

The Game Console Is Dead. What Will Replace It? - mtgx
http://wired.com/gamelife/2012/10/consolation-prize/all/

======
jiggy2011
Sure, in theory you could replace an existing console with a tablet that has
HDMI out and a range of bluetooth controllers.

The selling point of consoles is that they provide a game playing experience
right out of the box. You know that the hardware in the box will be capable of
running games for some time. Compare this to an android tablet or iOS device
where there is likely to be a replacement in a year with uprated graphics and
suddenly game developers don't want to support your old thing any more.

The Xbox360 also ships with a controller that is standardised so will be well
supported by all games and you know the quality is reasonable rather than
having to dig around looking for third party peripherals.

A dedicated console also has to make less concessions for portability and
power. An Xbox360 is not expected to have to run from a battery and if adding
an extra pound on inch of thickness to the design helps reduce costs then it
is usually a clear win.

OTOH this makes a nice change from "PC gaming is dead, consoles will take
over" that I hear every so often.

The next big seismic change in gaming is likely to come from devices like the
occulus rift rather than tablets.

~~~
mikerg87
What if Airplay became Gameplay and you could throw the game you had on your
phone up on your nice big TV via Apple TV or similar device. Then in fact your
controller is the game. when to get new hardware and game play experience is
left in your hands.

I don't know how it is for IOS developers but I have been quite happy how well
apps have remained playable and available from iPhone version to iPhone
version.

~~~
zwily
AirPlay can already put your game on the tv via AppleTV. What were you
thinking of in addition to that?

~~~
ConstantineXVI
It needs to work in reverse. Instead of sending a video stream, send the app
itself and run on the ATV (or equivalent), using your phone/tablet for
control. The Apple TV is already using binned A5s and running iOS, this
wouldn't be a huge leap.

~~~
AJ007
Out of all of the players out there, Apple could do this the quickest and do
it well.

Something between an Android box from Google or a Steam console could come in
second. Apple is 95%+ of the way there, they just have to provide a great user
experience playing iOS games on the TV. As pointed out, Airplay is unusable
due to lag. The output cord gets rid of the lag issue but is too short,
cumbersome, and limited.

As for Google or Valve, they have compatibility issues that will make for a
rough ride. It could take perhaps a year or two before we started to see an
adequate volume of games, and new games, that played natively at an acceptable
level.

I agree with the original poster, that this will not be "the next big seismic
change." To me this is more about opening the console up to a far bigger
market of developers, which helps to hasten to pace of innovation. That will
make way for the next seismic change. Or, as I say in relation to my business
"A giant leap ahead rather than many tiny micro percentage gains."

------
acgourley
Everyone seems to be beating up on this story. The title is link bait &
hyperbole but let me argue why I think the writer is at least pulling on the
right threads.

1\. Processing power won't matter, we've crossed a line where the real
bottleneck is content creation not pixel rendering. Assassins Creed III at 300
people over 3 years shows this. Your next phone will be powerful enough to
render the best games we make.

2\. Your second next phone will have a good way to get this to your TV. Either
through a wireless standard or a well designed dock.

3\. Yes, controllers matter for some games. But everyone has agreed what a
controller should be (dual analog, d-pad, start/select, 4 buttons, and 2
shoulders, 2 triggers). Companies will make good BT versions of these and this
problem is solved.

4\. The expected price of games is dropping, and console makers are simply in
denial about this.

5\. Set-top boxes running Android, like Ouya, for many of the above reasons,
are going to gain a strong foothold. They're going to be the "just works"
solution you buy at walmart. They're going to get bluetooth controllers into
you hands. They're going to get you used to gaming on a TV for cheap & free.

~~~
majormajor
How do you see your first and fourth points interacting? Companies trying to
make up for lower sales prices on volume, while still taking ever-more time
and effort to create the content?

~~~
acgourley
I admit I don't know, and as always the industry will exist on a spectrum not
as a couple dots. But I think the whole spectrum is shifting such that only a
few franchises/studios can pull off a $60 game, and it will be so risky to
start that effort up that it will only be trusted to those few. You'll still
see block buster titles from block buster names at block buster prices _but
fewer_... and everything else will move down the price spectrum.

------
mmariani
What's up with journalists? It's like they have to kill something every week
or so.

~~~
qbrass
They have to perform ritual sacrifices in order to ensure page views.

------
Yhippa
I know the title is hyperbole but I do agree with the point made in the
article that the business models are going to have to change in the industry.
Honestly I don't care if I'm playing a game on a phone, console, or PC; as
long as it's fun and engrossing I will play it.

I've downloaded a lot of games on my Android and iOS devices and a lot of the
action games have touch controls that are awkward for me to use. On the iPhone
5 my fingers cover up the speaker when I'm holding it for console-type game.

Also I'm not completely sold on in-app purchases. I've tried a bunch of the
top games and what little gameplay you're allowed to have for some of these
games before you need to start paying to play is low. It's obvious to me that
they designed the games primarily to extract money from me through some flaw
in human behavior as opposed to putting out a comprehensive experience.

One direction I'd love to see the gaming industry go is to see some form of
resurrected OnLive. I get my music via subscription and love it. I really like
the idea of some type of "all-you-can-eat" game subscription service kind of
like what PSN is doing right now.

The other problem that was mentioned in the article was the cost of building
some of these really nice games. It reminds me of movies in the 90's and
2000's: lots of money spent on a flop at the end of the day. I really don't
know the answer to this one. I love playing games with fancy graphics but know
that a studio can only gamble on a few of those these days. They're way too
high-budget for an indie developer to make as well.

------
Ogre
"Pundits and developers presume Sony and Microsoft will quickly follow suit
with their own updated game consoles — also the first in years — though
neither have confirmed it."

From August: [http://www.ibtimes.com/microsoft-acknowledges-new-xbox-
conso...](http://www.ibtimes.com/microsoft-acknowledges-new-xbox-console-
rumored-be-codenamed-durango-739046)

and Durango was not a well kept secret to begin with, nor do I think it was
particularly meant to be.

"None of the game industry insiders Wired interviewed for this story were
ready to call the age of the consoles well and truly over."

But this Journalist is.

"Your smartphone is quickly getting to the point where its hardware could
display good-looking games in 1080p on your television, and it won’t be long
before your phone and TV can sync up without cables."

I regularly play videos from my phone to my TV without cables, and have played
games the same way (iPhone to AppleTV using airplay) Is there some meaning to
"sync up" I am not grasping, or is he making predictions of things that are
already widely available? Later he mentions WHDI, which has also seems to have
been around for more than a year and does look nicer in some ways (low
latency) but doesn't seem to be really taking off.

------
jarjoura
As long as I can play my epic multi-year effort, triple A, Uncharted/Gears Of
War games on a giant screen, I don't care what you call the platform.

This article can't predict the death of consoles until the PS4 and XBox 720
come out and actual sales indicate things one way or another.

Just because touch gaming has a new and growing market doesn't mean the
established players are finished.

------
melvinmt
My Xbox 360, which replaced my $70 cable subscription with Netflix, Hulu and a
bunch of other apps, is still very much alive.

~~~
jivatmanx
These services are now being built into TV's themselves themselves.

~~~
ConstantineXVI
But so far, they're terrible at it. The difference in usability between my
Vizio TV's preloaded Netflix and such vs. the Xbox with Kinect is so vast it's
not even funny. The living room is where voice command really shines.

~~~
sliverstorm
It's hard to tell if they are poorly written, or the hardware is too slow, but
I agree.

At least it is functional once you've got a video going though.

------
Falling3
What will replace it? Hopefully better journalism...

------
yk
This article reminded me, that I did pay $60 for madden on the PS3 last weak,
after some Android game reminded me that football games are actually quite
fun. The problem was not, that there was anything wrong with the Android game,
in fact it is very well designed, the problem was the tablet platform.
Especially that for a action game one needs an interface with haptic feedback,
such that the interface is just there without looking for the image of a
button on a touch screen.

Theoretically it would be possible to attach a controller to the tablet, but
what kind of controller? Four buttons, 6, 8? With an D pad? So the game makers
do not have a clear target for development of an interface. Furthermore
already for consoles we know that any additional hardware, like a Kinect,
multiplies the target market by a rather small fraction. ( And a tablet is
simply too small to have a dedicated controller.)

This is of course not saying that there is no market for tablet games, but
that consoles ( and of course also PCs) will have a place in any future gaming
landscape. Simply because the interface devices are better suited for action
games.

------
tsahyt
I just checked on my Xbox. It seems to be very alive and has no intentions of
dying until the next generation arrives.

Really, this is the second article I found here today claiming that the
console's dying. It isn't. Mobile isn't gonna kill it because it is an
entirely different animal. When I sit down in front of my Xbox and play a
game, I expect to be busy for hours on end. When playing a mobile game, I
expect to be entertained until I step off the train.

Again it's a case of "Tablets can do this and that today, so they're totally
gonna kill off everything else". They're not. They are capable and have filled
an interesting hole in the market but they're not going to kill off the PC
_or_ the game console. However they're _not_ gaming machines. Modern gamer
computers are incredibly powerful in order to render the most vivid scenes.
Even the best tablets don't come anywhere near them at the moment and they're
not going to for the next couple of years either.

------
laserDinosaur
I thought PC's were the ones who were dead?

~~~
zyb09
PCs are dead, Consoles are dead, Windows is dead, Java is dead, basically
everything that's not an iPad = dead.

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danso
No one's yet mentioned Wired's "The Web is Dead" headline from a few years
back?

<http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/>

~~~
smacktoward
Don't forget their even more infamous "Push media will kill the Web" story
from 1997:

<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.03/ff_push.html>

"The Web browser itself is about to croak. And good riddance."

Ooooops.

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kmfrk
_Wired_ declares something dead?

I am shocked. Shocked. (Shocked.)

------
dreamdu5t
I spent 6 hours last night using my PS3 - but game consoles are "dead."

~~~
jivatmanx
I had a Pong tournament... but Pong is "dead".

------
lucb1e
And not two years ago they pronounced the desktop dead for gaming and the
console was the platform that game developers would focus on in the future...

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mikelbring
What? I love my Xbox.

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zupreme
This, and other "X is Dead" articles are not only unproductive, they are
almost always wrong.

Let's consider other things that have been declared dead by journalists and
bloggers in recent years.

1) Microsoft is dead: <http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html>

2) The PC/Desktop: [http://www.thestrategyweb.com/desktop-is-dead-tablets-on-
the...](http://www.thestrategyweb.com/desktop-is-dead-tablets-on-the-rise)

3) CD's:
[http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/crossfade/2011/11/cds_are_dea...](http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/crossfade/2011/11/cds_are_dead_five_favorite_obsolete_music_formats.php)

4) DVD's: [http://www.investmentu.com/2011/February/trans-world-
enterta...](http://www.investmentu.com/2011/February/trans-world-
entertainment.html)

5) Linux on the Desktop: [http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/08/gnome-founder-
says-deskto...](http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/08/gnome-founder-says-desktop-
linux-is-dead)

That's just a small sampling and each and every one is built on an incorrect
premise. That premise is that technologies "die" when something better comes
along.

This could not be farther from the truth. It is actually very rare when a new
technology or device comes along which is so superior, so much more
accessible, and so much more cost effective than its predecessor that the
predecessor fades completely from view. In fact, it's so rare that I cannot
think of a single example of this having occurred since Cassette tapes were
upstaged by CD's.

Can you?

~~~
DanBC
Betamax versus VHS. VHS versus DVD - VHS is effectively dead now.

5¼" discs versus 3½" discs versus USB sticks and email.

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drivebyacct2
This better be wrong, or Steam on Linux better accelerate things more than
even I'm hoping for.

