Consoles are really harming PC gaming, so that's why there are some of us who would prefer they died all together. Not that that will happen though.. but still, you asked, and that is why. They do require a bit of fuss compared to a console, but really it's not hard these days, they mostly take care of themselves, and for those of us who can deal with the quirks, we end up loving our PC's and we miss the good ole days when our games weren't crappy ports, or dumbed down, or toned down technology wise, or all three of those things as is often the case.
Actually, the only manufacture that does a console right is Nintendo. You insert the game disk.. you play. As patches can't be made, game developer test more their game, and you have a better quality game.. might not be fun for some games, but at least it's not buggy. XBox 360,and PS3, you have to install the game, takes ages, and then apply patches, which also takes time. Then you need to manage space with the small hard drive provided. PC game can technically work that way. Nothing stops it of working that way.. it's just that they compress the game onto the disk, so that it fits onto 1 disk, faster load time (even thought Nintendo technology shows that if you want, you can have virtually no, or really no load time as demonstrated on the Game Cube and the Wii), and the obligatory DRM it needs to install in most cases.
I agree. I remember the Xbox being announced and I always wanted it to be a huge success because I hoped it might become a really good yet affordable PC. But although it uses PC components it is nothing like a PC
If the consoles suddenly dissapeared not every console gamer would suddenly jump ship onto the PC. Investment in the gaming industry as whole would dramatically shrink and our choice of games would too. If they did jump to the PC they would want to take their controllers with them so you may get your better graphics but a lot of the old interface problems and target market would still exist. The dumbing down of video games is not because of consoles, they are a symptom not a cause. Games have dumbed down when the barrier of entry is lowered and the technology deomcratised to the masses. Look what social networking did for the internet as a more recent example. If you take the comments in context from a game streaming company it puts it into a different light. Maybe MS will only be releasing a Kinnect type device and games will now be streamed ONlive style to it. There has been talk of Kinnect being built into new televisions so it could indicate that they are licensing the tech to other companies and pulling out of the console hardware business but not out of gaming.
Cutting out console gaming would be like cutting out foreign players from the English Premier League. A lot of the interest in football would disappear and become very niche. The English national team might get but footballing as a whole would decline.
But investment in PC gaming would increase, and that's what matters to us PC gamers What interface problems? None of us ever had any problem with keyboard and mouse, and we have had gamepads and joysticks before consoles even existed. That's true, but still, consoles have exaggerated it. It has created a huge new more casual market which makes the old hardcore PC audience too small to care about anymore.
Yes, but it would be investment in pc games designed for the much lamented casual market. If those people switched to pc, it wouldn't magically change their preferences to match the hardcore pc gamers. It would certainly influence some people in that direction but there's no reason to expect that a lesser number of hardcore gamers wouldn't be drawn into liking some of the casual stuff. As Baboon said, the console are big because the pc audience is small, not the other way round. What this issue almost always comes down to is that people are disappointed because big budget publishers don't really cater to their niche demands, and they either fail to see how niche they really are, or they feel in some way entitled to big budget games catered towards those who helped gaming grow as an industry.
Investment would probably drop, as companies who produce games for both console and PC would lose profit from the loss of console sales, and some may even disappear. Prices of games would probably go up too. If consoles completely disappeared, I would be very concerned for the future of gaming. Now that consoles have been around for a while, and have gotten themselves a large market share, I don't think we can afford to lose them. The problem when a console game is ported over to PC, and the controls are pants, or its not possible to remap controls. If you've never experienced input/controls/interface problems on a game, your clearly not playing many games.
Sony have been bleeding money from it's consumer electrical division for months now, considering the last couple of Sony consoles have generally sold at a very small profit margin (or even at a loss for the PS3) for the first few months I wouldn't rule it out that they'd decide to sit out a generation (think how much it'll cost them to buy enough HDD's with the prices how they are).
Maybe. But even that would be preferable to me. I think just the fact that you have to at least have 'some' intelligence to maintain and run a PC, means that PC gamers in general are always going to be a different kind of breed compared to the 'plug play drool' alternative. We did just fine before consoles took over. The budgets weren't AS big but PC gaming was still plenty big enough to support decent budgets. Doesn't matter to me. PC gaming was great in the 80's and 90's when the market was tiny in comparison. There was no mass produced crap and higher standards in general. I'll take fewer better games, than lots of meh ones. Never going to happen anyway, even if Sony did decide to opt out, consoles are going nowhere. I thought we were talking about if consoles were dead and we all played PC games? If that was the case, there would not be the issue of crappy ports.
Problem is that the consumer electrical division doesn't just include PlayStation, but has their TVs (which are definitely suffering at the moment), digital imaging, computing etc. The PS3 is now actually making money on hardware, which was the entire point of the Slim revision, so I highly doubt they'll sit out the next generation. Of course, they'll probably be a lot more careful about how much profit they make on the unit from day one.
That's what i'm getting at, it's the Playstation brand that's pulling in the money for the whole division, another launch like the PS3 (low profit, low sales due to high price) could well put them in a critical condition.
Sony won't stop making consoles, they are just sticking to there plan. PS3 is here untill 2016. +1 to that, variation is always good!
That doesn't make logical sense - profit is profit, and any profit to compensate for losses in the TV etc departments is a plus. Why would you not want to make money? That's like a business such as HMV closing their successful stores and keeping the ones that leak cash. Another launch like the PS3, where it started off at £425 and lost Sony money, isn't going to happen. The PlayStation 4 will be designed to be profitable from the start, and won't break the consumer's wallet either.
Consoles haven't often been designed to be profitable, not from a hardware perspective anyway. The profit comes from licensing.
Agreed. Although it is possible I suppose. Say they are only making a small profit and yet it requires massive effort and focus to make that tiny profit, then it wouldn't be worthwhile continuing. Think of how many resources (people, etc) if they decided to just end the playstation and put all their focus on whatever else it is they want to do. As unlikely as it might seem that the mighty Playstation may end, when the company you are up against is Microsoft... anything can happen. Microsoft is just a total juggernaut and they can achieve pretty much whatever they want. They wanted to come out of nowhere and enter the console market which was already sewn up by other companies and dominate it, and yet against all odds, they did it. Makes me wonder just how much harm they have done to Sony in the process, not to mention harm Sony has done to themselves (security breaches etc). I wouldn't fancy being up against MS. If they want to squeeze you out of a market, I wouldn't bet against it happening.
Well, in my opinion consoles are complete antithesis to your statement. There's not much competition, and as far as improving products and pushing technology goes ...I don't believe I even have to comment on that. Suffice it to say November 2006 (twice), May 2005 and DX9. In my eyes the only thing worse for gaming is smartphone/tablet "gaming". Insofar as one can call playing Tetris for gaming. Does that make me an elitist? Perhaps. But that oxymoron that is "casual gaming" is akin to likening a fingerpainting 3 year old with Picasso. No, wait... That's a bad analogy.
He effectively works for a rival company, why should he be trusted? I think it is highly unlikely, for both Sony and Microsoft the console is too important for there overall strategy.
