Poll of the Day > Are video game consoles about to become obsolete

(+) Yeah! (+)

Fuck off

No, but console wars and exclusives are getting there, such that it wouldn't surprise me if the landscape looks pretty different within a few years in terms of how many systems are around and how standard cross-play is. Because of how much console gaming is now tied to an account and therefore a single system (digital games, friend lists, DLC/microtransaction purchases), consumers are even more reluctant to switch their console of choice now then ever before, so the potential for exclusives to motivate system sales has been considerably reduced. Timed exclusivity will likely still be a thing, but even first-party publishers have been finding that there's more money to be made releasing major exclusives as multiplats for extra sales than keeping them on one system to move more units, so expect your console purchase to matter a lot less in the long run.

Nintendo will almost certainly just continue doing their own thing, because that's how Nintendo do, but for everyone else I'm expecting more ports/multiplats and more cross-play.

Lol no. What a ridiculous question.

Not anytime soon but yes, eventually

No. The design may change to fit the times, and perhaps even the definition of a console itself, but the gaming "console" will live on.

No, but Sony and Microsoft have an uphill battle for sure. Sony has shot themselves in the foot by announcing that the PS5 is in its later part of its life (despite the fact that nobody feels that this generation has really even gotten started) and Microsoft is hinting that the Series X/S will be their last console.

The reality is that technological advancement has hit a wall. For years, advancement seemed to be exponential, but we've seemingly flatlined. The current console generation was released far too soon (not to mention launching in the middle of the most serious global crisis since the Second World War was a very questionable move).

The next consoles need to be purposely designed with a life expectancy of at least 10 years. The 5 year cycle that existed in the 90s and 00s is obsolete, Sony and Microsoft need to stop pretending otherwise.

I think with the success of the Steam Deck, we might end up seeing more PC "consoles"

faramir77 posted...

and Microsoft is hinting that the Series X/S will be their last console.

they flat out directly said that they're working on new consoles already lmfao

faramir77 posted...

The 5 year cycle that existed in the 90s and 00s is obsolete, Sony and Microsoft need to stop pretending otherwise.

8th gen was over 7 years, continuing well into current gen due to how hard it was to obtain current gen hardware for so long.

7th gen was 8 years.

who is pretending

Consoles? No. Physical media is going to be phased out HARD though. I doubt PS6 will have a physical media version, its going all digital. Sony is going to have an iron grip on your game license rights, its going to be a fucking disaster.

I thought consoles would tank after the PS4. People keep buying them so I guess not. Some people just want an affordable cool looking box with cool lights and a cool UI that doesn't take much effort thinking or troubleshooting to set up. But there's no reason for me to ever buy one.

faramir77 posted...

The reality is that technological advancement has hit a wall. For years, advancement seemed to be exponential, but we've seemingly flatlined. The current console generation was released far too soon (not to mention launching in the middle of the most serious global crisis since the Second World War was a very questionable move).

CPUs have flatlined for now but GPUs are still growing. GPUs are way more powerful anyway. More and more things will be offloaded to the GPU from here on out.

Yellow posted...

CPUs have flatlined for now but GPUs are still growing. GPUs are way more powerful anyway. More and more things will be offloaded to the GPU from here on out.

They're still growing, but there are substantial diminishing returns in terms of player experience. Paying hundreds of dollars for a very marginal increase in visual fidelity isn't overly appealing. Meaningful growth now is going to be more along the lines of rendering more entities at once or otherwise having games that are more computationally complex (which is generally more of a CPU thing, as I understand it), or improvements in form factor like what the Switch did (which the Steam Deck has followed up and the PS Portal has quasi-mimicked).

Maybe one day day but I'll probably be dead by then.

Yellow posted...

I thought consoles would tank after the PS4. People keep buying them so I guess not. Some people just want an affordable cool looking box with cool lights and a cool UI that doesn't take much effort thinking or troubleshooting to set up. But there's no reason for me to ever buy one.

i wish they were affordable and cool looking with cool lights

bring back transparent plastics and led dump the fuck out of them, make consoles cool again instead of a white or black generic looking box or internet router.

25 years ago was the first time someone said to me that consoles were about to become obsolete (because who needs a console when a PC with emulators can play everything?!).

I 've been hearing it every couple of years since. I'm sure they'll be right eventually, but probably not any time soon.

ConfusedTorchic posted...

bring back transparent plastics

This was the biggest thing in the late 90's/early 2000's, and it just dropped right off. I'd be all over resurrecting that particular fad.

I don't think so. I think there are still games that are best on consoles.

superman being straight has become stagnant in my opinion

adjl posted...

They're still growing, but there are substantial diminishing returns in terms of player experience. Paying hundreds of dollars for a very marginal increase in visual fidelity isn't overly appealing. Meaningful growth now is going to be more along the lines of rendering more entities at once or otherwise having games that are more computationally complex (which is generally more of a CPU thing, as I understand it), or improvements in form factor like what the Switch did (which the Steam Deck has followed up and the PS Portal has quasi-mimicked).

We are basically getting to the point where graphics aren't really going to improve at a significant margin anymore. The only real improvements from 10 years ago are higher resolutions and frame rates. Compare that to the jump from 1974 - 1984, 1984 - 1994, 1994 - 2004, and 2004 - 2014. All of those are way more significant, and arguably an equally huge leap in fidelity. We are also at the point where we can't make processors any smaller while maintaining the same speeds. So a lot of what we are getting are software improvements like "Ray Tracing".

So while I don't think consoles will become "obsolete", they will likely be very different 10 years from now and arguably unrecognizable. We also aren't going to see the price drops like we used to, since I don't think they can be made any cheaper then they are now and companies no longer want to produce them at a loss to push sales of software since most titles are getting multi-platform releases.

And of course, Nintendo will do their own thing because they hold the spot as the largest gaming company worldwide:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1197213/market-value-of-the-largest-gaming-companies-worldwide

So yea, Nintendo won the console war people...

i'd rather a bigger focus on performance and npc ai than graphics

in all honestly, 1080p is still 100% just perfectly fine, and developers pushing for 4k shit is just murdering game performance and it's stupid, when those aren't the things that even make the game enjoyable to play.

real incredible dynamic ai to actually challenge me is enjoyable to play, a game running at a rock solid frame rate makes the game enjoyable to play, more animations make the game more enjoyable to play

seeing 5 leaves instead of 4 leaves on a flower is not enjoyable to play.

papercup posted...

Consoles? No. Physical media is going to be phased out HARD though. I doubt PS6 will have a physical media version, its going all digital. Sony is going to have an iron grip on your game license rights, its going to be a fucking disaster.

Yeah I suspected the all digital content only but that also raises the question for storage because some of the games I have download on my PS4 and PS5 exceed 70GBs so that eats at space.

I think the next big change will be cross-platform gaming. That would be awesome to play your buddies etc on XBOX if you have PS. Now idea how Nintendo would fit into that though.

They have been obsolete for a very long time. But people keep buying them anyways. So they will continue to be made.

BUMPED2002 posted...

I think the next big change will be cross-platform gaming. That would be awesome to play your buddies etc on XBOX if you have PS. Now idea how Nintendo would fit into that though.

this is already a thing

and Nintendo fits in fine when they can

you could be on Xbox playing Minecraft with someone on a switch, on a phone, on the PC, and on playstation, for example

BUMPED2002 posted...

Yeah I suspected the all digital content only but that also raises the question for storage because some of the games I have download on my PS4 and PS5 exceed 70GBs so that eats at space.

That would just be their justification to push for full cloud storage and streaming play. Don't have to worry about storage space when you're not storing anything locally.

It's what the publishers already want - "In the future you will own nothing and be happy."

It's also the thing that will basically lock me out of gaming forever. Because fuck that future. Fuck it in the ass with a rusty fork. Sideways.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

That would just be their justification to push for full cloud storage and streaming play. Don't have to worry about storage space when you're not storing anything locally.

It's what the publishers already want - "In the future you will own nothing and be happy."

It's also the thing that will basically lock me out of gaming forever. Because fuck that future. Fuck it in the ass with a rusty fork. Sideways.

Itll probably be what kills gaming for me, as well And for the people who dont have good enough internet for streaming Or people whos internet goes out often

ParanoidObsessive posted...

That would just be their justification to push for full cloud storage and streaming play. Don't have to worry about storage space when you're not storing anything locally.

I doubt that would happen in the near future given that even gigabit internet has a hard time playing streaming games without a very noticeable hit to latency. It is why Stadia failed so hard and no one gives a crap about Playstation Plus.

But subscription services like XBox Game Pass? You bet your ass they will push that hard. Difficult to make people justify paying $60-$70 for every game that comes out. But $20 a month for access to all the games? People will pay that easily even if they are just buying it to play CoD. It is why they are so popular. Minimal effort for maximum profit.

Dikitain posted...

But $20 a month for access to all the games? People will pay that easily even if they are just buying it to play CoD. It is why they are so popular. Minimal effort for maximum profit.

It would probably be dumb to pay $20 a month every month for multiple months for one game, though, tbh

Dikitain posted...

I doubt that would happen in the near future given that even gigabit internet has a hard time playing streaming games without a very noticeable hit to latency. It is why Stadia failed so hard and no one gives a crap about Playstation Plus.

ignoring that you can game stream perfectly fine with even basic dsl, stadia "failed" simply because people just don't want streaming, nor to buy a game they can only play through streaming, and Google has a tendency to kill their endeavors unless they have immediate adoption of it by millions.

stadia streaming was like magic though. the lowest i was able to throttle my connection and still connect and play was around 300kbps, and it was fine

BUMPED2002 posted...

I think the next big change will be cross-platform gaming.

Cross-platform is already a thing, but it's mostly Microsoft pushing for it and Nintendo going along when it's feasible to do so. Pushing for it is mostly a product of being behind, though. Those in the lead tend not to want cross-play because they can already offer enough of a playerbase to leverage fence-sitters into buying their platform to play with friends. Those that are lagging, however, benefit more from "you don't have to choose between getting our system and playing with your friends."

LinkPizza posted...

It would probably be dumb to pay $20 a month every month for multiple months for one game, though, tbh

I mean, if you spend three months playing the game, that's roughly equivalent to buying it for $60. Obviously, that value calculation falls apart if you start looking at replaying it again in the future and needing to pay for it again, and that doesn't work out in your favour for games that would last you that long but cost less than $60, but it also does work in your favour if you play more games than that.

If you're only ever playing one game? Yeah, that's not so worthwhile. But it's still a pretty solid deal, if you're willing to accept the loss of control over your library (which is a big sticking point).

adjl posted...

I mean, if you spend three months playing the game, that's roughly equivalent to buying it for $60. Obviously, that value calculation falls apart if you start looking at replaying it again in the future and needing to pay for it again, and that doesn't work out in your favour for games that would last you that long but cost less than $60, but it also does work in your favour if you play more games than that.

If you're only ever playing one game? Yeah, that's not so worthwhile. But it's still a pretty solid deal, if you're willing to accept the loss of control over your library (which is a big sticking point).

I think Im talking about the ones who play it everyday for like a year, or until the next one comes out. Paying $20 a month for just that seems like a lot

LinkPizza posted...

I think Im talking about the ones who play it everyday for like a year, or until the next one comes out. Paying $20 a month for just that seems like a lot

Most people aren't going to care though.

How many people have subscriptions to stuff they don't regularly use? That is why subscription services are being pushed so hard.

Dikitain posted...

Most people aren't going to care though.

How many people have subscriptions to stuff they don't regularly use? That is why subscription services are being pushed so hard.

I know theyre not going to care. Doesnt make it less dumb, though. Between paying hundreds just to play that one game for a couple years vs paying $60 once to own it, Id rather own it Seems like a waste to pay that much

LinkPizza posted...

I think Im talking about the ones who play it everyday for like a year, or until the next one comes out. Paying $20 a month for just that seems like a lot

Yeah, that's silly.

Dikitain posted...

Most people aren't going to care though.

How many people have subscriptions to stuff they don't regularly use? That is why subscription services are being pushed so hard.

But also this. It's very, very easy to forget about subscription costs, underestimating or even completely ignoring them as they fade into the background of ongoing expenses. You probably do this yourself: How often do you do the math for how much time you spend watching Netflix (or whatever video streaming services you use) and use that to evaluate the cost? Off the top of your head (that is, without opening your bank statements or taking several minutes to do some mental math), could you give me an estimate within 10% of how much you spend on recurring costs every month?

Maybe you can, in which case kudos for being particularly financially responsible, but most people tend to underestimate how much little costs like that add up. In that regard, Gamepass is fire-and-forget: You set up your subscription, then you just get to play CoD or whatever for free without ever having to think about buying it. You spend more money in the long run than you would just buying each game, but you don't feel like you do because you're not consciously making those transactions and you just get used to having $20 less each month.

It's why so many companies push subscriptions and auto-renewals: the less you have to think about the money you're spending on something, the less likely you are to feel like that thing an area where you can cut back on your spending.

adjl posted...

Cross-platform is already a thing, but it's mostly Microsoft pushing for it and Nintendo going along when it's feasible to do so. Pushing for it is mostly a product of being behind, though. Those in the lead tend not to want cross-play because they can already offer enough of a playerbase to leverage fence-sitters into buying their platform to play with friends. Those that are lagging, however, benefit more from "you don't have to choose between getting our system and playing with your friends."

honestly i think the push that brought it over the edge from "we don't really want this" to "yeah we want this" was epic using fortnite to bully Sony into finally allowing it, and then call of duty following along

before it was really a thing, it was always Sony who wouldn't allow it for some nebulous "our player base doesn't want this" excuse when that was nowhere close to the truth at the time