Idle Weekend June 10, 2016: One (Million) Console Future

[Chris]

Idle Weekend June 10, 2016:



One (Million) Console Future
With the PlayStation Neo and Xbox Scorpion potentially (probably) getting their big stat reveals next week at E3, the Weekenders ponder the brave and/or very annoying future of console iteration. Elsewhere on the cast, Danielle has a giant philosophical brainfart and Rob ponders the real meaning of the best BioShock movie: Snowpiercer.

Discussed: Playstation 4, Xbox One, Diablo 3, Doom, Hearts of Iron IV, Snowpiercer, The Three Body Problem

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[Pearlmania]

The new console upgrade system has me really, really down. I really enjoy my PS4 and WiiU but I do NOT want to pay to upgrade them every couple of years. Recently I've been thinking about upgrading my CPU and jumping on the GTX 1070 train, maybe that's a better choice. Like you point out in this week's episode, when I upgrade my PC I also get more power for a bunch of other stuff. The buy in seems better to me. Maybe I'm just old though, maybe the kids want to buy new shit every two years.

[Twig]

I mean a lot of people buy new iPhones every year because they are... well, I won't judge.

 

Okay I'll judge but I won't vocalize said judgment in detail.

 

This doesn't seem to be a HUGE step away from the concept. It's not like you're required to buy the upgrade every time, either. I imagine the ideal is every two or three "generations", you'd end up starting to see older versions become obsolete or no longer actively supported.

 

That said, I think the biggest hurdle is development. All those devs who are console exclusive because they don't have the resources to expand to, for example, PC, well, they're required to use those resources they didn't previously have to support older consoles and newer consoles at the same time, and I can't even IMAGINE the shit they'll receive if the New Console Version isn't visually superior to the Old Console Version.

[Ninja Dodo]

Yeah, really not sure how incremental consoles are a thing that I would want. I tend to buy consoles only when the price drops and only if there are some exclusives that I absolutely must play (bought a PS2 when Shadow of the Colossus came out, got a PS3 for Little Big Planet and Red Dead Redemption, got a DS, a Wii and an N64 and that's it). Shelling out for a new piece of hardware every two years just to have more pixels is not appealing to me in any way whatsoever. I don't do that for phones or tablets either and I'm not going to start now.

 

If I'm going to upgrade anything, it's my PC.

 

Regarding revisiting thoughts on older games: There are some things like that here and there. RPS recently did a feature called Games I Was Wrong About (part 1 / part 2) which was quite interesting, Eurogamer tends to have occasional retrospectives and there's EDGE magazine's Time Extend. Most of these are about the lasting impact of a given game but many also look at the changing critical perception over time.

[Gamebeast23456]

So, the way I understand the console business is that, at least originally, most of these machines cost more to produce then what they are sold for. Maybe, over time, the industrial processes and the components of these machines come down in price so that eventually selling the box itself is profitable, I'm not sure. In general, though, console companies expect to make their money back on software sales, among other things. The ultimate reason that a company will move onto the next thing (beyond the very broad forces of expectation and competition), is that they think they will be able to sell more software if they update the box they are selling. If there was never any reason to upgrade, they never would. 

 

So, here comes the model of the Neo and the Xbox One Two (I genuinely blanked on the codename, because apparently I can't retain any codenames that aren't Matrix-centric). According to what we heard from those leaked Sony documents, the restrictions placed on devs on the new hardware are pretty stringent. We probably shouidn't expect massive gains in the complexity of games in this next increment, if those guidelines are followed for a long time (which, to be fair, if Sony is betting on an Apple model of production, we probably shouldn't expect them to be), then what is the sell? Why is this company revving up production for a new system, that presumably has more expensive and newer components, that will probably be sold either for the original PS4's selling price, or slightly more. I can't imagine them bumping up the price on it significantly, though, nothing is really stopping them. I don't understand what is drawing these companies towards a model like this, where they are going to take massive losses on new products year after year just to sell marginally improved software. 

[feelthedarkness]

i recognize i have a certain privilege in being able to do it, but I feel like $600 every 2 years isn't really bad as minimum hobby buy in goes. it's less than my gym, or spending $20 a week on eating/drinking out.

 

i'm pretty much full time pc now, and rob nailed my preference for it. i think there is a ton of value for that money. throw in a steam link and you've got both a solid console experience, and backward compatibility with a lot of early games if you don't mind some low level illegality.

[Ninja Dodo]

Yeah as pointed out on the cast you get a lot more out of having a current PC, and might even have to upgrade it for other purposes anyway. When I do buy a console I tend to buy at most 10 or so games for it (basically all the really special exclusives) so there is no way I'm going to buy multiple versions of hardware just for that... and even if a console is your primary game system it's going to be hard to justify that expense just to have the extra tiny pixels and slightly shinier effects if, as announced, all PS4 games are to remain compatible with both.

[rharwick]

I think the comparison to smartphones falls apart when you remember that most people get their smartphone upgrade through their plan provider. It's subsidized in the cost of their plan, which they factor as a monthly expense. Yes, their monthly plan could be cheaper without it, but they don't think about it that way. Psychology and how the cost is incurred (likewise with the monthly gym payment comparison) is a big factor.

Nintendo has been doing this in the handheld space for years, though, and the sky hasn't fallen. I've bought the upgrades that made sense to me (original GBA to SP; original DS to DS Lite) and ignored the ones that didn't (SP to GBA Micro; DS Lite to DSi; 3DS to New 3DS.) I expect it will be the same with the PS4. Since I'm a PC-first gamer, I will probably stick with my basic PS4 for a long while, especially if Sony follows through on their plans to keep all PS4 games compatible with both. But then, I don't care about 4K or VR. 

Will they eventually have an upgrade that makes me move on? Sure. Will that be called PS5? Maybe, maybe not. I would love if this meant that consoles got more consistent backward compatibility. That to me is the chief benefit of the lack of distinct "generations" in PC and mobile gaming. I can still play that game I bought 5, 6 years ago on my upgraded hardware.

[SL128]

Lord's Management.

[Valorian Endymion]

Since the rate of jrpg and other Jjapanese games begin ported to pc have increased, between this and the price of consoles (specially where I live), I feel less like ever trying to buy one, off course, there still that eventual game which isn´t likely to show up at pc (like let´s say, Persona) that kind once in a while still make me wonder the idea, but not much else.

 

On the subject of games with a "chill out" mode, Danganronpa 1 and 2 features the "School Mode", which is unlocked after you finish the game - and essentially, is just the interaction with the other characters along with a minigame that involves gathering resources to build stuff, without the trails, murders and other stuff of the main plot.

[cornchip]

I think smartphones are where consoles are going. The subsidized contract upgrade rharwick referenced is in rapid decline, replaced by no-contract plans + 24-month installment payments for phones, and slightly more recently, lease with a perpetual upgrade option.

 

Getting XB/PS customers to pay $30/mo to keep getting the latest incremental upgrade makes a lot of sense. One key is whether development markets, which is where the old phones go in the lease programs, can also be dumping grounds for last year's consoles.

 

Another key will of course be customer reception to a program like this. People are comfortable with visiting a phone store to swap a phone. I suppose a few have traded in old consoles for GameStop credit, but this isn't really the same. Probably it's an opportunity for Microsoft to use their official stores to sell and lease phones, Xbox and Surface in a similar manner. Sony USA would be dependent on their dealers.

[Arathain]

The thing about Diablo 2 is that it's not about building a character at all. It's about filling out a build; about constructing a machine for killing monsters out of a limited set of parts. That's fine, and satisfying when it's going well, but without looking up optimised builds online it's easy to build yourself into a dead end, and be unable to effectively progress up the difficulty levels. Of course, if you're looking it up, it's not really yours anymore, and so isn't as satisfying to create. 

 

Diablo 3's solution was bold and brilliant. You can change your skills at any time, and this goes further than fixing the issue above. It encourages tinkering. You can change any time- and you do! Leveled up? Try out the new skills you just unlocked. Having a tough time? Maybe swap out a couple of skills, or throw out your build and start again. The way items play into this is great. You find a cool armour piece that gives you a 15% bonus to fire skills, so you go looking through your skills to see which ones do fire damage, and then you fit your other skills around those.

 

You do lose that sense of permanence and progression, but what you get instead is a great big toy box you can rummage around in whenever you want. And funnily enough, my oldest character has grow into a build that is mostly stable, based on a few powerful items that I've never found an upgrade for, that gives me a playstyle that I like. 

[Jake]

If I'm going to upgrade anything, it's my PC.

By having a PC that you can/want to/know how to upgrade, you're basically out of the market MS/Sony care about anyway. There are tons of people (MS/Sony's core market) who game only on phones/tablets and their consoles.

[Helvedeshunden]

By having a PC that you can/want to/know how to upgrade, you're basically out of the market MS/Sony care about anyway.

 

MS certainly still cares about you with their new direction. Anyone with a beefy PC can buy their Play Anywhere-titles meaning you get a greater audience for Microsoft exclusives. First party games can be played on consoles and PCs, and, when you think about it, this makes the multi-console future look far more enticing. Why?

 

PC games will already be made to target a wide range of hardware. As we can see with Ryse, which is very good at scaling to host hardware, and the dynamic resolution scaling abilities in Halo 5 (and more), a lot of the ground work has already been made to make support of multiple console SKUs more viable. You're already targeting PC hardware above a certain baseline - which in this case would be a bit above the Xbox One hardware (to allow for greater overhead). When games self-optimize towards a target performance, you really just need to tweak a bit and test that it actually works on the various hardware platforms. The most important target is of course the low end. Does it look and play acceptably? If so it will look and play better on stronger platforms. 

 

Where some extra work might be needed is where you want to add additional graphical features like HDR for Xbox One S or improved shadows and resolution for Scorpio, but with Play Anywhere you already had to do that groundwork. Especially if they aim to release simultaneously.