These consoles are not going to last 10 years because pretty soon mobile phones will outperform the consoles. Mobile phones killed the console star.
If you believe mobile devices, both phones and tablets, are going to kill consoles, it is because you donât understand them. Consoles were never about superior performance but rather about a walled garden with a consistent platform.
A walled garden approach allows the console developers to easily get away with underpricing their consoles because they know with certainty that it will easily be made up in the cost of the games they sell. It also gives the potential to easily control the quality of games for their platform. By comparison it is much easier to release shovelware on mobile and charging for a game is exceedingly difficult when the competition is usually free.
A consistent platform allows a developer to worry far less about potential hardware differences, being limited primarily to controller differences, and focus on taking full advantage of the given hardware. Contrast this to mobile devices where you have a wide range of devices even on platforms such as iOS. Taking full advantage of a platform is usually a waste for mobile because most people wonât have it.
I havenât watched the video as AnandTech had an in-depth preview for the chip.
The same thing popped into my head as soon as I saw âHardcore Mobile Gamingâ in the title. Hardcore games existed long before the graphics power available in a modern mobile device was a thing. It is not what is stopping it from happening.
Consider playing Quake Zero on a tablet. Graphics performance isnât whatâs stopping that from being a thing.
Having said that, Iâm still excited about the new chip.
With OpenGL 4.5 and DirectX 12 support, it would be nice to see this chip in a Chromebook, or a compact, travel-friendly gaming console, as opposed to a Android tablet or smartphone.
I donât think any amount of technology is going to turn mobile into a âhardcoreâ platform simply because the input cannot ever favour hardcore gaming and mobile devices are consumed on the move.
So the answer is no.
Can it lead to better graphics? certainly.
Will mobile kill console? No. Itâs already had six years to try and the graphics are already good enough to make the attempt. Itâs not happening because people love the big screen console experience. That hasnât changed.
Hardware isnât going to change it either. If anything, better hardware simply means VR for consoles. Morpheus and Rift are experiences that really, really donât suit a phone. And by this I mean, youâre not going to whip out your google cardboard in the street and get run over by a bus.
Itâs not happening. In addition to this, mobile markets are a dead duck and a financial risk for AAA style titles due to unprecedented piracy rates. So games which are social and are designed around free to play are the breadwinners. This typically wonât be Halo 5 with you squinting at the screen sliding your thumbs over cortana.
The idea for AAA currently is that the mobile device is another facebook they can tap into, itâs essentially a mobile you, and they can utilize this to enrich (read: trap) your game experiences in their desktop/console title. Games like the Division and AC show how players on mobile can interact with dedicated console gamers.
I donât have much respect for mobile in general. Android is the most pirated platform in the history of computers, and iOS suffers around half of all played titles being pirated. This number is considerably less on console.
Thatâs not to say that you canât make good money. You can - but if you make good money, it wonât be because of a phone that costs more than a console.
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Depends how you think this as for input for example Apple devices already have official support for (iOS) controllers. Itâs not too far fetched to think that in few years you can play Uncharted 2, 3 or 4 quality game with a controller on TV (native res).
Oh yeah, but then youâre just buying another console at console price, except itâs utterly riddled with piracy which scares off premium development.
The last consoles had a 10 year shelf-life but if mobile devices keep going at this rate they could have better hardware then the consoles (wether its this iteration or the next). The ipad for example sold 200 million units in only 4 years vs ps3 80 million or xbox360 83 million in its 10 year lifespan. If there are more devices (bigger market) with better hardware then mobile then why wouldnt it be a console killer
Yes I see that. Itâs something many observers have mentioned, however the price is often forgotten. For an xbox 360 quality phone, be expected to shell out $400-$600 for ownership.
If you are on a payment plan, it will still cost you much more than is reasonable to keep upgrading. I donât think thatâs going to be the majority of people, and therefore it wonât gain traction.
Hardware capabilities has little to do with it. Think about it for a moment. The PC has had gigabytes of memory available in even the cheapest computers long before the PlayStation 4 and XBox One were released. Likewise better processors and graphics cards were also available before them. At reasonably affordable prices.
If hardware alone was sufficient the consoles would already be dead. If they still exist then clearly there are other factors youâre not considering. Some of those have already been mentioned in earlier posts.
Or replacing a damaged/lost device. Losing your phone is far easier than losing an XBox.
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Hardcore mobile gaming is an oxymoron. Iâm sure itâll be an increasingly viable gaming option in the future, but if youâre a âhardcoreâ gamer, why would you choose the least powerful option?
Least powerful? Or least practical? I donât know any gamers who would want to sit around squinting at their phone and trying to play any lengthy or fast-paced games using a touchscreen. It simply isnât practical.
Phones are not where this processor would shine but rather handheld consoles such as the PlayStation Vita.
What about the OUYA, if they kickstart an OUYA 2 with a Nvidia Tegra X1 or Nvidia Shield 2.
Or they could bring out a âcartridgeâ phone, a basic smartphone, but with a great display and you can buy a AAA game engine cartridge that includes a dedicated Nvidia Tegra X1 that clips onto it.
Or should all the components be modular and upgradable, a modular upgradable OUYA.
Maybe itâs less about the box and more about the games, Oculus are always going on about how they need great content to make the Rift a success. Microsoft bought Bungie and then blocked Halo from release on Windows PCâs.
Both 
Desktops outperform laptops, laptops outperform tablets, [most] tablets outperform phones. Systems like the Vita, shield and ouya are in there somewhere. The screen size is also an issue now, but if oculus in the future can connect to an iWatch, then it wonât a problem.
As much as these things all improve in the future, mobile gaming will still be the least capable. It might become as good as super computers are now, but at such a point, hardcore gaming will likely be redefined by an average desktop in that era.
Thereâs no bias here, Iâve got a few time killers on my phone and my primary âgaming rigâ is a laptop. In fact, I have never even owned a desktop and this is my first windows computer
But most of that power is probably on the GPU side. Hmm what we need is a C# to GPU compiler, ideally you could just tag a section of code as Multi-Core e.g.
[MULTI GPU]
foreach Enemy e in Enemies
e.Move();
[MEND]
and it would just run on multiple threads on the CPU or GPU under a thread management or Job system!
I think this is a simplistic statement as high end smartphones probably have more power than low end desktops and laptops.
Itâs true. My phone from 2014 has 2GB of RAM and my macbook from 2008 has 2GB of RAM. Then again, my macbook from 2014 has 16GB of RAM. The argument is definitely there to make, but it doesnât fit the context of âhardcoreâ. A $1200 tablet probably performs better than a $100 laptop, but is a hardcore gamer going to try to play anything above zork on a $100 laptop? Probably not. And that $1200 would be better spent on a desktop for power per dollar.
On the other hand, a tablet might be better for a portable device than a $1200 laptop⌠but you can get a laptop like the one I just did on sale for $1200, which has 16GB RAM and an NVIDIA GTX 860m. Itâs still junk compared to a desktop graphics card, but probably still outperforms tablets
Itâs about as relevant as stating laptops and tablets have better native graphical capabilities than desktops just because they have built in screens, as if a competent computer user would not also purchase a monitor for their desktop.
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Platforms like OUYA arenât ever going to get the killer games because nobody with any sense is going to invest in something with zero copy protection.
Iâd rather play exclusives like Uncharted4 and Halo5. I know these games are going to have absolutely stunning production values, and I value my time too much to waste it on playing some glitchy hobbyist turd. I know how that sounds being an indie developer, but Iâm speaking from a gamer perspective.
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I prefer my Vita over my tablet because it has input and games that are designed for that input. That said, I play a bunch of games on my phone because its convenient to hold and always with me where other devices may not be.
I just find it surprising that this argument keeps popping up and this weird conception that if they bring out a tablet powerful enough that console manufacturers will be like âHey guys, shut it down!â
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Well, mobile consoles + VR equipment could be the future. I saw a video yesterday of someone with an oculus + leap motion on the front of it. The little device rendered the entire room for the guy to look around in, and he could see his hands too! Consoles will continue to rule couch gaming, but all of the VR tech is going to introduce rooms-without-furniture gaming 