Where do you see gaming in 5 years?

[Colamisu]

Remember the first rule Consoles - they are practically 'obsolete' the day they hit the market. They will also realize PCs will always be superior to consoles.

Japanese developers should develop across all regions at the same time. Nintendo did it with Zelda: Majora's Mask.(Japan and US). Plenty of developers do it now.

The developers are well aware of these facts. But you need to realize the advantage of consoles: there's no bullshit process of installing games (before this gen), no compatibility issues. It's plug and play. Or at least, it was until they started requiring firmware updates every 2 months. But it's still considerably less work to start playing a new console game than a PC game. And something that a kid with no computer experience can do on his/her own. Consoles = wider possible audience. Of course, this is becoming less of an issue with cloud gaming services like OnLive, where you simply play the game on a remote computer on which it is already installed, rather than installing it yourself.

Generally developing across all regions simultaneously is a bit of an illusion. They have the finished game in the region of origin, then wait for the localization teams to catch up before they release in cases of simultaneous releases. And it's really only done if it's some over-hyped game like HALO 8.

[Daemonised]

Terrible argument. Emulation usually lags about a generation behind.

For the record, the console versions have been consistently outselling the PC versions.

By a lot.

Hell Crysis 2 was doing exceptionally well for a PC game.

It didn't even outsell the 360 versions alone. Which were, get this, 3 times as high.

So yeah.

I agree more and more people are getting pc's wether that is laptops or desktops is irrelevant its the fact that emulation is constantly evolving to play the games that are out currently

[Raype]

I agree more and more people are getting pc's wether that is laptops or desktops is irrelevant its the fact that emulation is constantly evolving to play the games that are out currently

People have always had PCs.

But that's not where the money is these days. PC gaming is going to have to get used to the fact that they're taking a backseat and it'll be consoles that determine what happens with gaming.

But it's not all bad. It's never been more cost effective to build an adequate gaming PC.

But back to the other point;

The only currently emulatable console is the wii, which is a very weak console hardware wise that also suffers from being extremely similar in architecture to the GC (the best Wii emulator on the market started as a gamecube emulator). And the emulation is still very much imperfect. Were emulation half as important as you state, why can I not run, in a playable fashion, something like Shadows of the Damned on an emulator despite the current generation of consoles being approximately 5-6 years old?

By the time I actually can do that console gaming will already have moved on to the next generation. Or we'd at least be quite close to it. Which is even sorta happening with the Wii, Nintendo is abandoning it already. Not due to emulation, it's simply that the hardware wasn't "good enough".

Also, since PC gaming has been in serious decline the hardware might have a harder time playing catchup in the years to come. When you don't necessarily need a beastly vidcard to play the latest games, manufacturers are less likely to make said vidcard. With less power under the hood, it gets harder to do something as resource intensive as emulation. But that's largely speculation on my part.

[Graeystone]

People have always had PCs.

But that's not where the money is these days. PC gaming is going to have to get used to the fact that they're taking a backseat and it'll be consoles that determine what happens with gaming.

Which is lousy because consoles are always a step behind PCs in terms of hardware and what can be done. Developers have to take the 'lesser hardware' meaning console into consideration if they want to multi-platform. By my own estimations console are just hitting 'next-gen' yet today's basic PC at Best Buy is still way ahead of next-gen consoles. If console and PC gap needs to be closed then the console makers have to step up and make consoles upgradable however every time that's been tried its been a failure.

On building a decent PC Rig for gaming, there isn't much of a price difference between buying a PC straight from a store and getting the parts and putting it together. A decent made from scratch rig can last as long as a brand name rig.

On a side-note about the Wii - If Nintendo had not skimped on the hardware, they would have steamrolled Sony and Microsoft in the console wars. 3DS isn't helping them any and if the company doesn't get their act together they'll end up like SEGA.

[Gypsy]

I quite enjoy dlc as long as its a large dlc like an extra campaign like the shivering isles or knights of the nine what I dont like is dlc that is small enough to already be on the disc in the first place.

and yip yip cloud gaming will never be the future its too unreliable

and to the ubisoft drm thing the reason the drm is not needed is because what happens when they remove support for a game in a year or two ? in my opinion drm should never require you to need to be constantly online at any given moment.

Yeah, it's not to say DLC lacks potential (Valkyria DLC was decent), but I actually saw a friggin' commercial for Freddy Kruger DLC for MK. I assume he is $5. Freaking stupid. Charging for skins/colour packs is even worse.

And it's really only done if it's some over-hyped game like HALO 8.

I snickered.

On a side-note about the Wii - If Nintendo had not skimped on the hardware, they would have steamrolled Sony and Microsoft in the console wars. 3DS isn't helping them any and if the company doesn't get their act together they'll end up like SEGA.

They have still dominated sales. Pretty sure Nintendo doesn't give a shit about "gamers" as long as they have good sales. I see your point though. I still don't own a Wii. Might get one when I can get one for like $40-50 range.

[Slacker Magician]

People have always had PCs.

But that's not where the money is these days. PC gaming is going to have to get used to the fact that they're taking a backseat and it'll be consoles that determine what happens with gaming.

But it's not all bad. It's never been more cost effective to build an adequate gaming PC.

But back to the other point;

The only currently emulatable console is the wii, which is a very weak console hardware wise that also suffers from being extremely similar in architecture to the GC (the best Wii emulator on the market started as a gamecube emulator). And the emulation is still very much imperfect. Were emulation half as important as you state, why can I not run, in a playable fashion, something like Shadows of the Damned on an emulator despite the current generation of consoles being approximately 5-6 years old?

By the time I actually can do that console gaming will already have moved on to the next generation. Or we'd at least be quite close to it. Which is even sorta happening with the Wii, Nintendo is abandoning it already. Not due to emulation, it's simply that the hardware wasn't "good enough".

Also, since PC gaming has been in serious decline the hardware might have a harder time playing catchup in the years to come. When you don't necessarily need a beastly vidcard to play the latest games, manufacturers are less likely to make said vidcard. With less power under the hood, it gets harder to do something as resource intensive as emulation. But that's largely speculation on my part.

Video card manufacturers still push out the newest cards; if it hasn't slowed down yet, I don't see it happening anytime soon. Mid-range cards already outclass the current gen. of consoles, and high end cards aren't even comparable (in terms of pixel and texture fillrates or bandwidth). CPU speed is the limiting factor in emulation.

An article I read recently, which I find completely ridiculous, suggests that accurate emulation requires hundreds of times the power of the original system.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2...s-emulator.ars

[crimsonedge]

PCs as being used as a gaming rig will continue to get cheaper, as state of the art PCs continue to get more powerful than console systems. I have an old Dell PC that was given to me from 2006 with an intel 2.2 GHZ core duo, with 2 Nvidia cards in SLI that still plays most of the latest PC games at playable frame rates. Low to medium settings of course, but low PC settings are at least equal or a little better than console graphics in most cases. Also got an emachines that is similar but with an AMD CPU and only one GPU. The Dell performs better with its GPUs in SLI. My cousin gave me the Dell, and he would dual boot WoW with it on 2 monitors, and get no lag. He was seriously going to throw this PC away, so I offered to take it. Absolutely nothing wrong with it.