
Carmack: Unquestionable that mobile will surpass consoles - kenjackson
http://www.industrygamers.com/news/john-carmack-unquestionable-that-mobile-will-surpass-current-consoles/
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copenja
Title is misleading...

If you read the article Carmack is saying that the processing of power of
mobile devices will exceed current generation consoles, not that the sales
will.

About sales he says:

"Could the bottom drop out on the triple A market because everyone’s playing
Angry Birds? It doesn’t seem to be happening. The numbers don’t show that.
We’re selling more big titles than ever before, despite having all of these
other platforms out there."

About processing power he says:

"it’s unquestionable that within a very short time, we’re going to have
portable cell phones that are more powerful than the current-gen consoles."

~~~
blueHelios
The title is not misleading. You missed the next sentence in the quote from
John Carmack:

"So it looks like it’s parallel growth rather than one stealing from the
other."

My interpretation is that there is a massive market for convenient casual
games that has been neglected for a long time. That market is exploding and
represents huge revenue opportunities, but because it targets an entirely
different customer base, it is not hurting sales in the serious gaming market.

------
programminggeek
I think that it's a bit surprising that a company like say SEGA or EA or
whoever hasn't got together and put out a gamer-oriented Apple/GoogleTV type
device. Think Apple TV size that used existing bluetooth PS3 or Wii
controllers or controllers designed for the system.

Certainly with dual/quad core chipsets, we are close to or past the power of
the Wii and if there was a better industry standard around such things you
could even create a kind of built-in "meta console" platform within TV's. Then
you don't even have to buy a separate device, your TV just plays games as long
as you have a controller. That would probably sell more HDTV's than 3-D TV
technology would.

All I know is if you can get an ARM chipset that can reliably spit out 720p
games at 30fps with reasonably good quality, built into a TV that had say
10,000 games available for under $10 (I'm looking at you iOS and Android),
parents woudln't buy their kids 360's or PS3's. They'd just buy apps that run
on their tv.

~~~
jokermatt999
How is that different at all from the online distribution systems that the
PS3, 360, and Wii already have? The 360 has a fantastic low price indie market
in Xbox Live Arcade, the PS3 does pretty well, and the Wii is steadily gaining
the entire Nintendo back catalog.

What would people gain from buying yet another device, and what do you mean by
a "meta console"? Something like OnLive? Because otherwise, you're not going
to see anywhere near the performance that the current consoles get. While
graphics don't make the game, shiny graphics do help to sell games.

~~~
saturdaysaint
"How is that different at all from the online distribution systems that the
PS3, 360, and Wii already have?"

The product that the parent post describes is priced like an impulse buy
($99), has no monthly fee , integrates beautifully with millions of popular
devices (Airplay with iTunes, iPads, iPhones, iPods) and Apple would make it
as trivial as possible to port games/apps from their already popular platforms
to the new TV format... If they indeed keep the pricing as cheap as Apple TV,
it could be practically ubiquitous and the network effects for social games
and Facetime-like apps would thus be a major competitive edge.

I don't think it's hard to imagine Apple disrupting the consoles. Of course,
it's more likely that they'll try to stay intensely focused on their two
existing platforms for the foreseeable future. Then again, I have a feeling
that the merging of Android with Google TV makes the marriage of iOS and Apple
TV more likely - they know that the home's "big screen" is a future
battleground for these platforms.

~~~
ConstantineXVI
The AppleTV is already iOS behind the scenes (and uses the same A4 chipset as
the current iPhone and iPod touch). Technically, it'd be possible to run iOS
games on the Apple TV nearly unmodified, and use your other iOS devices as
controllers. Also, the iPad 2 will be able to do full video mirroring over the
network to the Apple TV as of iOS 5; presuming the performance is up to spec
it'd be possible to "invade" living room gaming that way as well.

------
nikcub
It will happen, and Sony and Microsoft only have themselves to blame for
failing to figure out the console upgrade path and what consumers want. The
hardware in the latest xbox and playstation is now over 6 years old, and what
you can buy with a $150 mobile device almost surpasses it in pushing polygons.

I don't understand why they do not keep the console operating system
consistant, and update hardware every 18 months. xbox loading times, game
prices etc. are a pain when the alternative is to boot up your phone or
browser and play for 5-10 minutes at a time. Sony had the Ericsson partnership
they did nothing with, and Microsoft had Microsoft .. and nothing came of
either.

The more exciting element is gaming moving to the browser. webgl is coming to
the mobile browsers soon. I just happen to be watching this demo video
yesterday of RAGE running on webgl in a browser:

<http://youtu.be/d0S2dsuSxHw>

bit of a 'holy shit the world is changing' moment

~~~
maximilianburke
A $150 mobile device is far from surpassing the Xbox 360 and PS3 in polygon
pushing power. Ignoring that the hardware isn't going to be fast enough until
Kal-El shows up (and even longer until Kal-El-type hardware is $150) the
consoles also permit writing much closer to the metal than most mobile
devices.

Consistent hardware is the reason consoles have been so attractive to develop
for -- you don't have to worry about leaving 30% of your market behind because
you want to use OpenGL ES 2.0, you don't worry about having performance
differences between different phones, you don't worry about one configuration
having multiple cores and another not. Microsoft went so far to ensure
consistency in their hardware performance profile that when the Xbox 360 was
moved from discrete CPU/GPU to a SoC for their new slim version they built a
front-side bus on die.

Different hardware profiles is why AAA games just seemed to evaporate on the
PC for a while. Even now with Direct3D 10 and 11 having given developers a
much more stable target to aim for it's still a pain to develop for them. With
the mobile market's mix of instruction sets (NEON, VFP, soft FP), graphics
libraries (GLES 1.1, 2.0) and their different implementations (necessitating
things like this: <http://aras-p.info/blog/2010/09/29/glsl-optimizer/>), plus
core counts, clock speeds, screen sizes, and operating systems, it's getting
worse in mobile than it was for PC.

For the most part console/PC games and mobile games are different in player
usage too -- saying "why play a console game when you can boot your phone or
browser for 5-10 minutes at a time" is like saying "why watch a movie when you
can watch cat videos on Youtube". Different audience, different itches
scratched.

As for the "WebGL Rage" demo, it's neat but it's very misleading. First he's
just displaying assets from the iOS version of Mutant Bash, it's not even the
full Mutant Bash game, let alone the full game of Rage.

------
cletus
I've said it many times: Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony need to be worried
about... Apple. The iPad (more than the iPhone IMHO) is becoming and will
become a massive gaming platform.

The move towards 3D realism on modern consoles (Xbox360, PS3 and successors)
has driven up costs, driven down release cycles and basically given things
that many (if not most) people don't actually care that much about.

The App Store has proven there is a serious market for lower-priced games with
wide distribution, something the content industry as a whole has failed of
grasp over the last decade or more in spite of the mountains of evidence to
the contrary.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Certainly 3D realistic games (AAA FPS titles, for example) are very expensive
to make. However, many of them also have fantastic returns and have generated
extraordinary revenues. Just as in the movie industry there is a place for
both high and low production values.

Modern Warfare 2, for example, was the highest grossing entertainment launch
in history, including blockbuster movies, making a third of a billion dollars
in a single day. Today only perhaps 2 or 3 films have had higher box office
revenues than Modern Warfare 2 has made. No sane person would pass up a chance
for such revenues. More so when you consider that at that scale games cost far
less than movies to produce: MW2 cost about $60 million to make, whereas
Avatar had a budget of $237 million, Titanic had a budget of $200 million, and
even the Return of the King had a budget of $94 million.

Hollywood seems to be chugging along just fine, and the gaming industry seems
to have lower costs and comparable revenues.

------
falcolas
Anybody who thinks that mobiles will replace consoles for gaming doesn't
actually seriously game (or perhaps it's more accurate to say that they aren't
interested in games more complicated than farmville or Angry Birds).

Consoles (and PC's for that matter) offer up several things that phones can
not offer.

1) Decent controls. Controls for phone based games are terribly imprecise; to
the point where even games specifically designed for phone controls don't
always do what you want them to do. Even phones with hardware controls are
uncomfortable for someone like me to use for a long period of time (Such as
the PSP Go and it's new mobile successor)

2) Gaming on large displays. I don't mind my mobile gaming - I've owned most
handhelds since the gameboy - but I don't want to play Rage or Skyrym on a
screen less than 11" diagonal.

3) Stable hardware specs. I don't have to worry that my 3 year old 360 won't
play Skyrym when it's released. I do have to wonder if my original droid will
play the latest hotness in games.

4) Stable internet connections. I've tried an MMO on a phone; the lag was
unacceptable.

5) I can play on a console all day long and not worry about battery life.

6) Textures. No handheld can match the texture resolution of the consoles,
simply due to the storage requirements for the graphics & limitations on
realistic bandwidth use to download a game on a phone.

Sure, the current consoles are starting to show their age. But their _launch_
titles still look better than any phone game I've ever seen, and we're nearing
the point where new consoles will start making their appearance (see
Nintendo's recent announcement about their new console).

~~~
msbarnett
> Anybody who thinks that mobiles will replace consoles for gaming doesn't
> actually seriously game (or perhaps it's more accurate to say that they
> aren't interested in games more complicated than farmville or Angry Birds).

Most of the market doesn't "seriously game". Most of the market isn't
interested in games more complicated than farmville or Angry Birds.

"Most of the market" is where the majority of the money is to be made is
found.

~~~
falcolas
EA and Activision, with their single title console releases of over $500
million would beg to differ.

Zynga may be making money by the bucketload, but Zinga is the exception (and
very heavily dependent on Facebook; there's plenty of horror stories around
about how this kind of dependency can bite you in the end). Most other
developers of casual games are not so lucky (with an average of $3,800 per
title). Not exactly blockbuster hits, let alone a "majority" of anything.

~~~
InclinedPlane
There is both a "casual" and a "hardcore" game market (or market segment, if
you like). The existence and size of one doesn't negate the existence and size
of the other. Both are multi-billion dollar industries.

~~~
falcolas
I agree with you. The problem is that the title of this article and many
comments within (including the GP I was responding to), indicate that the
casual market (smartphone gaming) will completely eclipse the hardcore market
(console gaming).

That's the conclusion I'm arguing against.

------
6ren
Disruption occurs when the incumbent _more_ than meets the needs of its
customers ("overserves"), and the entrant meets those needs well enough - and
also meets the next-most important need of customers. (A very simple model of
customers is that they have ranked needs - once the first-ranked need is met,
they focus on the second-ranked need etc)

So, mobile phone voice quality is not as good as landline quality, but good
enough - plus, you can use it wherever you are. Microcomputers are not as
powerful as mainframes, but powerful enough - plus cheaper and smaller. While
some customers in some circumstances may still need the extra quality/power of
the incumbent, the big profits go to the disruptor.

Do console graphics overserve most customers? If not, how close are they to
it? (Note: while there is obviously room for improvement, the key question is
whether customers _want_ that improvement. If they are overserved, the
improvement just doesn't matter.) Apart from the popularity of casual games,
one test is that PC versions of games have better graphics than current
consoles - yet, the console editions are outselling them. It seems that
customers value something other than graphics.

------
jasonkolb
I could see the gaming market being split fundamentally between the casual and
high end experience. You either play HTML 5-like games or you want 3D kinect-
driven large-screen immersive experiences. They're almost fundamentally
different experiences, trying to serve both of them with 1 device seems
foolish.

~~~
jokermatt999
Thank you. I've seen so much proclamation ( _especially_ on Hacker News) about
how mobile and casual games are totally going to overtake console and PC
gaming, and the current players are totally oblivious to this massive
revolution.

No, no they aren't. Traditional gaming and the current mobile gaming are
completely different experiences. It's like the difference between someone who
plays games and a "gamer" (forgive my Scotsman here, it's for an analogy).

While both someone who plays games and a "gamer" might put in a decent amount
of hours a week on Angry Birds, Tiny Wings, or whatever the mobile fad of the
moment is, the "gamer" is not going to be as satisfied with that. They're
going to be drooling over the latest videos for Skyrim, the next Battlefield
game, or Deus Ex. A simple mobile game does not scratch that itch. They're
completely different experiences, and I've gotten so tired of people equating
the two.

It's like saying YouTube is going to overtake movies, because people totally
love watching videos of cats. Sure, they spend hours doing that, but no matter
how many cute animal videos, vlogs, or LPs they watch, it's never going to
serve the same need as a nice big screen movie.

</rant>

~~~
rimantas
Please, everybody talking about winning, overtaking, etc. provide the clear
metrics you are talking about. Overtaking ir market share, games available,
money earned? If for every ten seriuos gamers who will pay $20 for new console
game there are 100 casual gamers paying $2.99 for some little game on iOS —
whats would that mean in „overtaking“ terms?

~~~
ja2ke
In these arguments, its never concrete like that, because what people are
fretting over is not actually about a particular metric, about revenue, etc.
It's personal, and it's cultural. When someone says "casual games will take
over console and pc games!" what they mean is "people's first impression of
the word 'gaming' will be rewritten to point to a part of games culture that I
don't like or participate in, which is troubling to me personally."

------
seanalltogether
I think iPads and Android tablets could completely swallow the console market
if they had more sophisticated control inputs. Right now touch screen controls
are a really limiting factor for games, and I hope someone figures out an
elegant solution to this.

~~~
cageface
Yes. The virtual d-pads are terrible. The biggest limiting factor in the
growth of touch devices as gaming machines is that touch control is _very_
different. You have to design for it from the ground up.

------
chaostheory
I may have missed it in the article (I didn't think Carmack mentioned this),
but I think the main reason mobile gaming will surpass consoles is the speed
of mobile device hardware evolution vs the consoles. iOS devices get major
changes / upgrades approx every 2 years, while Android devices get major
changes / upgrades every 6 months or less. Compare this to the traditional
console hardware life cycle where you only get major changes at a minimum of
five years, but typically at 7-8 years before they retire something after a
decade.

~~~
cageface
I wonder if this will cap out eventually though. How much power does the
average user really _need_ in a phone? Size and battery life will be more
important than anything else before long I suspect.

~~~
chaostheory
Maybe, but I don't think it will happen before a decade. Besides people were
using your argument as to why the 1st iPhone would fail.

~~~
cageface
That was clearly premature, but I don't see why we won't eventually arrive get
to the same point we've reached with laptops & desktop computers where
aesthetics and battery life count more than stats for most people.

------
copenja
2010 app store game revenue: About 1 billion

COD Black ops sales in first 44 days: over 1 billion

References:

[http://blog.itchannelplanet.com/2011/02/apple-dominates-
glob...](http://blog.itchannelplanet.com/2011/02/apple-dominates-global-
mobile.html)

[http://www.bgr.com/2010/12/21/call-of-duty-black-ops-
sales-s...](http://www.bgr.com/2010/12/21/call-of-duty-black-ops-sales-
surpass-1-billion/)

Note: To calculate app store game sales I am taking the total sales and
inferring the amount through the statement that "over half of sales are
games".

------
nahname
I am just one data point, but I used to be a hardcore console guy and now
mostly play games on my phone + ipad. There are more interesting things
happening via touch and/or mobile than what I am finding in console games.

My home theater system is my ideal gaming setting, but being able to play
virtually anywhere has a lot of appeal too.

I can look into actual figures, but I haven't spent more than $20 in the last
5 months on console games and have bought 20-30 ipod/iphone games in the same
period, some over $15 themselves.

------
iwwr
There are still physical limits with battery power and overall heat
dissipation. Perhaps they'd be overcome with a new power source, like a fuel
cell.

------
smackfu
If people would pay $650 for their consoles, they would have faster
processors.

This is a place where the subsidized phone model really helps.

~~~
parfe
The answer is subsidized consoles. Microsoft and Sony are already moving there
with the paid online experience. They just need to codify it into a 2 year
contract.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Consoles are typically subsidized. Only Nintendo prices their consoles so they
make a profit on them from day one. Both MS and Sony subsidize console sales
at the start of a new console generation, trusting to game sales and licensing
for their profit margins. Eventually the cost of the hardware comes down and
they usually end up making a slim profit on it, but that's not typically where
they assume to make their money from.

------
bane
A _big_ problem with the future of mobile gaming in my opinion is the
incredibly low software prices. Making a AAA title, then selling it for $2.99
is going to be very difficult. Raising the floor of mobile software pricing to
something more akin to today's console pricing would be even harder.

------
sbochins
Most of the people that play Angry Birds weren't gamers before these type of
games came out on smart phones. It is these gamers and others that don't
currently play these casual games that will make up the vast majority of game
players in the future.

