Wired Mag Says Game Console Dead

[xIx EDGE xIx]

That's more or less someone just looking to get in on their 15 minutes of fame with a contrarian, outside the box outlook on something. It has no merit to it as the gaming industry is as large as it's ever been.

Simply put, mobile games are great and convent while you are out and about, but once I'm home and I'm sitting in front of my Xbox 360, I completely forget that I even have mobile games.

 

[PP Mguire]

I don't even play mobile games when I want mobile games. I try, but just doesn't grab my attention.

 

[Omoplata]

CNN has jumped on board too.

Why console gaming is dying - CNN.com

 

[Puckett]

CNN has jumped on board too.

Why console gaming is dying - CNN.com

That article is even worse. It fails to account for market saturation and the relative lack of good titles compared year over year.

At this point, pretty much everyone who wants a Wii, 360 or PS3 already has one, and - if they don't - the folks buying them now are likely buying them due to dramatic discounts.

September 2011 included Dead Island, Resistance 3, NHL 12, Gears Of War 3 and FIFA 12. (From 2011 in video gaming - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

September 2012 included NHL 13, Borderlands 2 and FIFA 13. (From 2012 in video gaming - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Gears Of War 3 sold 5.6 million copies (Game Database, Best Selling Video Games, Game Sales, Million Sellers, Top Selling - VGChartz), Dead Island sold 2.3 million, NHL 12 sold a million or so which is about 4-5x what NHL 13 sold, etc.

Occam's Razor is fairly simple - it tells us that the hypothesis which makes the fewest / least complicated assumptions is often correct. In 2012, game sales might be down because consoles are - ZOMG! - like, DYING. Or something.

Or game sales might be down because not as many high-profile or good games were released in 2012.

Compare the games released in 2011 to the titles released so far in 2012. There was a LOT of great stuff that came out in 2011, and not as much in 2012 (especially considering the titles delayed until 2013). I wonder if, next year, a spike in game sales of anticipated titles that were finally released will in turn lead to articles which read that increase as excitement for the release of the next console generation.

Also, this: "There have been a lot of great games to be sure, but fewer must-haves — the kind that truly take the medium into uncharted territory." Written like someone who is well and truly clueless about video games.

Finally, look at the sources. Zynga is not going to say the console is alive and well. A guy making his money off mobile / social gaming consulting is not going to admit that the mobile gaming market is inundated with shovelware. It's a poorly considered piece of analysis because it fails to account for a number of factors, each of which contribute to declining year-over-year hardware sales, and a decrease in the number of games sold in 2012.

 

[PP Mguire]

After seeing specs related to PS4, if the new Xbox goes in that direction I can see console gaming dying easily now.

 

[Puckett]

Oh? Got a link? And what is Sony doing this time? If it's anything like how they treated customers who bought the PS3 ...

 

[PP Mguire]

Development kits are using an APU so it's safe to say the new Playstation will be using a modified APU or something extremely close to it. Albeit a vast improvement compared to current gen I don't think it will be enough improvement for the consoles to really go mainstream like current gen did.

Rumor of the Xbox Surface also points the new Xbox with similar specs in that aspect.

 

[Puckett]

Development kits are using an APU so it's safe to say the new Playstation will be using a modified APU or something extremely close to it. Albeit a vast improvement compared to current gen I don't think it will be enough improvement for the consoles to really go mainstream like current gen did.

Rumor of the Xbox Surface also points the new Xbox with similar specs in that aspect.

That's a far cry from Sony developing a new chip architecture for the platform. Huh. I guess we'll see what happens.

 

[PP Mguire]

It's been a well known fact all 3 companies went to AMD for hardware, and at least one of them should be using an AMD CPU. So far we know that Wii U got an AMD GPU. Some specs were released for the Xbox Surface and in those specs a "stationary unit" was named. It has 2 IBM Power7 CPUs and 5GB of RAM and also a custom AMD GPU. I doubt seriously this will be just a standalone unit made specifically for this Xbox Surface. It sounds like those are the specs for the new 360 which sound kind of spot on besides the random 5GB of RAM. It appears all units will be using 28Nm AMD GPUs so that leaves Sony with the CPU.
Since IBM developed the CPU for both the Wii U and this new Xbox I would be willing to bet Sony will be using somebody else, and that leaves AMD.

It's known that developer kits aren't using the actual console hardware but PC equivalent of very similar hardware being used. So an APU sounds about right. They could toss a discrete AMD GPU in there for Crossfire giving an edge over whatever Microsoft is using.

We can speculate furthermore from these specs (more specifically the new Xbox) that if games are being developed with multiple CPUs with more than 4 cores that new gen games are going to take a heavy toll on PCs.

Of course, all rumor and should take everything with a grain of salt. Only thing for certain so far is Sony kits are using an APU.

 

[Puckett]

It's been a well known fact all 3 companies went to AMD for hardware, and at least one of them should be using an AMD CPU. So far we know that Wii U got an AMD GPU. Some specs were released for the Xbox Surface and in those specs a "stationary unit" was named. It has 2 IBM Power7 CPUs and 5GB of RAM and also a custom AMD GPU. I doubt seriously this will be just a standalone unit made specifically for this Xbox Surface. It sounds like those are the specs for the new 360 which sound kind of spot on besides the random 5GB of RAM. It appears all units will be using 28Nm AMD GPUs so that leaves Sony with the CPU.
Since IBM developed the CPU for both the Wii U and this new Xbox I would be willing to bet Sony will be using somebody else, and that leaves AMD.

It's known that developer kits aren't using the actual console hardware but PC equivalent of very similar hardware being used. So an APU sounds about right. They could toss a discrete AMD GPU in there for Crossfire giving an edge over whatever Microsoft is using.

We can speculate furthermore from these specs (more specifically the new Xbox) that if games are being developed with multiple CPUs with more than 4 cores that new gen games are going to take a heavy toll on PCs.

Of course, all rumor and should take everything with a grain of salt. Only thing for certain so far is Sony kits are using an APU.

It has been a very long time since I've seen an alphabet soup like that

I also like that you aren't making SWAGs, you're noting what is known and what you can prove, and then extrapolating from that to deduce what is logical for other systems.

Now, it's been quite some time since I had to engage in any discussions about chip strengths, weaknesses, architectures, etc. (frankly, since I worked at Intel and that's more than a decade ago (yes, that means I am functionally a tech dinosaur)), but if I'm reading what you're saying correctly, it sounds like the forthcoming console gen will feature incremental, perhaps linear improvement, instead of exponential improvement (or something akin to it) like we saw in the recent generations.

In other words, we're likely to see prettier games, but not ones featuring noticeably better or faster performance. Does that pretty much sum it up?