The reason to keep making 360s is because a lot of casual gamers don’t want to build the latest gaming rig. A PC which would run 360 games would be an aweful lot more powerful (see expensive) than a 360.
That’s not really true or logical. Why is a 360 magically cheaper than the equivalent hardware in a PC? Maybe that was true when it was originally released, and maybe its true that Microsoft absorb some loss when they sell a console, but not that much. Now that current-gen PC hardware is making the 360 look like a turd in the rear-view mirror, its certainly not true that the hardware is inaccessible, and given that you can build massively awesome computers for not that much more than a 360, that’s not the reason people will keep buying 360s.
The biggest reason consoles will still exist is the same reason consoles continue to exist today: Its a more social gaming platform. LAN parties are hard to organise and harder to have the kind of ‘fun’ 360s, PS3s and Wiis can generate amongst the so-called ‘casual’ gaming crowd. They are awful replacements for keyboards and mice for almost everything except the fact that you can have four of them on a single monitor. This means that people get them to play with their friends, and that’s why they’ll persist even despite the current trend of convergence with PCs.
Console gaming is the cornerstone of the gaming industry. It has existed way before PC gaming became popular and isn’t going away anytime soon.
Don’t get me wrong, I play on PC 90% of the time but I also love playing on my PS3 and not because of the “social gaming” features, but because it’s a good console with excellent games.
Hardcore PC gamers like to use the social gaming excuse as some sort of justification for why people still buy and play on consoles instead of PC but that’s bullshit, people play on consoles because they’re excellent gaming devices and always have been.
Equivalent hardware in a PC wont run the PC versions of the 360 games, they’re not optimized well enough. Thus you need more powerful hardware in a PC for the same games.
Why not just play Farcry for the PC? Instincts is just a watered down version of the original Farcry.
People don’t buy consoles because they are excellent gaming devices. They buy them because they have aggressive advertizing and good software support.
Console aren’t as good a platform as PC because consoles aren’t an open platform. Open platform + the ability to do anything that a console can do = great gaming platform.
If there was someone aggressively marketing the PC as a gaming platform, it would be the leading platform.
I think if Microsoft does this windows 8 can run 360 it would be because they realize that the increased OS sales coupled with still getting royalties (because even though on PC 360 games would still be closed platform) is better than trying to push hardware. I think Microsoft really needs another thing to push with windows since Apple’s market share started to rise.
Or maybe because it’s just more convenient for a lot of people to buy a straightforward gaming device that you can just connect to your TV and play.
Is it so hard accept that a lot of people just simply prefer playing games on a console instead of a PC?
I see your point with the aggressive marketing and whatnot but you also have to see that there is also a great continuous legacy of console gaming. People who grew playing on console will keep playing on console and there’s also people like me who grew up playing on PC but see the merits of console gaming.
I just find this console hate fucking ridiculous.
Its not hate just logic. TBH I wish I had the spare cash to buy a PS3 but again not because its a great gaming platform but because it has a lot of software / games I can’t get on PC.
I grew up with consoles and instead of “switching over” to anything I just expanded. Equal attention to all consoles and my PC. It’s the best way to fly, I can’t miss out on anything.
Unless there’s some kind of Mac exclu–ppppffffttthahahahahahaa
It’s both true and logical. You can write code specifically for the hardware on a console. It’s gonna stay the same for it’s entire life, and every console is going to be the same. On a PC you have maybe 1000s of different graphics chipsets and configurations being widely used. Same for sound, same for motherboard and processor and RAM etc… so you need to use abstraction to make everything compatible, as optimised as MS makes their truely fantastic DirectX it’ll never be as good as writing for the bare metal on a console.
I seriously doubt you could build a PC capable of what the 360 is for £100.
Also if you make 10-15million copies of the same thing it greatly reduces the cost. The primary up front cost of a console is the design, prototyping and tooling. Divide these costs by 10 million, the actual cost of these things are negligible. It’s a rare graphics card that sells anywhere near this many. So you personally are still paying for a substantial percentage of the total cost compared to a console.
Everything else you say is true.
If consoles had some sort of “upgrade” option where you can bring it in to a service center and for a small fee they upgrade it to the latest internals, while retaining backwards compatibility, I would be very pleased. There would still be millions of these upgraded internals made and sold, so the cost shouldn’t be nearly as high as upgrading a PC’s internals. Also, the upgrade cycle doesn’t have to be as short as a PC’s; once a year would be more than often enough to upgrade a console’s hardware. Also, games could be coded to automatically upscale graphics with the release of new hardware, or if the game is released too long after a user’s console revision was sold, it could automatically downscale its graphics (for example: when Crysis 1 was released obviously there was very little hardware that could play it maxed out at decent framerates and resolutions, but nowadays it can finally be played the way it was intended. Game patches could be released for people who upgrade their consoles to take advantage of their better horsepower). Obviously at a certain point new games that take advantage of new hardware would be unable to run well on the very old revisions that a user chose not to upgrade (example: Crysis on a Pentium 4), but in my mind that should only happen at the very soonest 5 years down the line, which is pretty much the lifespan of a console nowadays.
I’ve never been very good at expressing my thoughts, but if what I said above is possible without sacrificing good pricing, then imagine the benefits: your games keep getting better the longer you have your console, by only paying a small upgrade fee once a year; this will help promote innovations by game developers, will draw in more money for console makers, will allow a console to live significantly longer, etc. etc. And don’t say that there will be a problem managing all of those different ages of hardware, because all people will have to get the same exact upgrade if they do chose to upgrade. There won’t be a choice between ATi and nVidia, it will be whatever ONE component the console makers choose to supply owners with, and can be thoroughly tested for compatibility in the same way a new console with backwards compatibility is tested today.
Hope I made some sense, I’m actually kind of excited about what I just typed
That’s exactly the opposite of what a console is supposed to be. A lot of people buy consoles so they can have a gaming device with which they don’t have to bother with hardware upgrades or other kind of more complex maintenance.
And by keeping the core hardware exactly the same throughout the whole cycle, developers don’t need to worry about the different configurations, the games are more stable and no one has a significant advantage over everyone else.
But the point of the upgrade method that I suggested is that it shouldn’t be any harder than buying a new console. You bring it in to your local walmart or best buy and they can do the rest there in a matter of minutes. No complexity needed.
Stability with games? Like I said, the only upgrade option is the specific hardware the console maker picked out, which can be tested thoroughly for stability. Again, no different from buying a new console, just cheaper and easier since you don’t need to replace the whole system, and since it is done more frequently than pushing out a new system, the console makers could make more money. The only advantage some people would have over others would be better graphics… that’s the main selling point of new consoles, and also a big attraction to PC gaming. PC gamers play on a wide variety of graphics settings… I would hardly consider someone playing on “extreme” to have a “significant advantage” over me if I was playing on “medium” graphics.
Dude, keep console gaming simple and straightforward.
Honestly, this console generation is a just couple more years from being replaced with the next generation and one of the cool things about console gaming are the big leaps in graphical quality from one generation to the next. It wouldn’t have as much impact if it was a gradual thing.
I’m just saying, if it wasn’t so “simple and straightforward” I would have a lot more interest in it as a platform, and I honestly believe that so would a lot of other people.
So you just want consoles to be more exactly like a PC, which is defeating the point of having a console.
What I described is far from PC. PCs have millions of different hardware variations, with expensive hardware due to smaller production quantities and a relatively niche market for gaming hardware. With what I described, those issues would be alleviated significantly.
I don’t know if you guys are aware of this but console used to have upgrades. 32x or CD attachments or the extra ram for the N64. Even more that I can’t think of especially if u count add-ons only available in Japan. None of those were large financial successes. There is a reason why consoles don’t have upgrades anymore.
The main reason the 32x and mega cd failed is due to the fact there were no good games, and then Sega dropped them very quickly. It was one of the key points in the downfall of Sega in hardware.
They do raise an interesting point though. The CDX (basically a genesis + Sega CD in a small form factor) broke compatability with some games.
This has happened with playstations as well I believe. Some older games not working with newer revisions. These are on consoles with no upgrades.
Russilker’s plan isn’t bad, but the problem is that most casual gamers don’t care, they just want COD to play, and casual gamers form most of the console Market. The 360 tie ratio is somewhere around 10. Disregarding bundle titles or those bought with the console ( we’ll say there’s 2 of those) that means the average gamer buys 8 more games. The 360 is 6 years old. So that’s about 1.3 games a year. A sizeable upgrade isn’t going to be less than £100 GBP. Costs you around £75 per game + £50 for the game. £125 per game. A brand new basic 360 costs £130 odd. Too expensive for the average user. Which means few will buy it, so that pushes costs up etc.
The main reason the 32x and mega cd failed is due to the fact there were no good games, and then Sega dropped them very quickly. It was one of the key points in the downfall of Sega in hardware.
They do raise an interesting point though. The CDX (basically a genesis + Sega CD in a small form factor) broke compatability with some games.
This has happened with playstations as well I believe. Some older games not working with newer revisions. These are on consoles with no upgrades.
Russilker’s plan isn’t bad, but the problem is that most casual gamers don’t care, they just want COD to play, and casual gamers form most of the console Market. The 360 tie ratio is somewhere around 10. Disregarding bundle titles or those bought with the console ( we’ll say there’s 2 of those) that means the average gamer buys 8 more games. The 360 is 6 years old. So that’s about 1.3 games a year. A sizeable upgrade isn’t going to be less than £100 GBP. Costs you around £75 per game + £50 for the game. £125 per game. A brand new basic 360 costs £130 odd. Too expensive for the average user. Which means few will buy it, so that pushes costs up etc.