The End Of Gaming Consoles

If cloud gaming is the future of the mainstream then I'll follow Keeper Sammy's lead and build my own dungeon and play roguelikes or my own collection.

I highly doubt that PC gaming will ever totally disappear or dissolve into this cloud nonsense. If it does we'll still have indie devs or roguelike devs or whoever that want to create something for a niche that us old fogies enjoy. They might not be bright and shiny like the mainstream games, but they are no less enjoyable.

I think the console market as we know it will not survive for more than another decade. As TV's become more like computers and broadband gains are made, I think services like OnLive will eventually displace them. It just makes sense. Eventually, every TV will have gaming abilities built it through an internet connection. Sure, most people won't use the gaming function, but the marginal cost won't be much, and it will leverage the same technology that will put online video directly on.

Why spend all the development cost for three different consoles when the game is the exact same, when you can do it for one and have full market access.

Consoles and retail games won't go away.

Large parts of the world don't have an internet connection fast enough to stream full games or movies in HD. And they won't have it for decades.

Originally Posted by blatantninja
Why spend all the development cost for three different consoles when the game is the exact same, when you can do it for one and have full market access.

That wasn't always the case. Publishers/developers choose to do this for increased sales.

In the early days, you were really making a big choice when you decided to purchase a gaming console. Do I go with Atari, Intellivsion, or Colecovision? The vast majority of games on each of those consoles were exclusive to each console.

This largely remained true until the PS2/Xbox era began where widespread porting has become the norm and exclusives going the way of the dinosaur.

As you stated, it is perplexing now how publishers/developers jump through 6 hoops for a single title (PC, PS3, Xbox360, Wii, DS, & PSP) - seven hoops if the game gets ported to MAC. Like you, I have been sensing a desire in the industry to consolidate - though I don't think it will happen for a while.

The video wont play for me for some reason, but I also find the idea that console gaming will be replaced by gaming in mobile devices unrealistic.

I would, however, be more willing to consider the idea that the popularity of these latest mobile devices might lead to the domination of non-specialized multipurpose gadgets that will eventually eliminate the ones that are designed to mainly perform one function, like the game consoles (as we know them). In that case I expect that the pc, as the figurehead of multipurpose devices, wont have any problem surviving.

Originally Posted by Gorath
Consoles and retail games won't go away.

Large parts of the world don't have an internet connection fast enough to stream full games or movies in HD. And they won't have it for decades.

Exactly. And look at how even in developed countries like ours (Germany) Internet providers are struggling with bandwidth "only" because people are streaming YouTube videos like crazy. The big German Internet providers have begun limiting their traffic at peak times to avoid network collapse.
If people started streaming games, too, you could kiss the Internet good-bye, especially if we consider the fact that future games (next console generation) will probably double or triple in size like every time a new generation is coming out.
At the same time, network bandwidth growth will be only moderate so -yeah- for the foreseeable future people will still be heading to the stores to pick up a Blu-Ray copy of 'God of War VII' for the PS4 instead of downloading the 70GB install or even streaming the game at a high bit rate.

Originally Posted by Gorath
Consoles and retail games won't go away.

Large parts of the world don't have an internet connection fast enough to stream full games or movies in HD. And they won't have it for decades.

What parts? The US is generally at the tail end of any developed world internet access/speed stats, and we're getting there, slowly.

As for the developing parts of the world, do the sales there really make enough difference? Especially given that piracy (which would be pretty much cut out in an online only model) is far more rampant in those areas?

Originally Posted by Moriendor
Exactly. And look at how even in developed countries like ours (Germany) Internet providers are struggling with bandwidth "only" because people are streaming YouTube videos like crazy. The big German Internet providers have begun limiting their traffic at peak times to avoid network collapse.
If people started streaming games, too, you could kiss the Internet good-bye, especially if we consider the fact that future games (next console generation) will probably double or triple in size like every time a new generation is coming out.
At the same time, network bandwidth growth will be only moderate so -yeah- for the foreseeable future people will still be heading to the stores to pick up a Blu-Ray copy of 'God of War VII' for the PS4 instead of downloading the 70GB install or even streaming the game at a high bit rate.

But with something like onlive, you aren't downloading 70GB installs. You're just streaming the video essentially and sending back the data from the input device. Not saying it's not still a lot of bandwidth, or that upgrades aren't necessary to the infrastructure, but I don't think it is as impossible as you are making it out to be. Netflix already streams 720p here in the US quite effectively and that's a lot of data on a crappy infrastructure.

Originally Posted by blatantninja
But with something like onlive, you aren't downloading 70GB installs. You're just streaming the video essentially and sending back the data from the input device.

Yes, I know, sorry for the confusion. I was looking at both sides of the digital coin so to speak, i.e. digital downloads and live streams. My point is that (at least in Germany) both are far from replacing retail, especially considering the fact that games are going to get ever more demanding. I have just recently read of the first game that will be released on two Blu-Rays on the PS3 because 50GB is not enough anymore (don't remember which title, sorry). That's a lot of data right there and now if you had both, a few hundred thousand people downloading 50GB+ on the day of release of a popular game in addition to people streaming the game then I'd say that's a pretty likely blackout scenario for the current web infrastructure.

Then we got the reality of Internet providers already throttling bandwidth for their users today just because of heavy YouTube activity and then I guess we need to realize that any dreams of a purely digital age where millions are streaming videos and games are just that for now: dreams.
At least for as long as there is a disequilibrium between the cheetah-fast growth of the content that needs to be delivered and the snail-slow growth of the medium, i.e. the Internet infrastructure.
It would take a fairly sensational technological breakthrough to solve this dilemma in the "short" term (short = next ten years in this regard).