Well yes, but you can always add some massive cache to your CPU in order to mitigate some of that latency. It’s not a perfect solution, but the downside of having your GPU using DDR3 is going to be a heck of a larger issue, IMHO.
An interesting point that has been brought to my attention recently is that, essentially, the more technologically powerful console has practically never won the console sales war.
NES vs Master System, NES wins, Master System is more powerful
The Neo Geo was the most powerful console of the SNES era, and well, price point destroyed that one.
The original Playstation was probably the weakest console of its era technically.
The Xbox had way more oomph than the PS2.
The Wii STILL leads the PS3/360 by double digit millions.
So yeah. Just because the PS4 may or may not be the strongest platform, technically, doesn’t really say anything about its odds of success.
Another datapoint:
My current hardware fetish is the Raspberry Pi…$35 shipped to the US from Britain. It’ll do 1080p video, has ethernet and HDMI, a native version of XBMC, and OpenGL support (Raspberry Pi: 3D Parametric Plotter - YouTube )
This does not, in any way, suggest it would be a good gaming console candidate, but a $35 Bill of Materials + shipping + profit gets you a LOT of capability these days.
The Ouya is going for that angle as well.
I think that no only will this be the last console generation (as we know them), but that the consoles will continue to struggle to appeal to the casual market.
Smart TV’s, Mobile games, cheaper consoles (last gen consoles, WiiU, Ouya, possibly anything Apple/Steam might come up with), will syphon off most fo the casual gaming market.
What kinda blows my mind is how expensive “last gen” consoles STILL are.
The PS2 hit $100 around the release of the 360. Even the Wii is still selling for AT LEAST $150, the cheapest 360 is $200, and the cheapest PS3 - after TWO major redesigns, no less - is still $250.
It’s kinda crazy.
The PS2 was never big on game-console bundles. But that’s about all you see with current gen systems. Also, the PS3/Xbox 360 keep upping the hard drive size. So while not technically a price cut, the underlying idea that they want consumers to believe is that now they’re you more for the same price.
It’s not a bad strategy actually. Find a price point and then just stick with it and fill the box with “extras” to justify the cost.
Even still though, if a “bundle” is supposed to be a bargain, then either the system or the game is supposed to be discounted in some way. So if we assume that the PS2 was “discounted” to $100, that would’ve made a PS2 + game “bundle” no more than $160.
But do people actually care? Or even look? I’d honestly expect them to sell a LOT more units of like a 60GB model at $150 than a 320 GB model at $300.
I dunno; I think at this point, people who haven’t bought one of these things have not bought them because it doesn’t seem like a price/value combination they like, and the easiest way to get to change, obviously and clearly in the mind of Joe the Consumer is to reduce the price. You can talk out your ass about “added value” all you want, but I think overall, cheap beats “high value” every time. The average consumer is stupid and prone to making poorly thought out purchases, so it’s much easier, for example, to sucker him into paying $100 for a console and $50 for another controller than it is to get him to buy a console with two controllers for $150, because $150 “sounds” like a lot more than $100 and then $50 later. Psychology is weird.
Edit: Plus I guess the $100 console with only one controller is a better deal for the people who might not WANT another controller. That’s the problem with bundles. I don’t give a crap about bundles because they never bundle games I care about.
Disk capacity accounts for a small fraction of the cost of making a harddisk. You have to have a multi-billion dollar clean room facility to make a 30 gb HD just as you would to make a 2TB disk. Once the R&D and facility costs are accounted for, disk cost per capacity is set using other factors…if the building CAN make bigger disks, and CAN make more money selling them, they may be reluctant to devote manufacturing capacity to making smaller disks.
Point being: The base Xbox may stay at $200 and bump from a 60 to 120 Gb disk because it’s cheaper than continuing to source 60 Gb disks.
Just about the ONLY thing I’ve seen that bucks this trend is the 160 Gb iPod Classic.
Okay, but that’s almost independent from my astonishment - are the rest of the components ALSO not going down in price? If you can get a 120GB hard drive now for less than the cost of a 60GB HD in 2005 (which does not sound unreasonable) why has the price not dropped more substantially? Why is it that a generation of consoles ago, we could build hardware that cost somewhere in the $300-$400 range at launch for $100, but now we can’t seem to manage to even get our current generation of consoles down below $200 after a longer wait? I mean, storage gets cheaper faster than almost anything else.
Well, you can buy an Xbox console with a 4 Gb memory cart (another proprietary moneygrab) for $200, that IS cheaper than they previously were, and it’s a smaller enclosure, and it includes HDMI, which the launch console didn’t.
The cheapest HD based one is 50 more, and comes with a 250 GB HD instead of the launch 20GB console that was $400…so they HAVE come down in price, just not to $100.
Because they threw a lot more stuff in there. The launch Xbox 360 did not have HDMI or onboard memory or wireless or a few other doodads. Console manufacturers want to follow Apple’s lead when it comes to the downward slope of a console’s life.
Could we ever do that? I don’t think those numbers are right. In the pre-PS2/Xbox days, consoles were sold at a profit, but it wasn’t much more than the manufacturing cost.
I looked it up, and apparently the PS2 launched at somewhere between $300 and $400 depending on where you were. I couldn’t find super firm US numbers though.
The point about the added stuff is relevant though.
And always on console connection is back in the headlines.
First, rumors abound about the Xbox being either always on, or at the very least, requiring you to be online to start games, followed by Xbox department creative director, dismissing concerns over always online - saying that most devices are always connected anyway, and if you live in west bubble $$&%! Virginia with crappy internet, tough cookies.
The always on thing is going to be a killer for me. I guess I’ll keep my PS3 til it dies and then buy a proper blu-ray player.
Yeah, definitely no to the Xbox. That made up my mind for the ps4
I think PS4 + PC combo might indeed be the way to go next gen.
I’m not sure how I feel about this, but I’m definitely not 100% comfortable with it, so unless MS can come up with some compelling reason for me want their system, any next gen system acquisitions will be limited to Sony, who, while they may have a bunch of ideas I don’t care about, have at least managed to stay away from stuff that makes me say “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that…”
A few questions from a very casual player:
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Why is the industry moving to “always on internet connections” - what purpose does it serve them other than DRM protection?
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Why do people care? Is it going to eat up so much bandwidth that it’s an issue? Is it a concern with the longevity of the system or the individual games - that it won’t be supported X years down the line? Something else?
It also makes the used game market much more difficult.
There’s that. Who’s to say that XBox will stop supporting Madden 2013 as soon as Madden 2014 comes out?
Also, as seen in Diablo and SimCity launches, companies don’t always keep up with server demand. So, if you can’t get on one of their servers then you can’t play your single player game that you bought.
Also, not everyone has reliable internet speeds. That’s why that Google Fiber was such a big thing, as there are many places in the country, especially the boondocks, that only have dial up to work with. And I live next to a major city, in a college town, and my internet likes to drop randomly (thanks, Comcast).
So why have all of these issues for very little gain for the consumer?
You mean “always on DRM” isn’t ENOUGH reason for them to want to do this? Don’t forget DRM isn’t just “copy protection”; It’s also mod-proofing, “cheat” prevention, the ability to control how and when anyone does anything with your game, etc.
You’re looking at this wrong. You should be asking “Why would anyone WANT an always on device?” The answer is “There is absolutely no reason a consumer would want an always on device.”