quite a big one.
The fast evolution of mobile devices is actually a disadvantage for the kind of people that buy gaming consoles in the first place.
However, console gaming has been a niche for quite some time. This is not new. The exception was Nintendo's Wii, but that was just a fluke.
I may have missed it in the article (I didn't think Carmack mentioned this), but I think the main reason mobile gaming will surpass consoles is the speed of mobile device hardware evolution vs the consoles. iOS devices get major changes / upgrades approx every 2 years, while Android devices get major changes / upgrades every 6 months or less. Compare this to the traditional console hardware life cycle where you only get major changes at a minimum of five years, but typically at 7-8 years before they retire something after a decade.
What's more, this point applies to ANY consumer device today:
"Why can’t I write a game for <device with a CPU> tomorrow using $100 worth of tools and my existing Windows laptop and test it on my home <device with a CPU> or at my friends’ houses"
If as a company you're going to push for any device (game console, tablet, TV-box, phone, etc.), that seems like a number one pre-requisite to significant market share.
Part of the reason that software isn't pushing up against hardware limitations as hard anymore are the relatively old and underpowered current generation consoles. Games were traditionally on the front of the hardware curve, but over the last few years only a small proportion of the game market has had fundamentally high hardware requirements.
It'll be interesting to see what upcoming console releases will do for the the hardware market.
I'm actually happy that a lot of games are moving to 'under powered' devices. Most of my favorite games come from when limitations in the platform forced simple, well designed gameplay. With new (or even old at this point), computers, you can hide these elements behind fancy graphics,and it is much harder to pick out the good games.
Also, my 'under powered' phone has a faster CPU, and more ram than by x-box.
I think that's a bit of hyperbole. Game consoles are decidedly a smaller market, but dying? Come on. The latest game consoles will always be much more powerful than the latest phones just as the latest PCs will always be more powerful than the latest consoles. The console market might shrink a bit due to casual gamers being able to use mobile devices but die?
It's the games. Games shift consoles. People buy iPhone games because they are there and because they are cheap. People _don't_ buy iPhones to play particular games.
This is the opposite case for consoles, where it's not uncommon for someone to buy a console to play a particular series — say, buying an xbox to play gears of war.
At the end of the day, the iPhone lacks the lengthy and complicated games that a lot of people crave. This isn't to say more casual games stop them from competing, but they can't hope to use them to replace the current games market with cheap, casual games alone.
Personally, I think it'd be nuts for any game developer to spend the same amount of time on an iPhone game as they would on a DS game. For two reasons; Apple's mercurial approval process and an app store full of companies chasing each other to the bottom — too many cheap-arse games basically.
Apple already has a huge gaming platform with iDevices and the app store. Mobile games are a huge business and Apple takes 30% of that revenue.
So why would an energy efficient ARM chip suddenly make a gaming console of interest to Apple? Both Playstation and Xbox are X86 PC hardware. Apple could have just used x86 years earlier, but they didn't. Why? Because that's not their market.
Sales of consoles are driven by price, and the game portfolio. I have yet to meet a consumer who will be excited for a energy efficient console which costs more than the competitors and have almost no big titles.
None of my friends who have PC’s or consoles consider phone (games) a “console” platform worth considering. There’s been no games on phones that have made me consider upgrading or switching. That the phone has games is incidental to its existence, not central.
It's because general purpose PCs aren't as profitable as consoles. Companies want to make phones, tablets and computers into "app players" in order to extract maximum profits from app stores and subscription services.
There is no room for power users in that market, only passive consumers. Besides, power users might be motivated to circumvent their systems and do things that companies can't extract rent on.
I recently bought a 1.7GB game for my Android phone (Modern Combat 3), that you can optionally connect to a HD monitor using a HDMI out cable.
Quad core mobile chips are already in production and PS3 capable mobile GPUs are 6 months away (ARM Mali T-658).
Why is a console, a console and not simply a power/cooling/connectivity dock for a suitably powerful mobile device ? Id's flagship game, RAGE, has been supremely playable on an iphone for ages now.
Consoles like PS3 and Xbox already lag desktop-grade video hardware by 5-6 years, yet have a large market - so why cant the same be true for mobile hardware ?
Apple is a significant player in the market today, but they have a glass ceiling. Yes the iPhone has a lead on the mobile market today, but when they lose that lead what then? Apple's OS has never been a gaming platform, apple's ability to create a viable gaming network is clearly limited...
As a PC gamer, you mention it's dying, but yet the e-Sports scene seems to be the next professional sports arena. As for consoles, they're nowhere near their peak. PS4, Xbox 720, Wii-U... what we're witnessing is a divide between casual gaming and ACTUAL gaming.
Casuals will always be the majority, but to think they'll ride in on mobile horses with iPads is a bit naive. Why? Casual gamers are just that, casual. They have little loyalty to games/studios/platforms, and demand low prices because gaming is insignificant to them.
The day that a mobile platform offers the dexterity and practicality a controller or keyboard/mouse offers, then it can be safely said that the 'writing is on the wall'. But as long as there are 1.6 million dollar tournaments for BF3, grandparents bowling on the Wii, and more than 2x the viewers for eSports tournaments than those that tune in for the NFL draft, the power of Apple has limits.
Often there are choices made to support a larger range of devices that require comprises on graphic quality. It doesn't make a lot of sense to build a game only 5% of your customers can afford to run.
Next-gen consoles will have to become more ubiquitous before the previous gen consoles are left out of game releases.
Same thing with smartphones. Until a killer app comes along that pushes hardware, there’s no reason to upgrade - any iPhone past the 5 does pretty much everything the XS does.
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