Are mobiles phones becoming more powerful than Games consoles?

[Fonejackerjon]

Here me out here before you call me an idiot. The Galaxy note 9 is infinitly more powerful than the Nintendo switch, in fact the galaxy note 8 and s8 were more powerful. Mobiles are released every year, do you think there will be a time, with the event of diminishing returns becoming more and more common (xbox one x and ps4 pro are the very definition of diminishing returns!) that within the 5-7 year lifespan of console a frequently updated smartphone will outdo it in terms of power. It seems Likely.

With the event of fortnite being on android and looking very good indeed, do you see a time when we plug our mobile into our HDMI sockets, grab a Bluetooth controller kick back and play it like a game console?

 

[totheendofsin]

Do you have a source on the Galaxy note 8 and 9 being more powerful than the Switch? Cause I highly doubt that's true

 

[CaitSeith]

I don't doubt new smartphones are more and more powerful with each year.

Spoiler: But...

But...

The Galaxy note 9 is infinitly more powerful than the Nintendo switch

With the event of fortnite being on android and looking very good indeed, do you see a time when we plug our mobile into our HDMI sockets, grab a Bluetooth controller kick back and play it like a game console?

It's already doable. But for that to become a common practice supported by console game developers, it will require to be sold as a gaming smartphone bundle with a bluetooth controller and HDMI adapter + cable (just like the Nintendo Switch is sold right now).

 

[09philj]

A Note 9 costs over ?1000. ?1000 would also buy you a pretty PC gaming setup, or three and a half Nintendo Switches. High end smartphones are essentially pointless. You don't need that much power in something that's inevitably held back by a touch screen interface and lightweight OS.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

The Galaxy Note 9 might be more powerful than the Nintendo Switch, but also costs 3 times as much. You can get a Nintendo Switch for ?329 while a Galaxy Note 9 will set you back ?999 to ?1249, depending on model. A Note 8 similarly costs near twice as much or more. Just some perspective. I'd honestly call it a rip-off if they weren't more powerful.

 

[Samos205]

I highly doubt that'll ever be the case. Firstly, Phones are far more expensive than consoles. Why would i pay $1000 or more every year for a new phone, when a console costs $500-$600 and lasts for roughly 10 years (based of the lifetimes of the last 2 generations of consoles)?
Secondly, If phones were getting more powerful than the switch why haven't we see more AAA companies even attempt to release actual games? With the exception of fortnite, pubg, and the older gtas, I don't know of a single console level game appearing on mobile.
Third, You're going to be filling hdd space fast. Sure most phones have 64 or 256gb, but with games now being 30-40gb or more, apps, photos and bloatware you're going to run out of hdd space fast. Compare that to a consoles 500gb or 1tb, and the fact i can plug in an external hdd to add even more storage.
Fourth, I'm assuming we'll being ditching discs for cards? I can't imagine phones getting a card port since they want they keep trying to make them thinner, So i guess we'll be downloading them then? well that ties into my previous point, do you know inconvenient it will be to uninstall something to make room for something else only to have to re-download it when you want to play it?
Maybe a streaming service then? Good luck with current internet infrastructure.
Also, I'd love to know where you're getting that info from, only article i could find comparing phones to the switch was a reddit post

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I don't think there's any way for phones to be more powerful than consoles, especially ones that don't double as mobile devices themselves. Even if phones were to be more powerful than consoles, you'd need to buy peripherals to turn it into a gaming device that could play most games and when has a gaming device succeeded when requiring the purchase of peripherals? Also, phones want as few physical ports as possible on them so HDMI connection is out (and the HDMI port itself would be thicker than some phones) and so far, I haven't been impressed with the wireless phone screen mirroring to the TV being near up to snuff for the purposes of gaming. And to finish it off, the vast majority of apps and games are designed to run on phones a few generations old anyway to reach as many people as possible so they don't even take advantage of the latest and greatest phone tech anyway.

 

[Marik2]

 

[Fonejackerjon]

The title of ?Most/More Powerful? matters less and less as time goes on, unless developers can adequately leverage the extra resources and yield something that can?t be achieved anywhere else. Outside of being mobile and having some trivial gyroscopic functionality, what have phones given us so far? Certainly nothing that looks or (more importantly) plays as good as Horizon: Zero Dawn, God of War, Bloodborne, DOOM Eternal, etc.

 

[Saelune]

No, next question.

 

[CriticalGaming]

As someone with a Samsung Galaxy S9+, no. This will never happen. Because while the games might look good periodically on the phones, the problem becomes the scope in which these games can take. Touch screen controls suck, especially if they are your only option, the graphic power is good on a tiny screen, but the phone couldn't handle shit on a bigger screen. Then you have to figure sound options.

The extra shit you'd need to make gaming on a mobile phone comfortable completely outweighs any practicality of it. Especially when you consider expense. Head phones, a controller, a wi-fi connection plus a phone with enough storage to handle a 40+GB game, think about that for a minute.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

If it were... let me tell you a tale that makes me seem so smart.

There was a show on the Discovery Channel (and BBC) called Last Man Standing.

It took several different kind of athletes and pitted them against rituals, contests, and rites of passages from different Cultures.

They had a strongman named Bradley Johnson [https://youtu.be/BRLdnhLSkpo]. On the Tarahumara Endurance Running [https://www.runnersworld.com/runners-stories/a20954821/born-to-run-secrets-of-the-tarahumara/] challenge, the Tarahumara people were taken by Brad's physique and thought that would lead to great showings.

But, as life would have it, it was the endurance athlete and Fitness Guru Rajko Radovic [https://www.rajko.tv] who won the day. Because his lifestyle before lended more to the grueling test which was the Endurance Test.

Yeah, the Phone can have all the higher specs it wants. But if it's not designed for the task, it probably won't perform as well as a console.

See the Silent Hill 2 example, where the fog can't work better on stronger hardware such as the ps3 and the ps4 because the PS2 excelled at things like Transparency effects [https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-what-went-wrong-with-silent-hill-hd].

 

[Bad Jim]

No. Mobiles draw power from a battery, Consoles draw from mains A/C. Mobiles have less power, ergo they have less power. Of course the Switch is sort of a handheld, so a mobile can beat that, but beating a PS4 or XB1 is not going to happen until they are long obsolete.

What you are doing is looking at short term trends and extrapolating beyond the point of reason.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

I don't think it's possible. Phones are very powerful indeed, but they will not catch up to consoles. There are two reasons for this, and they are intertwined.
1. Price
2. Size

As long as people are going to be able to carry phones in their pocket, and companies are willing to do anything to make them thinner every year (cough *headphone jack* cough) then the technology will simply not be able to keep up. The architecture alone means that heat dissipation and clock speeds will just not allow that much speed in the palm of your hand.

Yes technology keeps getting insanely better, since our first Nokias, but that would also mean that consoles would have to stagnate. Despite the last generation lasting so many years, I think it's difficult for a phone to be as powerful as a PS4, for as long as we are having PS4 games being released. Nearly impossible, in fact. Plus, phones have a lot more to do than consoles (for the moment), maybe the OS would have a harder time utilizing its maximum processing power?

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

No, not even close. Mobile gaming is at it's best reproducing Final Fantasy games from 1992. And that's where it belongs. As a mobile SNES.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

No, not even close. Mobile gaming is at it's best reproducing Final Fantasy games from 1992. And that's where it belongs. As a mobile SNES.

Mobile gaming is where digital board gaming is at and the touchscreen is perfect for control purposes as well.

 

[DeliveryGodNoah_v1legacy]

There's a few hurdles smartphones have to get over before that's likely.

For one, power. A smartphone could be more powerful than the Switch, but using it at that performance has to get power from somewhere, and in such a small form factor it's unlikely right now a smartphone would have the battery to push console like visuals for very long.

Fortnite isn't exactly a visual powerhouse, and it only needs to render on a palm-sized screen. It's unlikely to be too demanding.

The next issue, like others mentioned, is cost. Yeah, those snazzy smartphones are pretty buff in specs, but for the same price you could use the money to buy a computer or console several times more powerful still. It'll be a while before phones of those specs go down to reasonable prices, and even longer still until phones at affordable prices actually even come close to full console level specs.

But at the same time, if smartphone components are getting cheaper and more powerful, it's reasonable to assume PC and console parts are too, so I'd assume smartphones would be in a pretty long game of "catch-up" at least until graphics stop improving and becoming a large focus in most consumers' eyes.

 

[CaitSeith]

No, not even close. Mobile gaming is at it's best reproducing Final Fantasy games from 1992. And that's where it belongs. As a mobile SNES.

Like, dude...


And that was released in 2016. You're getting old and cranky, my dude.

 

[votemarvel]

When it comes to touchscreen controls I really think it depends on the game. I enjoy the hell out of Final Fantasy 8 and 9 on my phone using the ePSXe emulator, they have slower gameplay. Trying to play Spider-Man on it though it an absolute nightmare as the faster gameplay just doesn't lend well to touch controls where there is no physical controls.

 

[sXeth]

If you put the same specs and power into a phone and into a handheld games console.

The games console will be better at running games, because its not trying to do all your phone crap in the background while its running games.

Its the same thing that happens when you cross-compare the stationary consoles with equal-range PCs. Assuming the console isn't diluted with excess features (which admittedly, has been the trend), the console will run the game better because it doesn't have all the other PC stuff gumming it up. Its one of the reasons people keep trying to get a solid OS competitor to windows off the ground and supported by game makers, because Windows is a big pile of bloat that takes away from your gaming rig.