Romero: Consoles May Die Out

[Son of Bryce]

I also don't think for a second that developers are in as much control as somebody said previously in this thread. It's a symbiotic relationship. Consumers will flock to whatever's new, or it, or offers them something convenient and sometimes they do things nobody can forecast. If you're popular you move units. Developers can't rely on themselves to herald people to gaming. If they tried the top two or three devs to do it well would dominate and nothing would change (except the beginning of a supplier longtail system which is really fucking weird and unnecessary).

Console producers need developers just as much as developers need console producers.

I agree with what you say. It's all a complicated symbiotic relationship between hardware/software/consumer.

My thinking at the moment was that if there was this "universal box" that was introduced, assuming it was something other than a traditional PC, its success would be in the developers hands because without their support it would never work. But yes, it is symbiotic, the hardware probably wouldn't exist without the developers support in the first place right? But when you have hardware like the PlayStation3 where it doesn't seem that any developers are "feeling" the design, outside of first parties, it seems like the hardware developers don't really care what the software people want. Same deal with the Nintendo Wii.

Consumers may bite, but does that change anything? Nintendo Wii's selling like mad but where's the big developer support for it? Software companies are deciding not to invest into the system despite its success. This is early on still, but it's a trend: look at N64 and Gamecube. Both strong selling systems that lacked overall support and suffered because of that.

In my opinion, it's those kinds of instances where it's the software developers that have control over the market.

[Frogacuda]

The main drag about PC's is the constant need to upgrade to stay on top of the latest graphics and performance. Every piece of computer hardware (mainly PCU's and GPU's) will be outdated in 6 months or so.

This is kinda bullshit. PC hardware won't last you 5 years like a console will (if you get it at the beginning of a generation) but I got a very modest $300 rig like 2 years ago almost, and it plays new games with the setting turned up at decent framerates. A lot of PC games are targeted to be scalable onto console standards, so they really don't push the high end so much.

Considering that nVidia's latest GPU goes for $549 at the lowest on newegg, that is almost the cost of a PS3. Now imagine if you want to go SLI then you are talking over a grand just to upgrade.

Buying the latest, top of the line thing is not a reasonable way to shop. They charge that because there's a segment of the population that will pay anything to have the best. SLI is retarded, too.

[Yoshi]

Most pc ~ tv connections I've seen yield pictures that look like shit. Unless the past six years have video cards that have component or above cable outputs then they're still a bad choice.

DVI -> HDMI for the win.

Although the day console developers start releasing games with the "we'll patch this problem later" then we'll see a stronger shift away from console gaming. Hopefully this doesn't happen.

It's already happened. Thank Microsoft.

[Yoshi]

Yeah because the whole world is loaded with HDTVs. Maybe if HD becomes the standard then yeah sure that wouldn't be a pc overtaking console barrier that it is now. Perhaps if people catch up to the fact that it is simple to put pc output on pretty much any tv then pc may overtake, I don't see that happening at least not for another few generations of consoles. Besides, as it stands now buying a quality HD tv is IIRC much more expensive than a simple pc monitor.

You're kidding, right? I'd say good games with good graphics and an experiance that isn't a total glitchy technical nightmare is at least one difference between consoles and PCs.

If you're not even playing your consoles in HD by now, then I really don't give a fuck what you think of PC gaming.

[Tommy Tallarico]

Cheebs trolls every PC gaming thread. He hates that we understand how these things work more than him, so he tries his best to counterpoint with ignorant opinions and arguments that haven't been accurate for five years. His PC trolling is like someone badmouthing the Wii because the games are stored on cartridges.

[Cheebs]

Not if your system didn't suck. It wasn't optimized very well, but it worked fine.

That's another thing about PC gaming. Yeah, it can look better than its console counterpart... but only if the PC itself is so powerful that it's damn near sentient.

PC developers always have to code for the remote possibility that someone in Arkansas is still running Windows 3.1 on a 486... or maybe that somebody in North Dakota uses a hacked GBA as their graphics card or some shit like that. We all know coding for these countless bizzare hardware configurations drags down the performance of a game to the point where you need liquid cooling installed on your CPU to play Tomb Raider 1 at a decent framerate.

So as I said, consoles ain't goin' nowhere.

[Frogacuda]

That's another thing about PC gaming. Yeah, it can look better than its console counterpart... but only if the PC itself is so powerful that it's damn near sentient.

As a general rule of thumb, the games will look as good as the console if the computer cost as much as the console. Anything better than garbage can play multiplatform games as well as the consoles can a this point.

PC developers always have to code for the remote possibility that someone in Arkansas is still running Windows 3.1 on a 486... or maybe that somebody in North Dakota uses a hacked GBA as their graphics card or some shit like that.

If this was true, PC games wouldn't have system requirements on the box. They support hardware about 2-3 years back as a general rule of thumb. That's it.

I'm kinda thinking stibbons was right here. You sound like an old kodger talking about "Hippy Hop music."

[Rumpy]

Buying the latest, top of the line thing is not a reasonable way to shop. They charge that because there's a segment of the population that will pay anything to have the best. SLI is retarded, too.

And let's be perfectly honest, next to no games support SLI set ups. That's such a niche market it's not worth mentioning. You could waste your money if you wanted to, but it's really stupid.