" @ADTR_ZERO: Why did you treat it like a pregnant pause? It may be incorrect grammatically speaking but you're compounding it with dramatic overtones. "
I don't know, it's just hoe it always has been for me.
Perhaps i should have chosen my words more carefully. CDi may have beaten the comp to the punch, but eventually they both had. The fact still remains that there are no plans for full scale motion control integration to the PC anytime soon.
@SeriouslyNow: My point was focused rather on the fact that more powerful hardware increases a product's longevity and capabilities and by giving the console a longer life cycle that allows a greater amount of time to show creative freedom and enter into different markets providing a wider audience better entertainment.
But again I agree with you completely that upgradeable or modular consoles just wouldn't work. The PC has a hard enough time as it is with that sort of stuff and the consoles have traditionally been the platform of choice for people who don't wish to keep having to upgrade, update and stay ahead of the curve in terms of hardware. Which is why creating a solid product with good hardware that will last five or more years is the future of console gaming. Make a product with decent, but affordable hardware, that developers can easily get creative with and you'll have a product consumers will buy because the content on it is continually improving without them having to fork out money every few years to continue being entertained.
Nintendo have shown that this generation. Sony and Microsoft have shown it as well with their established online services and movement toward motion controls late in their products life cycles. All three of them have decided to continue supporting their products by getting creative and trying to cater to the needs of the market(s) they focus most on.
While we see the PC floundering a little with piracy issues and increased hardware costs. And even with all the endless possibility for upgrading hardware the PC still gets few exclusives if any at all, not to mention the games it does get are hampered by the fact developers can't afford to spend enough time optimising for the sheer variation between each individual computer system.
basically everything the OP wants is already what the ps3 can do, sans the directx, keyboard and mouse support for games, and upgradable parts. The cell processor was just too gimmicky and Sony should have went with a standard gpu cpu design so more people would welcome it as the ultimate home theatre computer hybrid.
@Marz: I'd like to say Sony will take note of that for any future console after the PS3, but Sony seem to be somewhat stubborn or bone idle when it comes to taking on the advice they are given and then actively utilising it to improve their product.
@Geno: Wouldn't work. The added retail cost associated in construction and the fact the the PC side of things would out date quickly wouldn't help it's chances either. Amstrad released the Mega PC in 1993 which was a combination PC and Mega Drive in one and it tanked for those exact reasons. While I look forward to the day all entertainment is in one central hub/device, those days a still a ways off due to corporate greed and each manufacturing company being into it for themselves alone.
@Marz: The issue with that is that Sony is Sony. They continue to be a business which creates exciting new products and markets and with the spare few exceptions of the Playstation, PS2 and Discman they continue to fail in capitalising on the majority of their ingenue success stories. Case in point : AIBO. They were the first company to deliver a working upgradable robot pet to the market. It created a lot interest and those who could afford bought every single one in all three generations of release yet only 5-10 years later Sony is all but completely silent on AIBO's future renditions. This is classic Sony mistep to ignore the plaintive pleas of their customers, just as the PS3's capability to be a decent loungeroom web PC is merely a half baked and thoroughly unexplored and unrefined end product.
@Hamz: See I feel differently about power and longevity. I've always noticed that in the latter half a given computer or console's lifecycle the best products get presented because the developers become far more proficient with the technology. GTA San Andreas for example is a game that practically would've been impossible to create on the PS2 using the first generation of Renderware's PS2 middleware which was used to create GTA 3. Yet by the time San Andreas had been released the middleware had been exposed to two other platforms; PC and XBOX and had gone through some extensive revision in terms of texturing capabilities, lighting models, poly counts, map scale/streaming and physics. While it is true that more powerful hardware can lead to longevity in some areas, its always true that having expert knowledge of the host system, the tools in use and the market you're aimed at will guarantee it.
Not a bad concept, but in practice I see too many pitfalls for a hardware company to commit on. First a foremost, would be the consumer base who would purchase upgradable consoles. Console gamers like the fact that they don't have to do hardware upgrades, there is a level of simplicity in terms of how a consumer views how a console functions that you would have to change.
You point that this idea would cut costs, I perceive the exact opposite. Case in point: The price of a large 360 harddrive. It's terribly inflated, and everyone knows that it's a rip off. Now imagine Microsoft releasing a new CPU for your machine, do you think that the price would be remotely reasonable? How many upgrades would you need for your console? Regardless, someone could make bank over such a lucrative business model.
I think that the types of upgrades for consoles won't be akin to the N64 Expansion pack or some customizable component, but an expansion of what has worked in the past specifically, peripherals. Natal with it's "I don't want to touch a controller to flip to a film", gimmicky but lucrative to Mr. Non-Gamer. I perceive consoles becoming more media centers and a bridge between the console and the PC, not from a hardware standard, but from a software standard and peripherals that support this interchangeability.
But yeah, your idea most certainly could be one type of future.
@Geno: That would be awesome!!! I would love to see console exclusives like god of war and uncharted with way better graphics. But how is this different from the system that's already in place? Consoles have a new generation every few years for a reason. Let's replace the word 'console' with 'motherboards' instead and have new cpus/graphics cards/ram in between every couple of years for upgrades. Wouldn't that just confuse the average consumer? That's what sets us PC gamers apart. We are willing to research what all the possible upgrades are for our system and what games will run well on our system. Will the average consumer act the same way? Console makers make consoles easy to use, which is their appeal. Consoles are not as flexible as PCs, hence cheaper. As much as I'd love this to happen so that graphics would be nicer. I just do not see console makers being even slightly open to this idea for the sole purpose of pleasing the PC gaming crowd. The average consumer is their target, and that's where they have made lots of money. Altering that is a very large risk.
" Going slightly off topic, Just very quickly, nothing matched properly or anything, this is what a current top of the range PC would set you back.. Also this price is in euro's
Thats $2,796 before you even buy a screen mouse or keyboard I forgot to put a hard drive in there as well.. "
any person to pay this much is Fuking retarded.Lets go thru this and tell you whats wrong. 400$ videocard thats already outdated and gets 5% more performance then the 200$ card 350$ for ram,you dont even need more then 3gigs and 6gigs shouldn't cost you more then 100$ 542$ for cpu,the model under it is only 250$ and can be overclocked to 4ghz if u wanted to. 165$ for case,the 60$ antec is good enough. 200$ for 1000 watt psu,you dont even need a 1000 watt psu unless you are running 3 to 4 video cards.
Yeah, I don't see this improving the PC situation one bit. The reason people need new hardware on their PC's is because more powerful hardware is being developed and then used by developers, right? What's going to slow down hardware development simply because it's for consoles, then?
Basically, this idea will just force hardware upgrades on console users from what I can tell. Maybe I misread it, but hardware upgrades on a console really won't wind up being any different from hardware upgrades on a PC. The only difference is that starting-level consoles will have the same hardware, unlike starting-level PCs.
As a console gamer, I'm perfectly happy to not improve my hardware to make a game like Uncharted 2 have "10 times the optimization" because it'll cost the same as running it as any other game would cost for ten times the optimization on the PC.
Some of you and the OP have this wrong. However, let me preface this by saying that I love my PC and work as a tools engineer for my livelihood so you don't think I'm just hating on PC's:
A brand spanking new graphics card for your PC costs more than a brand spanking new console. As long as the console has internet access and a reasonable interface the console is most comparable to replacing your entire PC every few years for the cost of a graphics card. If you want to argue that PC's are on the bleeding edge then I challenge you to maintain the relevance and cost of a console by buying the best new PC components at the beginning, and only the beginning, of every new console cycle. At first you'll maintain parity then the costs will go up as the PC becomes incompatible with new cards etc. and will eventually far outstrip console pricing. At best you'll remain equivalent in computing power but the shrinking PC market seems to be shoving itself more and more into a high-end only corner so in rapid time your PC will be half-assed for the few major tech-demo and intensive strategy games that are released for it.
My best hope for the OP's original sentiment is that consoles hurry up and start supporting a form of mouse if only for downloadable games (I'm pretty sure that's the only thing holding back a PSN Torchlight). *Sigh*... I'm making myself sad.
Some of you and the OP have this wrong. However, let me preface this by saying that I love my PC and work as a tools engineer for my livelihood so you don't think I'm just hating on PC's:
A brand spanking new graphics card for your PC costs more than a brand spanking new console. As long as the console has internet access and a reasonable interface the console is most comparable to replacing your entire PC every few years for the cost of a graphics card. If you want to argue that PC's are on the bleeding edge then I challenge you to maintain the relevance and cost of a console by buying the best new PC components at the beginning, and only the beginning, of every new console cycle. At first you'll maintain parity then the costs will go up as the PC becomes incompatible with new cards etc. and will eventually far outstrip console pricing. At best you'll remain equivalent in computing power but the shrinking PC market seems to be shoving itself more and more into a high-end only corner so in rapid time your PC will be half-assed for the few major tech-demo and intensive strategy games that are released for it.
My best hope for the OP's original sentiment is that consoles hurry up and start supporting a form of mouse if only for downloadable games (I'm pretty sure that's the only thing holding back a PSN Torchlight). *Sigh*... I'm making myself sad.
"
thats not really hard,when 99% of new pc games are console ports.
Some of you and the OP have this wrong. However, let me preface this by saying that I love my PC and work as a tools engineer for my livelihood so you don't think I'm just hating on PC's:
A brand spanking new graphics card for your PC costs more than a brand spanking new console. As long as the console has internet access and a reasonable interface the console is most comparable to replacing your entire PC every few years for the cost of a graphics card. If you want to argue that PC's are on the bleeding edge then I challenge you to maintain the relevance and cost of a console by buying the best new PC components at the beginning, and only the beginning, of every new console cycle. At first you'll maintain parity then the costs will go up as the PC becomes incompatible with new cards etc. and will eventually far outstrip console pricing. At best you'll remain equivalent in computing power but the shrinking PC market seems to be shoving itself more and more into a high-end only corner so in rapid time your PC will be half-assed for the few major tech-demo and intensive strategy games that are released for it.
My best hope for the OP's original sentiment is that consoles hurry up and start supporting a form of mouse if only for downloadable games (I'm pretty sure that's the only thing holding back a PSN Torchlight). *Sigh*... I'm making myself sad.
"
thats not really hard,when 99% of new pc games are console ports. "
That's obviously a made up statistic. Even if you were to call games like GTA IV and Street Fighter IV console ports, you're ignoring the most salient fact that all console developers use PCs for their work at some point.
Also, Kojog, when you're comparing said new graphics card to a console it behooves you to remember how much more capable that card is in terms of resolution and shader processing than the console. I know from a lay consumer stand point it's just dollars vs dollars but for real PC gamers the capability definitely is much more important than the cost equation. The PC Market isn't shrinking by the way. That is not a defensive posture from me as a PC gamer, it's just a fact. Consoles are generally sold by mass marketing stores who sell everything from clothes to music. Yes there are games stores but there SO MANY MORE PC retailers of all shapes and sizes. People who talk about a shrinking PC market just aren't reading their newspapers and magazines.
Some of you and the OP have this wrong. However, let me preface this by saying that I love my PC and work as a tools engineer for my livelihood so you don't think I'm just hating on PC's:
A brand spanking new graphics card for your PC costs more than a brand spanking new console. As long as the console has internet access and a reasonable interface the console is most comparable to replacing your entire PC every few years for the cost of a graphics card. If you want to argue that PC's are on the bleeding edge then I challenge you to maintain the relevance and cost of a console by buying the best new PC components at the beginning, and only the beginning, of every new console cycle. At first you'll maintain parity then the costs will go up as the PC becomes incompatible with new cards etc. and will eventually far outstrip console pricing. At best you'll remain equivalent in computing power but the shrinking PC market seems to be shoving itself more and more into a high-end only corner so in rapid time your PC will be half-assed for the few major tech-demo and intensive strategy games that are released for it.
My best hope for the OP's original sentiment is that consoles hurry up and start supporting a form of mouse if only for downloadable games (I'm pretty sure that's the only thing holding back a PSN Torchlight). *Sigh*... I'm making myself sad.
"
thats not really hard,when 99% of new pc games are console ports. "
That's obviously a made up statistic. Even if you were to call games like GTA IV and Street Fighter IV console ports, you're ignoring the most salient fact that all console developers use PCs for their work at some point. Also, Kojog, when you're comparing said new graphics card to a console it behooves you to remember how much more capable that card is in terms of resolution and shader processing than the console. I know from a lay consumer stand point it's just dollars vs dollars but for real PC gamers the capability definitely is much more important than the cost equation. The PC Market isn't shrinking by the way. That is not a defensive posture from me as a PC gamer, it's just a fact. Consoles are generally sold by mass marketing stores who sell everything from clothes to music. Yes there are games stores but there SO MANY MORE PC retailers of all shapes and sizes. People who talk about a shrinking PC market just aren't reading their newspapers and magazines. "
Gta is a bad port,it runs like shit even on the best hardware and sf4 runs on older hardware fine.
and on the shrinking market ,ati already sold 2 million dx11 cards in a few months.
thats not really hard,when 99% of new pc games are console ports. "
Are you kidding? PC has just as many AAA exclusives if not more.
@monkeyroach said:
Gta is a bad port,it runs like shit even on the best hardware and sf4 runs on older hardware fine. and on the shrinking market ,ati already sold 2 million dx11 cards in a few months. "
Um, the "best" hardware can run GTAIV just fine, I don't even have extreme end gear and I can run it at 1080 with max details at 60fps smooth. Consoles on the other hand run it on medium details at 20-30fps. And I think you may have contradicted yourself with your second point. The large sale of so many DX11 cards in such a short period of time signifies a large PC market, not a small one.
I want to address your second point though: PC market is not shrinking due to sheer volume of PC's being sold (if I understand you correctly). It stands to reason from personal experience that the majority of these PC sales are not sporting high-end graphics cards and particularly so since many of these sales are not desktops. This means the hardware is generally weak and likely behind current console standards for the average PC being sold.
Your first argument seems to be the following: the cost is not the only factor since these parts deliver higher resolution and frame-rate. Seems that this is a moot point in the current argument because, as many other posters have pointed out, you may rather hook this thing up to a TV and sit on your couch. If that's not the case you are in a small but important minority and will continue to be in such a position for the forseeable future. Akward multi-LCD setups aside, that TV is going to max out at 1080p and many of these televisions max out at 60hz. As TV's and highdef standards evolve the demands on hardware will increase but consoles have a track record of stepping up to the plate just as PC's have (just on a much slower cycle). Overpowered hardware is pointless and, really, for a similarly compelling experience, I need to run a minimum 24" monitor with a large speaker set that does nothing but play games and sit alone in my office in the dark. I enjoy that but the rest of my house doesn't. Point is, get peopless asses on the couch for the same money or cheaper and have an enjoyable experience that may involve the whole family (despite resolution and framerate being merely acceptable).
We are becoming the modern equivalent of people that loved their C64's well into the early 90's and need to accept that.
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