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[PATV] Wednesday, March 20, 2013 - Extra Credits Season 6, Ep. 2: Why Console Specs Don’t Matter
Dog
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
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I do agree with the mad scramble to include social features without thought of why they succeed or fail.
The other consoles are catching up now, yes, but this wasn't the case a few years ago. Out of the gates the Wii stomped all over the competition, which was probably what EC was referring to.
Regarding the 8 gigs being shared between the CPU and video that was how the Macintosh in the real early days (1980s) worked and there are trade offs compared to a video card-chip with its dedicated ram.
Actually no, since during that segment (@1:36), they cite recent sales figures.
And it doesn't really matter too much that it did. It started off better certainly, but it burned itself out mid-generation, and left Nintendo with a headache when because it left their sales weak at a critical juncture.
Like power, sales pf a console are not everything.
And holding it with one hand isn't going to feel right at all. Bash the Wiimote all you want, but it really is mostly properly shaped for such tasks.
Gaikai just isn't the future. I know a lot of game designers magically believe it will work (or wish it will), but the truth is that there's just no reason to do it that way. Sure, it works fine for some applications, but really, having local hardware is really the way to go. It isn't just a matter of bandwidth (though bandwidth isn't a good thing), its a problem of the whole "games as a service" thing (which is terrible; there's a reason MMOs have been moving away from subscription fees), its a problem of launches causing horrible issues where people simply can't play (and these not only get extremely poor press but are deeply angering for players), its a problem of eating up your internet connection when you can presently do other things while playing single player games easily, and the whole servers thing really probably won't save much money in the long run.
Perhaps "crushed" should have been used in the 3DS v Vita comparison. Sales for the Vita have jumped like crazy in Japan since the price cut, but still... ouch, man.
All in all, I agree with EC's conclusion on this. While it is certainly expected that the consoles will upgrade in power and tech each generation, it has been proven over and over that not only is "raw graphical power" the least important consideration in terms of what the consumer wants (hint: it's good and interesting games with high replay value) out of the product, but focusing solely on power can jack up the console's price and hurt sales. And yet, you will regularly see people (younger ones, I assume) rant and scream how their console of choice is "best" because it has "so much better graphics". I actually have an adult friend who thinks like that. It's pretty disappointing.
Warframe: TheBaconDwarf
No one, not even the big names like EA can have those kind of disasters especially when they handle customer service like Slippy Fingers McGee handles a bottle of nitroglycerin
At the very least, it opens up the market for a -proper- console (stand alone box with physical games, at least for high digital size games) in places where high quality internet simply isn't possible. Garages, basements, and the expanding fringe of tech civilisation (power but no net).
At worst, the streams overload existing network capabilities and the service itself is unusable.
Really, you're more likely to see Steam take over the lounge room first with home networking. Download games to PC, push to a lightweight consolish box's hard drive in the lounge room, box loads games automatically, plays like a console and is portable too. At least I hope this is where we go, because PC is far more customisable than a propriety system, and so being able to drag anything into your lounge room seems more appealing to me than being able to drag only the Microsoft things. But you sacrifice ease-of-use, so who knows.
Remember guys, to give the videos a thumbs up
In terms of sales, the tale of the tape is even more significant. The best selling game in the US is CoD: Black Ops...if you count sales across all the consoles. But the best selling games worldwide are on the Wii. If you count ALL of Black Ops' sales as a single title, it would barely crack the top 10 of Wii title sales. CoD:BO sold around 14 million copies...Mario Kart: Wii has sold 34 million. Wii Sports Resort has sold 32 million. Wii Fit 22 million. Wii Fit Plus 20 million.
In terms of game success, the topic is up for debate. I own all three consoles and the 360 became the console of choice for me, with the Wii being a device to primarily play Nintendo exclusives and little else. But in terms of success, the Wii dominated the market. Sony sought to use the PS3 to win the BD/HDDVD war and it did...but at great cost to their video game business. Microsoft used the Xbox to conquer the living room and arguably was very successful at it. So all of them could be defined as having victories in their own spaces. But in terms of mind share and sales, it's pretty clear that Nintendo 'won' as much as anyone could be said to do so this time out.
In terms of sales, the tale of the tape is even more significant. The best selling game in the US is CoD: Black Ops...if you count sales across all the consoles. But the best selling games worldwide are on the Wii. If you count ALL of Black Ops' sales as a single title, it would barely crack the top 10 of Wii title sales. CoD:BO sold around 14 million copies...Mario Kart: Wii has sold 34 million. Wii Sports Resort has sold 32 million. Wii Fit 22 million. Wii Fit Plus 20 million.
In terms of game success, the topic is up for debate. I own all three consoles and the 360 became the console of choice for me, with the Wii being a device to primarily play Nintendo exclusives and little else. But in terms of success, the Wii dominated the market. Sony sought to use the PS3 to win the BD/HDDVD war and it did...but at great cost to their video game business. Microsoft used the Xbox to conquer the living room and arguably was very successful at it. So all of them could be defined as having victories in their own spaces. But in terms of mind share and sales, it's pretty clear that Nintendo 'won' as much as anyone could be said to do so this time out.
Elder Scrolls is a perfect example of why specs don't matter, because the PS3 version of Skyrim was so abysmally bad. Even putting aside the fact that console players can't access mods, the PS3 version was far, far buggier. And when I played it on PS3, every single door meant a load time of 30 seconds or more. When I play it on my middle-of-the-road PC (which certainly loses to PS3 in terms of processing power) I never see a load time greater than 5 seconds. Graphics look better on my PC too. For how much more technically powerful the PS3 is than Xbox and PC, it has no excuse to lag behind in performance the way it so often does. Which I suppose has to do with what they said about the PS3 being hard to program for.
Also, I honestly do not see Sony implementing Gaikai in nearly as extensive ways that people are imagining. Sony has trouble updating and running the day to day operations of their existing PS3 store. As for using Gaikai for backwards compatibility, sure there will probably be some PS3 and older games you can play. If you buy them again, or pay a new subscription fee. I have heard people speculate that Sony could set the PS4 to read an old PS3 disk enough to acknowledge you own a copy, or check your PSN account to see that you bought a digital copy, and then give you access to the game streaming via Gaikai. Not gonna happen. In that scenario, Sony is incurring new expenses streaming you the game while making no new revenue. The warm feeling of giving you good customer service, or an intangible gain in goodwill towards the PS brand, is not going to be nearly enough for Sony to make a business decision that looks that bad on paper. And yes, the cost of streaming an individual game might be minor, but it adds up if thousands and thousands of people do it over the course of years. And trust me, companies like Sony try to run down even minute costs regardless.
So yeah, streaming might be the solution to backwards compatibility, but it is a solution that will include a new cost to play your old games.
Overall, the specs on the new consoles may or may not matter for their relative success in the console market, but they matter a hell of a lot to PC gamers. For years now, the majority of games have been lazy console ports which don't take advantage of the superior rendering power of modern graphics cards. The new generation of consoles will allow even lazy ports to look better on PC's. The fact that both new consoles will be using AMD graphics also suggests that the days of nVidia-tuned games will probably come to an end.
Eight gigs of RAM. That's... a lot of RAM. It'll be interesting to see how developers respond to this large-scale expansion. Still, though, I'll be staying with my trusty PC while curiously poking my head into the living room to observe my roommate play it, as he is seemingly obsessed with the prospect of the PS4.
Hmm... Microsoft's turn, I suppose. The trend outlined in the video would seem to indicate that they wouldn't need to make the Dr. Manhattan of consoles in terms of processing power or RAM in order to compete, but it's still highly possible that they'll wind up shooting themselves in the foot.
Time to sit back with some popcorn and watch it all unfold.
As for the PS1 being less than N64? True, but the cartridge was the key difference. CDs > Cartridge for space at the time and that mattered a lot.
If the Wii were to double or triple its sales compared to the PS3 and Xbox 360, they wouldn't be crushed, it's much more likely that they've been rendered almost totally irrelevant instead (e.g. Playstation 1 vs Sega Saturn).
But yes, those figures only count in initial sales, and the the novelty of the Wii is wearing rather thin. But to have that much of a boost to start with is significant, because it means that many more households have a Wii compared to others (and, like whitegoods, you generally only need one per household), so for Nintendo itself, it did very well, but it's harder to say for attracting game developers given how different it is than a standard control-pad console (and other limitations) - yes, its longevity is limited, meaning Nintendo would need to develop something newer sooner and somehow still attract developers to make games for it if they want to keep up.
PS3 and 360 were even closer, but you have to ignore the elephant in the room.
You just can't do it. You just can't. There is a built-in lag no matter where your "server farm" is or how "fast" your internet connection is. The fastest ping I've gotten on a server (somewhere in my city, not on a LAN obviously) is 20ms. This might seem pretty fast, but guess what? When I press a button to jump, or to fire, or to do anything time-sensitive, THERE CAN NOT BE A DELAY. Even a 20ms (best case scenario) delay is way too much.
Anyone remember OnLive? That streaming game service? The one that laid off every. single. employee (just last August)? Why do you think they failed? They were the #1 game streaming service. Because streaming a game provides sluggish responsiveness, poor visuals, and high data usage.
This isn't even taking into account the fact that your family/friends will start downloading something on your shared connection and then, guess what?
Game Over
"After the launch in United Kingdom, Computer and Video Games remarked that, after one month of use, the service was "working" and was adequate for trying or renting a game, but that it was not a substitute for owning a game on another platform due to the limitations imposed by internet connections (lag, freezing and smeary visuals, as well as high data usage for those on capped connections)."
Maybe in the future, when we all have fiber optic connections, it might work. But not for the next 10 years, minimum. And it would require large infrastructure investments if you had millions of customers (think Google data centers).
Let me just cut to the chase: not going to happen.
Things change when you try to implement augmented reality. Any delay over 20 ms between the moment you move your head and the moment you get visual feedback will feel unresponsive and headache-inducing. It is currently on the verge of possibility to get latencies this small even without placing the internet between the motion sensor and the display. So, cloud gaming will be a complete non-starter for augmented reality, no matter how good our connections become.
"I am compelled to shoot!"
It takes away the ownership of the product from the game owner and turns them in to licensed content that you have to pay to see on a constant basis.
What happens to these games once the company providing them goes under? You lose everything.
What happens if you want to re-sell it? Can't. You don't own it.
What happens if they just say "we're no longer supporting this platform"? Lost forever.
With cloud computing there won't even be companies like GOG re-selling abandoned games, they'll just plain be lost forever.
As a consumer, you should be doing everything you can to fight always-on-line and cloud computing based content for your own sake.
Current console games have 1% to 2% budget for AI... That's why you have CRAPPY AI, and LIMITED MECHANICS.
The fact that as an engine dev I have to exclude NEW TYPES OF GAME MECHANICS because the consoles are so underpowered compared to PCs, should be enough to convince you that SPECS MATTER.
It takes a lot of money to build all new assets and gameplay to get the most out of each platform. Game studios want to reach the most market share, and they can't afford to re-do and re-test the whole game to get the best out of each platform.
So games like Witcher2 look identical on the PC vs Consoles, not because we can't make better games with more powerful hardware, but because we have to go with the lowest common denominator's SPECS!
That's right! The SPECS of consoles even matter MORE when you're talking cross platform games! You want fully destructable environments where ACID can be poured on any reactive surface, or to have models that actually have guts (not just hollow mesh shells)? You want to be able to figure out your own clever way past obstacles, like break a support beam and have a building fall on a convoy? Or play more abstract games with even stranger themo-dynamics based gameplay?! TOO BAD!!! The consoles don't have enough RAM, Hard Drive Space, or CPU/GPU power! It's sad that for the same price as a console you can build a PC that's 3 or 4 times better spec'd. Seriously, as a game engine developer I say: Low spec'd CONSOLES ARE STIFLING the game industry WAY MORE than you know.
James, I hate to say it, but you should stay silent about this since you clearly have NO IDEA what you're taking about... once again.
"It's better to keep your mouth shut and have folks think you're a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."
You don't have to just take my word for it, go listen to the AI Dev Rants on GDC if you don't believe me:
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014586/Turing-Tantrums-AI-Developers-Rant
Now consider it's not just better AI, but new mechanics and EVERYTHING ELSE about games that can expand if we have more horsepower.
FOOL!
Edit: Hmm, I may be misunderstanding James. His video cites sales numbers.
Well, of course console specs matter little to marketing drone and holiday sales, but I thought we were talking about the impact to ACTUAL GAMEPLAY, not to some marketing numbers severely swayed by the vendor-lock-in revenue model... If James is talking the later, then yeah, who gives a crap about specs, the masses will play with Stone's lit by LEDs if you market it right. If we're not talking the effect specs have to gameplay, just sales: Then screw this topic, it's retarded.
Also, WRT: Dumb clients + "cloud computing": The 70's called, they want their paradigm back. There's a reason why we don't do that anymore. It's because it was just a crutch because we didn't have multi GHZ pocket computers back then... DERP!