The Future.

[DigitalAtlas]

Back in April, the Extra Creditz team made a video about how consoles are going the way of dodo in about seven to ten years.

I read the comments, and I was shocked how many people were fine with this.

I don't personally care how I game either folks, but eliminating consoles does two things that will destroy our industry:

1. Eliminates competition.

This one bugs me the most. At heart, we all believe gaming is an art form, and in all sense of the definition, it is. However, what we also forget is that gaming is a business.

Without competition, the publishers would have an advantage against the consumer. Not competing means that they can all agree to sell their games for as much as they wish. Do you really think Activision would charge anything less than $150 for Call of Duty: Touch and Gun 3D On the Go?

Plus, without competition, the sense for originality wouldn't increase; it would, in fact, decline to the depths hell. If one game is successful to a large bit of the market place, why not make the exact same game with a different name? Well, if they had competition and incentive to fight for sales, we'd get something other than Grand Medal of War. (copyrighting that now so John Romero doesn't touch it after he realizes how much Area 51 flopped)

2. Games would go full digital.

Congratulation, guys. Allowing the convenience of tablets just eliminated the ability to own games. I know, that's a large claim. However, developers seem to think we're more or less renting games from them nowadays.

Take for instance the mod from Steam who spoiled Portal 2 for people on his friend's list. What happened? He was banned from Steam. He lost all access to hundreds of games that may have cost him thousands of dollars. Why? Because he had a douche moment.

If tablets became the future of gaming, we'd need a system similar to Steam. What would this do? It would put the business side of gaming at large advantage over the consumer. We could pretty much only game if they willed it.

With consoles and physical copies, these issues don't exist. But hey, from what I read from the thread and heard in the video, we should all be excited, right?

 

[RA92]

Eliminates competition.

Your concept of 'competition' is so misconstrued...

Why do you think games are $60 these days? It's because publishers have to pay royalties to console manufacturers. The price is going to be hiked even more if Sony or MS lose even more money by selling their hardware at a greater loss.

Publishers, in that respect, always had and still has an upper hand on the PC market since no one regulates pricing on an open platform. But guess what? Games are cheaper on the PC, because publishers have to compete with other publishers.

Competition will not die with the consoles. AMD will still compete with Pentium, Nvidia will still compete with ATi, EA will still compete with Activision - albeit on new open or closed platforms.

<quote=RPS>In the console-war, the only real casualty is the gaming cultural form. If anyone wins, gaming loses. Any kind of console fandom is just choosing who you want to be chained to. They?re all international corporations who are legally obliged to serve their shareholders interests. Older gamers will remember the strong arm tactics used by Nintendo when they were on top, gaining the same sort of hatred which Sony are suffering now. Being upset about the Sega?s failure as a hardware manufacturer is one thing, but ? really ? if they?d have won, they?d been just as bad. It?s what corporations do.

Imagine if a band had to get permission from Sony to release an album on compact disc. It?s ludicrous, but that?s the position in every single console format in the world.

 

[Griphphin]

I can empathize with the want for a physical copy that you can hold and is untouchable by DRM/licencing/etc. I love the look of my personal gaming collection on my bookshelf, darnit!

 

[Bleedingskye]

Consoles need to stay, and I'd say that the future of gaming mediums will go more company based gaming instead of physical consoles. That doesn't bother me so long as I can still play with a controller, still play the games I have now, and still have the amount of choice we gamers have.

I do agree, tho, that there needs to be something done about the DRM crap. the mentality of "renting" needs to go the way of the buffalo, can't tell you how much I hate the fact that most PC games I have I can only play while connected online, or that many of them I can't use on multiple computers.

Eliminates competition.

Imagine if a band had to get permission from Sony to release an album on compact disc. It?s ludicrous, but that?s the position in every single console format in the world.

Labels had to agree to ridiculously over-priced contracts with Sony in order to distribute CD's when they first came up with them. Labels would be out-bidding each other trying to be the first. Luckily that was short lived and now it's not like that, but whenever a new medium comes out there is some kind of licensing or proprietary hardware/software fiasco that always comes up. I've been a big fan of playing my old stuff until the new medium has switched over and figured itself out in the marketplace. With the exception of the Nintendo 64 which I had to get as soon as it came out.

 

[RA92]

Games would go full digital.

The other thing I forgot to refute in my previous post.

You mention digital distribution. Here's the thing - do you know why Steam is so popular, despite the fact that the service was utter shit back in the yonder days of 2004? Because retailers nearly drove the PC market to extinction by not stocking PC games. So digital distribution rose literally because of the lack of hard copies.

People still buy hard copy if they have the choice. Valve may own Steam and CDProjekt may own GoG, but Portal 2 and The Witcher 2 still had hard copy releases.

And if this future multipurpose tablet has no input system for any type of physical medium storage... well, we all know how console gamers reacted to the PSP Go, and I don't think PC gamers would take it too kindly that their new PC-alternative can't even read discs.