@mezin:
Naturally it's a new market and growth is happening at a faster pace than an already established market ...
Wrong! Handheld video games is a market older than me and you. According to the
Wikipedia entry, "
Handheld video games grew immensely in popularity, thanks to the Game Boy released in 1989." But the article traces the history back to the 1970s.
Smartphones and tablets are invading a territory dominated by Nintendo for over 20 years. This is why the trend is scary. (but again, numbers don't mean anything remember?)
profits would be a better comparison
No no and no!! Nothing is a better comparison. Numbers give you ideas, they don't give facts. Take this for instance:
- What do you mean by profit? Is it the profit made by the console maker? The game designer? The manufacturer? The game distributor? The retailer? Each node of the supply chain is taking a share of the profit. Which one are you talking about? I can focus at any level I want and make numbers say whatever I want.
Android/iOS games have a different distribution/publishing system. Give your game to the App Store manager, he'll give you your cut at the end of the month. Even in such a simplistic system, the definition of the word "profit" can mean whatever I want it to mean.
Finally, again $2.5 games vs $40+ games. The issue is about comparing absolute values, when you should probably be comparing percentages. (and by now you made the numbers dancing so hard, you can probably prove that Nintendo is a scam perpetuated by governments to cover the fact that they never went to the moon).
Ultimately, we agree on the position of smartphone games as a threat to gaming, but I wanted the tangent point (numbers don't mean jack) to really stand out.
@dp0001:
So basically the point of the article is: Sony and Microsoft will probably put cheaper hardware in their consoles to remain competitive. Everyone will be happy except us, the gamers.
Fundamentally misguided. It's making 2 baseless assumptions:
- 64 bit systems are cheaper to manufacture than 128 bit ones.
- 64 bit systems are less performant than 128 bit ones.
For the first part, a chip is a chip. In my humble opinion (I'm no supply chain expert), the main factor influencing cost would be experience in manufacturing (in 2005-6, few comapnies really knew how to manufactor 128bit systems but 64-bit were far more common). By now this should not be an issue anymore.
Yes lower specs will cut costs. But this speculation is simply derived from the fact that they "might" be moving from 128bit to 64bit?! There's a plethora of components involved in the making of a gaming console. Literally more than I could count here. The article gives one particular spec (memory space adressing,
so random) and came up with the bogus conclusion.
Also, second false assumption: 128bit platforms are more performant that 64bit platforms. This is madness. The truth is: "With all other factors being absolutely equal, a game optimized for 128bit might achieve faster processing of certain aspect of the game than what we know on the 64bit". But that's very nuanced and specific. Just saying 128bit is "faster" or "more powerful" than 64 bit is absolutely crazy. Thousands of factors are into play when talking about gaming performance, from hardware, to software, to networking, to displays, I could go on... Memory adress space is, once again, just one random factor; it just so happens that bad journalists and marketing people love to talk about it. Then draw their stupid ass conclusions.
What I'm trying to say is that the article is baseless. It makes one assumption (next gen will backport from 128bit architecture to 64bit architecture), and let me stress on this:
it's just a rumor; and then go on lengthy bogus and fundamentally twisted analysis. Fanboys salivate at all the numbers and "deep" anaylsis they get. Magazine makes money. Everyone's happy.
One last thing: I salute the fact that you provided a very recent link to Sony's current state of finances. Of course, a couple of things to note:
- Bad end of year result aren't
necessarily a sign of bad health for a company. If you've taken an accounting class before, you know what I mean.
- The numbers (oh I love showing numbers) are once again misleading. The state of finances of Sony
Group aren't directly affecting the gaming division. As a matter of fact, the article blames TV divison for the massive losses, and
here's another article that depicts the Gaming division as the "key [to Sony's] reboud". Correlating the fact that Sony is losing money on the TV market, and that they will produce cheaper consoles even if it annoys gamers is sneakily evil.