MS has claimed for the last year that Xbox is definitely profitable. So unless the CFO and CEO are lying (possible), it's profitable.
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[Variety] Ubisoft Believes Next Gen is the Last for Consoles as Microsoft Looks Beyond Platforms
- Thread starter SuikerBrood
- Start date
MS has claimed for the last year that Xbox is definitely profitable. So unless the CFO and CEO are lying (possible), it's profitable.
It will happen at some point, i mean even sony is in its infancy doing this with PSNow. But peoples internet connections need to get a bit faster to allow this to happen fully.
But as usual technology has ebbed and flowed between dumb terminals and smart terminals or the so called fat and thin clients to access information.
So its inevitable for more of this happening over time. Id say however we are probably 3-5 generations away from streaming games to be anywhere feasible to give the greatest experience, IMO would require massive processing power and memory coupled with at least gigabit internet speeds widely available to for it to be fully reliable.
would just be a competing service. I mean Hulu and netflix co-exist atm etc. difference would be no different than now the games content they produce exclusively and the user experience within their services.
But as usual technology has ebbed and flowed between dumb terminals and smart terminals or the so called fat and thin clients to access information.
So its inevitable for more of this happening over time. Id say however we are probably 3-5 generations away from streaming games to be anywhere feasible to give the greatest experience, IMO would require massive processing power and memory coupled with at least gigabit internet speeds widely available to for it to be fully reliable.
would just be a competing service. I mean Hulu and netflix co-exist atm etc. difference would be no different than now the games content they produce exclusively and the user experience within their services.
All your post is basically 'how it it looks today', which is not the point.
Its not about now, its about future and yes 150k for petaflop is really low price.
The hardware inside the servers wont matter, engines will be generalized to use compute and cores like Tensor Core to fullest extend, so they can scale almost linearly workloads on machines. Remember that we got first compute based gpu architecture only 11 years ago, now think how everything will change 10 years from now.
Why would Sony or Microsoft have to do hardware research? Microsoft already have Azure division, Sony will rent it from AWS or Azure.
You wont have 250ms latency. Btw we already had games with around 200ms latency like Killzone 2 on normal hardware.
Cycling is not a problem, it will be automatic. Nvidia showed this technology: https://youtu.be/95nphvtVf34?t=5259 -- Most of this presentation is worth watching.
The only thing that will be updated yearly is infrastructure and this already happens on AWS and Azure.
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There is a lot of points in my posts that benefit consumers.
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Who cares about Playstation Now? We are not taking about today's technology.
And most people do not care about latency, resolution or framerate. Fuck i work in software development and i had software developers using 1650x1050 resolutions on 1080p monitors and it was not obvious to them that there is something not right with their screen when my eyes literally hurt seeing it.
Many people on this board are not mainstream, but enthusiast gamers and streaming is not targeted to you. For you, there will be PC or something like PC in the end.
Because i was the one making statements about the health of the market.
Nice switch of responsibilities ...
*hand wave away price concerns*
And why would this only matter in the cloud? Yes everything is moving towards the same type of computing; that is seeing benefits for local rendering too. That was my main point, nothing unique about the cloud here for that.
There still will be differences though, you are nuts if you think there won't be.
So Sony can rent from AWS huh? And you think paying someone else to host your entire console solution is a benefit compared to paying for R&D? You think MS isn't going to have to spend loads of money on R&D for Azure? lol
*hand waves away latency*
WTF? Done with you; post some more links for your credibility but hand wave away everything else.
You literally don't seem to know what latency is and how it affects game streaming. Latency is not a mainstream vs hardcore issue.. it's a "Fuck this game doesn't work" issue.
Killzone with 200ms latency? Are you talking about multiplayer game latency? YOU..DO..NOT..UNDERSTAND. Re-read my posts or something, I've explained it 3 times.
What even are you arguing then? The numbers speaks for themself. Console are far healthier than they've ever been, regardless of whatever "only because [X] is why" argument you come up with to downplay favorable comparisons to past consoles.
This article assumes the console industry rest on the decisions and whims of Microsoft's actions. This is ridiculous because Microsoft is not in a leading position and their actions are not guided by foresight but rather a response their ailing marketshare.
If Microsoft were to drop out of the console race, there would be little disruption to the industry in my opinion. They don't have a global presence, fans who jump ship at the drop of a feather, and software that is rather generic and forgettable. Microsoft does not have a sway on where the industry is heading.
If Microsoft were to drop out of the console race, there would be little disruption to the industry in my opinion. They don't have a global presence, fans who jump ship at the drop of a feather, and software that is rather generic and forgettable. Microsoft does not have a sway on where the industry is heading.
"We cannot release a console without an optical drive, in many countries Internet is not good enough..."
Five minutes later:
"Consoles are dead, streamed gaming for everyone!"
Please, gaming industry persons, decide.
Five minutes later:
"Consoles are dead, streamed gaming for everyone!"
Please, gaming industry persons, decide.
MS also didn't say anything about not selling consoles in this article. If anything they implied they'd sell consoles more often, as in more mid-cycle refreshes or maybe even yearly consoles.
It's the random Ubisoft exec quote about game streaming that is the only claim consoles would go away.
Why would i talk about price when the hardware does not exist today? We are talking about situation in 8-10 years time. $150k is low, as year ago 1 petaflops would cost millions in CPU based architecture.
Microsoft spends money on Azure, because they make loads of money on Azure. Sony doesnt need to do it themselves as there are other viable solutions. And yes paying for renting servers will be probably cheaper than doing whole infrastructure themselves, of course the contracts for something like that are different than normal company renting some AWS solution.
Look also at this from Sony or Microsoft perspective, they have like 40-70m install base. With subscription model where people do not need to pay upfront for a device, but can use anything they like, wherever they like, they can reach billions of people. Its uncapped market than can give them profits way bigger than they have now.
I actually think that Nintendo should be first to jump into streaming, as hardware sells are most of the time not something they care about that much in comparison to their software that makes gangbusters.
Battlefield 3 had 157ms input lag
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2017-console-fps-input-lag-tested
Killzone 2 had 150ms input lag
https://www.eurogamer.net/videos/digitalfoundry-killzone-2-latency-tests
And of course i hand wave it as i said, its not essential to mainstream gamers. Do not look at it from your perspective, its not for you and its not for me. Its a reason i have 144hz gsync monitor, but i'm not a mainstream gamer.
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we are still decades away from moving away from consoles. it's the same reason why 4K60 will never be a standard. Dedicated hardware will always be a thing as long as devs continue to want to go above and beyond with graphical and AI design in games. We couldve had 4k60 standard if they toned down their games. but why would they? they will keep pushing stuff to its limits. And that's why we wont see a move away from consoles until tech gets real sci-fi movie like.
I come up with nothing, numbers down a lot is a fact.
That one manufacturer is able to extract more money than ever before from a overall heavily shrunk market - congrats for that, but this speaks for the competition.
The same competition who has the worst and 2nd worst selling console of the last 2 gens at hand.
Yes the Switch sells really good, but it does so at the sacrifice of a whole market, a market where they alone sold ~155 million units last gen.
I never said consoles are in trouble, but that for sure isn't "100% healthier than ever".
Yes games have inherent input lag; you realize throwing a network in between the gamer and the host ADDS to that lag? And the lag they are measuring there is the time it takes for the result to render on the screen; network lag in between adds time to where the machine on the other end can even begin interpreting the command. Then you have the rendering pipeline which doesn't change, then you have added network latency to send the frames back to the client, then you have your built in HDMI latency.
For that 157ms BF3 how much of that is the machine getting the command? Not much; maybe 20ms. Add a 100ms network lag and suddenly it's 120ms to get the command; and then more time added for the server to return the frames.
Not to mention the fact that it's not constant; so at one second you might have 50ms input lag added and another you might have 150. And let's not forget encoding and decoding of the rendered video output, which isn't necessary for locally rendered games.
So you do seem to partially understand it, but man.. you are really downplaying it. And this isn't a problem that is being solved faster than bandwidth is. My average ping to a server out there is not much better than it was at the beginning of broadband time nearly 20 years ago.
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There are more points on your list which will hurt consumers in a variety of ways. I for example won't ever pay a subscription to play games as I very much prefer to own what I pay for.
But it is healthier than ever, maybe selling slightly less consoles (that were most likely sold at a loss for almost the entity of their life cycle) overall, but each of the big 3 are doing better than ever, as I've pointed out, but we'll agree to disagree I guess. If the CEO of MS and financial reports from Sony don't change your mind, I won't.
I understand, but also the games will, at least i hope, run in 60fps so the rendering input lag will be reduced.
What ping do you have to your ISP and then something like youtube? I have to youtube streaming (checked on firewall) server from 7-10ms.
Still most people will not have 200ms network latency, 100ms tops, but thats reaching. I mentioned that several % of people will be affected by this, but companies will take this loss of quality of service, because they will get more consumers in the end.
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Yeah, the ship of game ownership sailed many years when Steam got popular. Unfortunately this is something you will need to get used to, because this will happen no matter if they adapt streaming or hardware solution.
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Loosing ~ 1/3 of the console and ~2/3 of the HH market isn't slightly less.
Nintendo did worse than ever before in their lifetime in the WiiU era. They still aren't close to the Wii era (no, not even financially).
Ms doesn't give any numbers i wonder why, must be because they do better than ever before, because that's what companies always do - do better than ever before and then tell no one.
All we have is that MS gaming division was profitable at a certain point in time and that's a division that includes a lot more than their console businesses. Small things like the best selling game of all time e.g.
Aside from that i don't measure the health of a market by the profits of a single (or two) companies.
Sony and Ms (according to popular belief) did loose money last gen does it mean the market was more healthy in the PS2 gen?
Endless companies lost money in the SNES gen does it mean the NES gen was more healthy?
Sony is raking in these profits, because this gen has been the least competitive of all time.
By your logic less competition = healthier market.
You would think the games media who live in SF and NY would make a conscious effort not to just assume the rest of the gaming world is just like the bubbles in which they reside, but nope.
The same thing happened in 2013 when the American gaming press kept pushing the line that Sony were considering always online DRM and the end of the established model of used games, even though that was a complete non-starter for a Japanese console maker. But because an American console maker was foolishly planning on doing it, they incorrectly assumed Sony must follow.
I was looking for the thread for this. I call bollocks on the "end of consoles" and "games as a streaming service" theory because of the same reason that Greg Miller and Jared Petty explain here:
Of course that Microsoft would say that the end of consoles is near. Their real platform is "Windows", not XBox. I don't see "streaming games" as something viable simply because games will keep getting bigger - as they should - in the upcoming years. We've been through this rodeo before, and PS4 / XBox One was supposed to be the "last" one, and yet here we are, with the doom of consoles postponed for yet another generation. Sony and Nintendo will keep pushing forward with consoles that make the purchase of a console worthwhile, and I don't see this changing at all in the future.
With all due respect to Ubisoft, but if they eventually made a "Netflix" service to their games, I'd still want the ability of going offline and not having streaming it or... good riddance. I wouldn't subscribe for an Ubisoft service, let alone several brands "stream services" of games. We live in a world that hasn't made an actual solution to power outage, let alone internet outage. This just reeks Microsoft wanting to leave the console game than the actual console game going the way of the dinosaurs, like other users have mentioned it.
Of course that Microsoft would say that the end of consoles is near. Their real platform is "Windows", not XBox. I don't see "streaming games" as something viable simply because games will keep getting bigger - as they should - in the upcoming years. We've been through this rodeo before, and PS4 / XBox One was supposed to be the "last" one, and yet here we are, with the doom of consoles postponed for yet another generation. Sony and Nintendo will keep pushing forward with consoles that make the purchase of a console worthwhile, and I don't see this changing at all in the future.
With all due respect to Ubisoft, but if they eventually made a "Netflix" service to their games, I'd still want the ability of going offline and not having streaming it or... good riddance. I wouldn't subscribe for an Ubisoft service, let alone several brands "stream services" of games. We live in a world that hasn't made an actual solution to power outage, let alone internet outage. This just reeks Microsoft wanting to leave the console game than the actual console game going the way of the dinosaurs, like other users have mentioned it.
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I think people are wrong to focus on Microsoft. Ubisoft decide the future of gaming. They are THE developer. They are THE publisher. Where they go, the industry follows. Look at how successfully they worked to push the industry towards a small number of companies making a majority of profits through AAA games with extremely high production values and thus killing off the competition who couldn't keep up.
It just so happens that MS and Ubi see eye to eye on the future of gaming. When Ubi jump overboard, the industry scrambles for the lifeboats. Ubisoft has a hell of a lot more sway over the future of the games industry than Sony or Microsoft or anyone like that. Ubisoft will get their way in the long run whether anyone likes it or not. They might be playing nice currently by allowing many of their games to run offline, for instance, but it's only a matter of time before they get back to their original always-online plans once the technical issues are no longer a problem.
If you think, "But people have bad internet" is going to stop them, you're gonna be in for a rude shock. People thought Valve would never gain a strangehold over PC gaming because "People have bad internet. (Same with Netflix. Heaps of regions don't have the internet speed for decent quality Netflix, yet video stores have almost completely died out.) Nobody will accept mandatory gigabytes of downloads if you want to play a game! Nobody will accept PC games that don't have a disc in the box!" Look at where we are now. The biggest games on the planet are always online and digitally distributed. Here's the blunt truth. If you can't keep up, they are going to cut you off. They don't care that your internet isn't fast enough. Losing you as a customer is just an unfortunate side-effect. This isn't what people want to hear, I'm sure. But there's gonna come a point where people protest, "I'm gonna boycott you!" and the giant company stares at their giant piles of subscription money and say, "Yea, we don't give a shit." It won't be overnight. It'll be gradual. Like how in the old days Steam used to let you choose whether games downloaded updates. Remember those days? Distant memory now. "You wanna play Doom 2016 in singleplayer? Here's a 58 GIGABYTE PATCH! You have a data cap? Do you really think we care? Because we don't."
edit: And just in case I'm misunderstood, I detest the always-online, DRM-ed out the ass future of gaming. But it's inevitable, my dudes. Simply inevitable.
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You aren't comparing gens that have finished to one still ongoing are you? Pretty silly acting like it's already a done thing if so. Also where exactly are you pulling losing 1/3 from? I very much doubt it's behind gen 6 launch alined, considers the PS4 is still ahead of the PS2 and the Xbox is probably in line with OG Xbox and Gamecube combined (considering it was a 1 horse race gen too). Last gen possibly as Nintendo are way behind Wii and XB1 is slightly behind 360, but PS4 has almost overtook PS3's lifetime so it's probably pretty close launch alined too.
Dedicated Handheld hardware market is fucked though, outside of Nintendo, no one is finding success there.
Yeah we have heard that about this gen too. I think it will be awhile before consoles really go away.
Exactly.
Did this gen just end this week or they discontinued the PS4? lol
Just like the Wii U selling poorly didn't mean the death of consoles in 2013, the competition doing poorly doesn't mean that market isn't healthy.
The console market, gaming industry also includes 3rd party publishers.
I don't really follow hand held gaming so I can't speak on that, all I know is that's Nintendo's domain.
If the PS4 was also selling poorly, I could agree. If the Switch was selling poorly, I could agree.
What happened to MS and Nintendo means they just messed up. I don't expect ppl to buy products they don't want or like just because.
The fact that Nintendo is playing to their strengths with the hybrid, that's a debatable topic.
If the market is smaller, but those that work in it are still making money or making more money, we can't confuse what we consider unhealthy vs what these companies consider unhealthy.
I remember that time when everybody and their grandmother released a home console. I thought it was a great time, so many choices. That probably wasn't the best thing for the market or those companies. I can't even imagine a dev trying to support, make games for 5-10 different home consoles.
The other way
Yeah it is inevitable, but not happening as soon as Ubisoft thinks, if a console generation lasts 6-8 years.
Yeah it is inevitable, but not happening as soon as Ubisoft thinks, if a console generation lasts 6-8 years.
Just like physical books and e-books, I think consoles and potential dedicated gaming streaming devices can co-exist. I really don't think they have to replace each other and won't.
