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The future of Gaming? PC or Console?

The founder of Oracle... I forget his name about 10+ years ago said the future is 100% digital.

The PC takes us there, no need to order boxes, no need to leave your home.

buying a box/container/holder is so 1990s

reply to TheThing
I always tell people who are into consoles you're all waiting for Ps4/Xbox 720 when I'm already playing it!! But honestly PC isn't as popular as consoles until they can get the price down for the machine (which I think is retarded when people go out spend 2k on a new console).

What I think we might see is a console that blends both. PS3 starting doing this with your ability to get on Netflix and stuff. We might start seeing consoles that you can get a youtube/fb apps for.

PC gaming's niche is in the ability to build your own. With consoles you really can't mod it that much.

What I want is a game where I can where an entire suit!! Virtual reality kind of world. That'd be ccccrrraaazzaaayyy.

reply to TheThing
I think "SteamBox" and services like it are going to be the way to go, that way you can get all the benefits of PC gaming and less of the perceived difficulties associated with PC gaming.
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reply to TheThing
There are two games PC gaming is missing atm that I can think of.

1) Madden/NFL football game. EA Sports is just dirty. But this is a huge franchise that PC gaming cannot have any piece of atm.

2) A Popular Racing Game - Gran Turismo/Forza. PC racing games just suck. NFS Franchise is garbage.

Those two games are what I cannot get for pc gaming that I am really missing out on. I would get a PS3 just so I could play Madden or Gran Turismo.

reply to TheThing
Consoles being cheaper is an illusion.

$60+ a game? none of the games have the same replay value like F2P PC games.

Additionally, a console with 2% of the functionality of a PC is garbage..

netflix, FB... blah blah... thats nothing!

going to have to buy a new console for every app created?

APPS are the dumbing down of the PC world... an abomination

I agree with all that you said above. But to parents $250 for a console for $500 + for a gaming pc/laptop? What sounds cheaper upfront? Parents seem to no realize how many $60.00 games the children keep getting after.

BUT I do see a slight change. One being LoL. Tons of younger people are getting into that and it doesn't take an extreme gaming pc to play it. If anything it gets their foot in the door so we can suck them in.

reply to TheThing

can't see it!

can you give me teleprompting for the viewing impared?

»The best part of CES? Oculus Rift

Here
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reply to TheThing
I think the ultimate goal is the arrival of the one

We have a cable box

We have consoles

We have PCs

...PCs can realistically already do 2 of the 3, and with hulu, netflix, etc... the PC can basically do all of these

high speed interwebs + PC + TV = all I need

reply to TheThing
Which is the future? Both.

Neither is going out anytime soon or in the future. This has been discussed time and time again.
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reply to TheThing
Occulus Rift is apparently VERY VERY good. Many devs who have had access to the tech say it will completely revolutionize how we play games.

We'll see

its price point will be its breaking point. If it is priced reasonably enough it will take off into orbit. if it costs as much as a large screen monitor it will explode just after clearing the launch pad.

Mainly because it will be a hard sell to get someone to spend say 600-700 bucks on these when they already blew close to that much on a big monitor.

If it does take off, one thing that will gain is people will learn their keyboards better while gaming and never look down for their hotkeys again.

I Hope it does take off and get wide spread, We have been hoping for proper VR for ages in the PC gaming world and now we have the GPU horsepower to drive it where as before VR took dedicated hardware to really work well.
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[65 Arcanist]Filan(High Elf) Zone: Broadband Reports

reply to TheThing
From Oculus Article:

Like many of you, I had heard the hype about the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, the big names who are backing the device, and the successful Kickstarter that funded its further development. Having seen how awful other attempts at VR have been over the years, I was both skeptical and excited to give it a try myself. When I found out the Oculus guys would be exhibiting at a pre-CES press event that I attend each year, I made a mental note to go talk with them and see if I could try the headset for myself.

Turns out that was more difficult that you might think, because they were swamped by whole teams of press bearing microphones and giant cameras for most of the evening. I kept coming back, though, and eventually, as the event was ending, I found a quick opening and was able to slip on the Rift VR headset myself.

As a veteran of other 3D and virtual reality display schemes, I was in for several surprises.

The first one was simply the fact that I could wear the headset comfortably over my glasses. The big, foam-and-rubber ring around the Rift encompassed my prescription frame and sealed up fine without pushing it into my face. That was something new.

My surprise over that fact was soon swept away by what my eyes took in as soon as the headset was secured. Immediately, I was plunged into an immersive environment with a true and robust sense of depth, with none of the flickering or momentary disorientation and focus problems associated with most stereoscopic 3D schemes. The depth was there immediately, and I soaked in the tangible sense of reality as the Oculus guys explained that they had built in much more separation than most stereo display systems. The result is that objects in the virtual world—in this case, an Unreal engine-based demo called "Epic Citadel"—look like real, three-dimensional objects, not just a cardboard-cutout knight standing in front of a cardboard-cutout flag, as in most stereo display schemes. Having a truly separate image for each eye allows for more depth, which works wonders.

Depth is only part of the experience, though. Much of the magic came from the fact that the headset was tracking even the subtlest movements of my enormous noggin and adjusting the field of view to compensate. You can look side to side, look up, look down, even bend backwards and sideways to look at the sky over your shoulder, and you'll see the proper portion of the game world in front of you. If you've tried VR headsets that attempt this feat in the past, you'd rightly be skeptical about this aspect of the experience. The thing is, the Rift tracks your movements so quickly and fluidly that it actually works, like gangbusters, tricking your brain into accepting its alternate reality.

The combination of depth and fluid head tracking is a potent cocktail, one that gave me a bit of a buzz and a sense of elation, either over the possibilities of such technology or because my visual subsystem was being fooled into releasing crazy endorphins. Maybe both. The Oculus dudes shoved a gamepad into my hands and encouraged me to "walk" around in the game world, taking in the sights. Immediately, I decided that the texture-mapped stone walls in the environment needed some help via POM or tessellation—they looked too flat as they were. I made my way into the demo's gothic-style cathedral and found myself transfixed by the stone columns and arches reflected in its marble floor; the mix of depth and not-depth was entirely correct and truly stunning.

Even with the show floor buzzing around me, I was immersed. Heck, I was only vaguely distracted by one of the Oculus guys telling another a charming story about John Carmack's hilariously earnest humility in requesting a new strap when the one on his headset broke.

I wandered around the game world further, for maybe five minutes or so, becoming increasingly aware that I was probably taking time away from others who were waiting in line behind me. As I finally, reluctantly slipped off the goggles, the sense of elation peaked, capped by a realization that I blurted out to the Oculus guys: "I could keep doing this for... hours." Not only does the Rift provide a sense of reality unlike anything else, but it's so comfortable and convincing that I wanted to remain in the virtual space and had no sense of fatigue from having been there.

For me, this was the highlight of CES—of perhaps the last several years' worth of CES attendance, one of those moments when you see something truly new and astonishing and cool. Of course, I'm happy to see that the Oculus guys have the open ecosystem of PC gaming supporting them in various ways, from the endorsements by big-name developers to the giant Nvidia logo in their display booth to the scores of Kickstarter supporters.

The Rift is still a work in progress. Although I've heard the claim that the "effective resolution" of the display is extremely high since you can move your head anywhere and see a "portion" of the total "image" being shown, the reality is that the headset would benefit from higher pixel density and perhaps better color reproduction, too. I've heard that the Rift makes some folks feel sick, still, and needs even quicker responses to overcome that drawback. And the headsets up for pre-order on the Oculus website are simply part of a developer kit. There's very little content geared for the Rift at present, and those first headsets will hopefully help developers begin to rectify that situation. The consumer products will have to come later.

Still, if you have a chance to try a Rift headset for yourself, do not pass it up. When you peer into it, you'll be seeing the future, and you'll come away convinced that it looks pretty darned astounding.

reply to TheThing
I've had consoles of some sort since the mid 80's when I managed to con my mom into buying me an Atari 7800 for Christmas. Was the only thing I got and I had to shovel snow the rest of the winter in addition....and I was only 6.

I've had the following consoles throughout my life:
Atari 7800
Nintendo Entertainment System (both generations)
Super Nintendo Entertainment System (both generations)
Sega Genesis
Turbo-GraFX16
Nintendo Gameboy (the original one with the monochrome screen)
Sega GameGear
Nintedo 64
Playstation
Playstation 2 (both generations)
Xbox360

I've also been gaming on PC's since about the mid-80's as well when we used an Apple IIe in school and played Oregon Trail all the up to my current rig sporting a Core i5-2500k, GTX570, and some other goodies.

I feel that I have plenty of gaming experience on both sides of the proverbial fence and I would have to say that the future of gaming probably lies in the console market. Now, that's not to say that gaming on a PC will be a thing of the past, but I definitely think that console gaming will outpace PC gaming and there are several reasons why.

The first being cost. I spent around $1500 building my current rig and around $400 on the Xbox360. Of course, if you add in the 42" LCD HDTV I bought to go with the Xbox, then we're up to about $1200 total. Still cheaper than the PC and the majority of people don't buy a new TV and game console at the same time. Granted, it's common for games to run in the $50 - $60 range on a console, but that's not much more expensive than some of the top new titles for the PC. Farcry 3 - $50. Assassin's Creed 3 - $50. Borderlands 2 - $60.

Second is availability. I don't know anyone who doesn't have a TV to hook a game console to. I do, however, know several people who don't own a computer or if they do, it's at least 5 years old. Kids and even a lot of adults can pick up a game controller and play a game a lot easier than they can install, configure, and play a PC game. Of course, there are some games that are idiotproof and I'm not counting the abominations that Zynga puts out like Farmville.

Third is the hardware. You have a PS3? You can play any PS3 game. You have an Xbox360? You can play an Xbox360 game. You want to run Metro2033 or Battlefield 3? Uh oh...better check your specs to make sure you have the hardware horsepower to run them.

Fourth is franchise exclusivity which I AM touched on. Sony has the Gran Turismo franchise, Microsoft has Forza. You can't get any Madden game on the PC.

Fifth is developers. It's a lot easier to develop games for a system which has standardized hardware instead of trying to account for hundreds or thousands of possible combinations of PC hardware, operating systems, driver versions, etc. This is the reason you see a lot of console only titles and why a lot of titles appear on a console first and then make their way over to the PC side of things.

In the end I'm still a hardcore PC gamer and I would rather play on one instead of a console. That's not to say I don't enjoy console gaming, because I do. But overall, I still prefer PC gaming to console gaming.
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reply to TheThing
The greed from console game publishers will push gaming towards a mini-pc (think raspberry pi on steroids). I say this mainly due to the effort currently put forth to eliminate the ability to play a used game on the future consoles. Console games are already too high for what we get, add in the fact that:

1. Most come with locked content that costs additional money, basically increasing the cost for the game should you want the "full experience".

2. Many game companies are using exclusivity rights and release delays for other platforms to push players to buy a specific version (yes I am looking at you Skyrim).

3. Removing the ability to play rented or borrowed copies will push developers to spend a majority of their development time on downloadable demos, only to release a pile of steaming you-know-what once the game is released.

4. Game developers are realizing that hard copy games just add to the cost. TL2 is extremely cheap in part because they don't have to deal with the production costs beyond development.

Honestly, the biggest threat to console gaming is that used-game ban bs. If it goes through, it will be the end of console gaming until a newcomer emerges.

Edit: more reading: »www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/how···-market/

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