johnman said:
It's my theory that a few generations down the line, consoles will become so similar to PC's that for all intents and purposes they will no longer be consoles as such.
All consoles now have some form of web access and messaging function. But controllers are not meant for these purposes. The 360 controller even has a keyboard attachment. As console Internet technology becomes more streamlined, users are going to want something much more comfortable than a minute keyboard and thumb sticks for extended messages or browsing sessions. The answer to this will be along the lines of the keyboard and mouse/laser pointer. Now if keyboards are introduced to the console scene, there are a whole load of new keys that could be assigned in game-functions. Since the input on controllers is very limited, it is a very tempting prospect. At some point keyboards will become a standard. A controller is a two handed object and adding a keyboard to this mix wont work, so a one handed solution is needed. This could be along the lines of the Wii's motion sensor (Natal for example) or the good old mouse. Of course with these new devices, the controller is no longer necessary. Using a keyboard on your lap can be a pain, so you may see people migrate to desks, where a mouse will be much more useful hand a hand held motion controller.
When the first x-box was released I heard it being described as basically being a computer in a box. And to a degree this is true. Consoles now require hard drives, which the game is actively installed on, and the size of these hard drives has grown considerably.
How much easier would have life been for 360 owners if they has simply been able to remove the part that had been causing RroD's and asked for Microsoft to replace it, instead of having to ship the console away for 2 weeks at cost to the owner? Being able to take the side off and simply replace the offending part would save much time and hassle. Now since this can be done, why not provide more powerful parts for modular consoles? I have noticed some terrible frame rate issues on the 360, but a better graphics card would sort those out if you were so inclined. Noticing slow down on your game's as they are loaded from your hard drive? Then add some more RAM.
The way I see it, consoles will eventually merge into Pc's or become them, maybe with Sony and Microsoft competing in a similar way to Dell and HP.
But that's just my idea, lets get a good debate going here. Do you agree/disagree with the points I raised? Which ones and why?
An interesting idea. I am certainly keen on the notion of what I call "Lounge Computing" - i.e. the kind of lightweight use of I.T. that you currently get with an iPhone only via a wireless multi-touch tablet, or pen-enabled graphics tablet, that is far easier to wipe clean of food detritus than a keyboard. This tablet wouldn't even have to include an expensive display as it could have outlines of the keyboard layout printed on its surface to correspond with the soft keyboard that was occasionally shown on the bottom half of your HD TV when you were, say, editing an email. You could use this tablet for games, but really you would want to hold onto your gamepad if you favoured that UI. It could support PC game controls by having the WASD outlines on the left side of the tablet's printed-on layout control movement and the right portion just function as a trackpad, with multi-touch thumb-controlled "mouse button".
My point about the iPhone is that held-horizontally at viewing distance, it is about the size of a widescreen TV placed away from your sofa on the other side of the lounge, at least as far as your eyes are concerned. Try holding one at normal distance in the way of your TV to see how it just about exactly obscures it. They are equivalent.
This means, from a UI design perspective, that you can't just dump Leopard or Vista on to an HD TV and expect anyone to read the text.
This obviously explains the invention of iTunes Cover Flow, Front Row, Apple TV, Windows Media Centre, the New Xbox Experience, etc...
All of which are rubbish and not even worthy of comparison to the UI of the diminutive iPhone.
So, why not scale that up?
Well, as it so happens there are definite rumors that Apple is making a larger device (about the size of the Amazon Kindle Book Reader), it would be unwieldy as a phone, but it would likely support bluetooth headsets - think: sub-subnotebook. However, Apple only have to see that they can split touch from the display and make it easy to plug their closed boxes into the TV and provide a subset of its functionality with an interface that they already own... But they probably won't do it after their bad experience with the Pippin console.
Now, all that aside. There were two other things that struck me about the OP:
1. The Psychology of Console (and low-end Mac) users is the same.
I own a Mac Mini. I don't want to take it apart, overclock it, upgrade its RAM, or change its Hard Drive for a larger one. It is purely a matter of psychology. I'm interested computing, not computers. I have better things to do and I am not a speed demon. I probably wouldn't have another PC if someone gave me one and that is not a slur against Microsoft, as I wouldn't use it under Linux either. I'm not technical with hardware. Software, maybe... Hardware, absolutely not.
I own a 360. I don't want the next Microsoft console (let's call it the 1080) to be "Open" in the same way as a PC. Oh, the horror! Just think of the calls to technical support degenerating to the level they typically are with Clone manufacturers: "Have you tried this?", "We'll send you a part". No. I'm on my third 360 after two RRODs, but I'm quite happy. I kept the box UPS sent it back in from the first failure and reused it the next time it went wrong. They were polite, quick and I didn't have to get out a screwdriver. It was all covered by the extended warranty. If it goes bust now, I'll get an Arcade and stick the Drive on top (that should work, right? See... I don't know a thing about hardware....). It seemed likely to me that the 1080 would launch this November (to steal the thunder of the 2nd generation of quality PS3 exclusives), but the global recession may have delayed that - however, if I were them I would get a new, backwards-compatible, machine out sooner rather than later and see how Sony got on with its proposed 10-year lifespan for the PS3.
I own an N64. The games start immediately and I never miss HD textures. Because space on the cartridges is so limited they can't impress you with bloated cinematic cut-scenes like MGS4, but are forced to deliver compelling gameplay.
I own an iPod Touch. The games start immediately, are small (due to having to fit on Flash), work well in short concentrated bursts (like at the bus stop, or on a train), pause and restart without issues thereby making them at your convenience and apart from the controls limiting the available genres I feel it has a better sense of what works on a mobile format than the single-thumbstick PSP.
None of these apply to PCs. My Mac Mini (which can, in a sense be considered a (closed-architecture) PC because I
could install Vista on it) isn't used for playing any games at all. It is hopelessly inadequate and I don't need the distractions.
2. I doubt console manufacturers would support "open" systems.
You didn't go into detail as to how the console manufacturer would allow their system to be end-user modifiable with replacement/upgrade parts in the manner of a gaming PC without throwing out their whole business model. The console seems superior in power to lower spec. PCs at the same price because they subsidize the cost over the course of its lifespan. This subsidy reduces as the cost of its components comes down, but they also tend to be in competition, so the saving ends up being passed on as a price reduction, hopefully leading to a larger installed base. They need a large base to pay inflated prices on versions of games that will only work on that closed system. The PC market is much larger, so the price of the games tends only be be a sum of shop profit, distribution, marketing, publishing, development and tax - not having to pay another sum to IBM for inventing the PC architecture. This seems great until you realize that the cost of gaming on a PC is the unsatisfactory choice between playing the latest games at, frankly, unacceptably low frame rates, or becoming a technical wizard and spending substantial sums on money to play a game that should have really come out five years into the future.
Assuming that the console manufacturer, say Sony, makes no money from the console due to its heavy subsidy, but ensures that it will get a good revenue stream from games that are encoded to only work on their hardware which they can place a tariff on as well as using the machine to force the adoption of a new standard of HD videodisc, they open it up already to allow the Hard Disk to be replaced with a larger one as that then allows them to sell more downloadable content to you, but swapping out or upgrading the GPU/Cell just seems like a support nightmare as well as a fracturing of the market. Early adopters won't want to replace their machines at the end of the system's 10-year lifespan because a new game is out that assumes all PS3s sold in the previous 5 years (since November 2011) have upgraded GPUs (to compete with the Stereoscopic 3D graphics of the 1080), whilst those gamers will want a new game to utilize those features. Can the systems scale so the same new game runs at a lower frame rate, or Standard Definition on an unmodified 10-year old PS3. Will developers accept this fragmentation of the platform and work hard at creating detailed artwork even though it will only be fully-appreciated on future, upgraded machines? Is this economically viable? Surely, Sony want to retain the economies of scale that come from the mass-production of a single system (ok, there are variants, but only in terms of the Hard Disc and there is a financial incentive encouraging them to do that)? Besides, all the while PCs will still outstrip the consoles mid-cycle, tempting more and more people towards Home Media Servers (although they will probably have a much better name than that).
Douglas Adams once did a programme on the BBC about "Interactive TV":
http://watchification.com/tag/douglas-adams/
So, maybe this explains why Apple didn't use the name iTV for this:
My long post can be explained by the fact that I am working on the means to do Lounge Computing and Games Development with my Mac Mini, a graphics tablet on a long USB cable and a 360 gamepad. Everything is taking ages as I have to design the UI and the development tools and the programming language that everything is written in. The graphics
aren't even going to attempt textures, but should look like Damocles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercenary_(computer_game)#Damocles
I'm really more interested in deep gameplay than photorealism anyway and I realize that the better you try to make things look, the more work you have to do on the 3D modeling, texturing, animation, lighting, particles, physics, depth of field, motion blur, sound design, etc, etc. I have to be reasonable and limit it to what one person can do.
For example, I am no where near as ambitious as this brave fellow:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/martingbell/projects/
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/mod/journal/journal.asp?jn=472138
