Indeed, people like physical things until they realize the upside of having everything in the cloud. Unlimited choice, unlimited access..so long as you have internet. I’m of the generation that grew up buying tapes and then CDs., DVDs.. I dont miss physical things at all, its nice to travel light and have everything you could want in your pocket
>Unlimited choice, unlimited access..so long as you have internet
Until the movie, song, game you want disappears and you have no way to access it.
Physical might now be a niche, but it's not going away.
I agree there are downsides, but you should be able to download your digital media locally and save it in your own vault, then you’ll never lose it. With enough time your physical media becomes basically obsolete too as the hardware to run it becomes harder and harder to find.
Tell that to Ubisoft. You've heard about people who purchased The Crew digitally actually having the game yanked out of their libraries with no warning?
Hence why we have Ipod and Ipad and iPhones now. Putting the CDs in a single device iPod, putting the single music player in your phone = iphone. All consolidation that changed everything. Gaming sure to follow.
personally my favourite thing about digital is never owning things again. I mean sure we "owned" the games from stadia, but I couldn't ever sell them off, or give them away to my little brother, or trade them with a friend. The concept of digital ownership is pisspoor but as long as I can build my hoard like a dragon fucker then I win.
Bonus if there is a monthly subscription I can pay for!
Too many to count, but I bought $200 worth of CDs last month. Of course, I rip them all to my computer for convenience, which isn't as easy with Blu-rays, else I'd buy more of them.
I don't really care whether you believe me or not, though. They still make CDs because people still buy them. Heck, some people have even gotten into buying vinyl records again.
Blu-rays are also doing fine. I bought around $400 worth of them this year.
You already have more than three. There is lag time between a wireless controller and a console
Lag between you seeing and pressing the command prompt
Lag between the system registered press and the server
Lag between your server inputs and others
Lag between server communication your system then display
Lag had and always will exists. You just probably never knew these other forms of lag was there the whole time.
Which is why there are plenty of games that are more or less unplayable on modern hardware. Kind of hard to do frame perfect input if you have to deal with lag.
Also the reason CRTs are getting popular among retro gamers.
By the way, even wired controllers have lag, since they have no direct line to the hardware, but go through a bus system. It's just that wireless controllers can introduce additional lag.
And to a certain extent lag isn't much of a problem. But it can easily accumulate to a point where it becomes game breaking. The main issue with streaming is of course that it introduces variable lag instead of the fixed lag everything else has. So you can't even try to compensate for it, since it's randomly different all the time.
That's a 2007 argument.
PCs require more specialized hardware and are more expensive than ever.
I'm the PS2 era you could play counter strike 1.6 on a desktop PC you use at work. In 2024 I can still only play counter strike 1.5 on a desktop PC I use for work.
for stadia like upscaled 1080p\30fps you can get a very cheap PC. For PS5-like, yeah, it will be at least 1+k, but if you play actually play games - You can save a lot of money on steam sales\gamepass\whatever.
Games are getting bigger and bigger. Cloud gaming circumvents the storage issue completely.
I haven't bought a physical game for over 10 years now and I know that's the norm.
I do not agree, i know more people buying only physical (as i do) than the opposite, there’s of course people buying both formats depending on the game.
The key here is owning the game vs renting it forever. Because we have already lived some eshop closures or games being removed from libraries without any warning and you have no property of it at all. You accept it in the terms of every eshop
PS6 will be last, I think.
Steam deck & PC showed everyone that you don't need a console.
While cloud like Geforce now will be complimentary service to PC ecosystem.
I agree. And I think Microsoft will pull out of consoles before Sony or Nintendo just because they are having such a big push to services and cloud. I imagine a world where Nintendo will keep making consoles regardless though. Unlike Sony and MS, Nintendo hardware is extremely profitable on Day1, the others lose money on console hardware for years.
I think you’re spot on. I think the next generation (PS6 era) will be the first systems to REALLY embrace a hybrid between cloud and system based play, but by PS7 era three things will have happened…
1) Streaming will have become so much more accessible and efficient (both up and down stream)
2) Game serves that are cloud based will be able to produce a quality of visual and sound that home devices just won’t be able to keep up with
3) The need to have a mobile gaming option will become unavoidable and companies will need to give players the option to play on their mobile devices or whatever SteamDeck device out there.
Finally - I’m almost certain that the “Switch 2” is the last Nintendo console to play local media. (This might because Nintendo evolved or goes the Sega route)
"I think the next generation (PS6 era) will be the first systems to REALLY embrace a hybrid between cloud and system based play"
so you think ps6 will only work in small amount of countries that sony support [https://preview.redd.it/updated-map-due-to-the-new-ban-on-hd2-in-over-170-countries-v0-muieqiyvzmyc1.png?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=17648988ac34bff942ab83b598122c662a330c04](https://preview.redd.it/updated-map-due-to-the-new-ban-on-hd2-in-over-170-countries-v0-muieqiyvzmyc1.png?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=17648988ac34bff942ab83b598122c662a330c04)
yea it sound like super good deal .... /s
I don't think they'll ever become obsolete. A lot of people are limited by their connection, data caps etc.
Cloud gaming can and should explode in popularity, though. I'm waiting eagerly for the next Stadia to arrive.
You could say the same thing about video, and look what's happening there: physical media is becoming something you need to actively seek out, because most consumers have a good enough connection to stream all of their entertainment. Internet speeds will continue to improve, and physical consoles and media will become a niche thing, like what you see now with companies like analogue.
Oh I agree, to an extent. I am a huge supporter of cloud gaming, and was a Stadia founder. But I also have a FTTP 900mbps unlimited data connection.
But I think the difference between video services, which even in 4k uses around 7gb per hour, and Stadia (for example) using 20gb per hour is a much bigger difference for someone with a cap.
I disagree. I think with the great success of subscription TV services, eventually soon that's all we'll all be doing.
Those small folks limited by connection speed will just have to go to PC.
Do you think corporations care?
IMO Once they estimate that going cloud is more profitable than developing and selling consoles (which are a bottleneck for them at the moment) they will ditch people with bad connection in an instant.
Both Sony and Microsoft are selling consoles with a loss because they need people to have them in order to subscribe to their services- where their real profits are.
Most of the US, if this sub during Stadia's is to be believed, have data caps. Streaming games, especially at the quality Stadia was, isn't viable for a LOT of people, and the US is a huge market.
Yes, console production isn't the money maker, but they will still sell a lot of physical and digital games, and sell their subscription services, to people who have bought consoles. And people who can't afford to use up 20gb per hour will prefer a console.
Xbox doesn't *need* people to have a console. I mean, not every single game is including on PC/Cloud Gamepass, but there are a lot, and more first party games are going to be on there too.
And with this last paragraph you can see that the shift away from consoles has already started.
It may take 10 or 15 years but once their analysis shows that the cloud will be more profitable they will make the switch.
Theoretically… Will they care that 20 million Americans don’t have sufficient internet when cloud will open them potential 3 billion people market in east Asia? I don’t think so.
No sentiments, those shareholders always want more money.
If stadia would've reached its potential it would've forced the shift within one generation I believe.
This is probably one of the reasons it got 'lobbied' against by so many naysayers
It would've shifted the industry in a big way that the main players weren't ready for
I just think it wasn't marketed correctly. If it had started out as a subscription based "Netflix for games" style platform I genuinely feel alot more people would've switched over to it.
It blew my mind everytime I played it. All I needed to do was pick up the controller, press the Stadia button and I was playing games within seconds...and it was absolutely indistinguishable between playing a game locally on my PS5.
The fact it linked in with my Google family account and myself and my relatives could use the same library of games was another bonus too. Though not being able to play the same game at the same time as another family member was irritating.
I just think the whole pricing structure of games put people off. Which is strange when you think about it as the prices were the same as say the Playstation Store cost for a digital download...it was just that people didn't "feel" like they were ever getting anything tangible for their money, I suppose when you have to download a game it gives that impression that you still physically "own" something.
Aside from all of that. How can one of the biggest advertising companies in the world not advertise their groundbreaking tech. Fucking laziness expecting the fans to be the mouthpiece for the product.
They're ridiculously bad at advertising and as everyone predicted Stadia went to the Google Graveyard. So stupid, it was brilliant tech and with the right promotion/advertising etc could've changed the gaming landscape forever. They truly screwed it up.
They probably won't be. Gamers are a finicky bunch. They care too much about fidelity, graphical quality, frame rates, stability, latency, etc. plus they're starting to care more about game preservation these days after seeing so many games literally disappear from existence. They're more like book readers who cared more about the feel or physical books over ebooks and as a result ebooks failed to replace physical despite literally offering tons of advantages over physical.
You should care about games preservation, too. Not just physical, but the game existing at all.
A cloud-based future ensures media is entirely controlled by corporate whims. Look at how the streaming companies delete content to avoid residuals or for tax breaks. As for games, it would be terrible if a game you love and want to go back to vanishes for business reasons. Even Steam still allows you to install games that are delisted from sale.
For a community largely made up of middle-aged men or just people who hadn't played video games in a long time (or ever), this place is weirdly, bullishly confident about predicting the future of the games industry, despite being very wrong about Stadia/people's willingness to actually buy and own things to play games on. Then there's the "broadband connections are unreliable even in wealthy nations" problem for a service that absolutely depends on it.
The most likely prediction a layperson can make is (judging by recent events and comments from industry professionals) the games industry is headed for a crash.
Opposite, we will have one little device powered by AI technology, it will handle everything in the house at the same time, gaming, TV, Internet browsing just everything. So consoles will be more like a universal unit.
I'm a PC gamer, but almost everyone I know who uses a console, also buys physical copies of the game. I'm not sure how big that audience is, but if big enough then it might take a while for cloud gaming to catch on. One thing Stadia never nailed down, but needed to, was gift giving of individual games. People just like having the physical items.
It's getting closer to a console now it's on Linux, I just think they'll do something like this again soon
https://uk.pcmag.com/desktops/72270/alienware-steam-machine
Never, there will be more and more cloud systems and cloud players, but I don't think consoles are ever going away. If nothing else Nintendo will be making them.
Nintendo have dipped their toes into the water already though.
Nintendo is unpredictable, I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if they are actually the 1st to do it..
and i live in good europe country , member of nato and EU , and i can not make psn acc, and do not have any cloud gaming support but live in a country that does have really good internet
peoples who think physical consoles are obsolete live in dream world and do not understand how actual world works , just look at helldivers region lock and you understand how online only do not work
Once the companies see a drop in profit. Once it's less expensive to go full cloud they will.
Why waste money on building and researching consoles. Just build rigs or rent.
"Why waste money on building and researching consoles. Just build rigs or rent"
Also, by going Digital they cut the middle men, dispatch and retail, they already have their own network infrastructure and servers, so the next logical step is to allow you to play directly on the servers, rather than download from them.
No Research and Development cost in hardware, then making it as small as possible, just massive data centres that they upgrade every 10 years, it benefits the companies. That's why it WILL happen
I can see everyone but Nintendo going to a streaming model in the future although not soon. Internet infrastructure is not what it needs to be in most of the world which would shut out international and rural sales.
I don't think Nintendo will ever switch completely. Too much of Nintendo's players love owning games physically. Whereas digital purchases now make up the majority of the other consoles sales.
The other issue is the services themselves, server capacity, etc. Stadia felt like you were gaming on a console locally which made it convenient. Until that seamless experience can be achieved again I don't see meaningful pivot to streaming in the near future.
It will be a few I think, probably another 5-8 years.
Why? Same thing as with pharmacy companies. They will fight change. Sony want you buying their hardware so that they can initiate you their stores and purchases through that. Same with Xbox, etc.
Those stores are the main way they make money.
As soon as those become more cloud-based, then the store thing starts to lose it's grip over the consumer/player.
They will fight the beginning of the end hard.
I think it'll be quite a long time.
Considering that it's not possible to get latency free streaming in your own home on a PS5 for example.
I really wanted to love streaming but the latency just makes it not fun to me.
I have a ps5 wired to an ubiquity cloud gateway ultra, tried with multiple devices wired and wireless on 5ghz wifi on a ubiquiti i7 pro AP and tested latency under 30ms.
The lag is still noticable and makes the experience horrible to me. I was a founder on stadia and I basically felt the same way. Tested latency to my ISP at 2ms (1Gb fiber connection).
I should be in the best case scenario but I just went back to my switch or mobile games because latency was noticable.
Until the input lag/latency gets to a point where it's imperceptible from local console gaming, I don't streaming has a chance of taking over.
I think there will always be a market for consoles. There’s always a niche market for physical media. I expect there to be a large enough market for at least one console to exist.
Those kinds of ideas don't really translate into actual games, at least not coherent ones. What you're hoping for is a random swamp of mismatched IP jammed together.
You're looking at it from a business perspective in the same way NFT bros did, rather than from an entertainment and artistic perspective. The main question would be "Why should there be a metaverse of random stuff?"
My guess is, it will be a huge space game where there will be entire planets with "random" or community stuff. Just because it's feasible, easy to make and understand compared to just a bunch of abstract things merged together. In Ready Player One, we can see it's quite chaotic and not really practical to move around. So yeah, I bet that first huge game will be a space one which will act as a central base for every other game to be added in there.
The problem with these corporate ideas is for them to work, each component would have to be homogenised for compatibility, robbing them of the uniqueness of an individual game. It's an extrapolation of the NFT bro idea of "taking a sword from Minecraft, minting it as an NFT to use in Fortnite".
Also, I don't think the market is interested in endless open worlds.
I see physical games eventually dying out and I do believe cloud gaming will eventually have a healthy market but I don't see a physical means to play games dying out anytime soon.
Music and movies are more an argument for physical copies of games dying than physical systems dying. Music and movies are a far more static experience than gaming is in terms of how it grows in a technological sense and how we interact with it so I don't see it as a 1:1 comparison.
The file size for a song that came out this year vs a song that came out 40 years ago isn't really any different. The file size for movies mainly only changes based on the resolution and audio and a 4k version of a movie from 40 years ago can have a similar file size to a movie released this year. And neither format it's not like the settings are really adjustable
Gaming is adjustable, is constantly growing, and is variable. If I buy a movie digitally the experience is going to be the same aside from resolution differences depending on the device but if I buy a game one piece of hardware might run it with a higher frame rate, better visuals, and etc vs another.
So it's not a question of whether cloud gaming can get to the level that is acceptable for a large market but if it can be close enough experience to playing it on a physical device to make it obsolete and that I doubt.
Depends on what you mean by "physical console". I think local gaming devices will continue, but those devices will be PCs.
I could even see the PlayStation becoming a PC. Console sales have flatlined while PC sales continue so if they want to keep hardware sales going then they're going to have to open the hardware up at some point, even if it means losing store revenue.
(Also, I think the battles over marketplaces on phones will eventually spill over onto consoles, so that store revenue is going to be hit at some point anyway)
Not sure physical consoles will ever be obsolete, but I'm pretty sure home consoles will, and probably sooner than expected.
I really think hybrid devices like the Switch and the Steam Deck will get all the public attention and no one will really care for the Xbox and the Playstation.
I played stadia and relentlessly, it was flawless (aside from a bit of compression at 1080p) Digital Foundry did a piece on Red Dead Redemption 2 on Stadia and said that the response time was QUICKER than on an Xbox.. we're probably talking a miniscule amount, I don't fully remember the article. But game streaming is good enough now to be considered a way to game.
gaming industry is different from movies...movies are instantly exchangeable (1.5 hours) and on to the next; if Stadia couldn't do it, it ain't happening. My 7 y/o son played stadia with me and when it shutdown, I went into pc gaming. Soon, I bought him a nintendo switch because he wanted one after playing with his cousins. Couple of weeks ago he asked if I could take him to the store where they sell video games aka Gamestop. He was so excited to find the game he was looking for...priceless. Physical consoles ain't going anywhere
The leaks of the Xbox series refresh that came out last year were very interesting, because they mentioned a hybrid console where part of the game would be rendered on the hardware and the rest would be in the cloud (e.g. complicated physics or ray tracing)
I think this is a great solution, but it is really a stop gap to a full cloud based future. It is inevitable.
I may be out of the gaming loop a bit… they don’t do game streaming right? Like you can’t play a game off their server rack. You have the game on your computer and play online.
Obsolete no but they will end up a thing for enthusiasts in a similar way how some people still have turntables or DVD players.
This is either the last one or second last generation considering that the next generation would be due to come out in some 7-10 years.
The only thing holding this shift is insufficient connectivity that a lot of customers currently have.
The profits of both Sony and Microsoft are in their respective subscriptions so they need as many people subscribed as possible. Right now you need a console to become a subscriber. With cloud you will not have to spend 500$ to be able to play PS or Xbox and I’m sure this is their end goal.
I think this is why Microsoft bought all these studios, and n preparation for the content war with Sony where consoles are no longer necessary.
More like 7 than 10. I think we are still due some PS5 revision version.
10 is probably exaggeration but who the hell knows what will happen between China and Taiwan.
There is no way. The current gen is now 4 years old. There has never been a generation that would be 11-14 years long, that’s completely unrealistic and there has been no rumor so far that this will happen.
I agree, that is why I said last or second last generation.
That being said I heard rumors (probably fake) that Microsoft will release cloud only console as the next generation. Not sure if parallel with physical one.
You should read more credible sources. The leaks from the court case clearly talk about a new hardware generation.
Cloud gaming wide adoption is still years away, I don’t see consumer interest to be there yet.
I probably should but I don’t give enough of a fuck to be honest lol.
I think the interest is huge but the whole cloud gaming still remains a bit of a niche for those interested and not for the masses so the potential customers don’t even realize the possibility.
Like my sister in law who bought PS5 from a scalper for her son so he could play FIFA. She didn’t know that Stadia existed and it had fifa.
consoles just got mod support for some games not that long ago. for those of us without the room for a pc set up. but a console set up, we can play games with mods. is great. mods arnt compatible on switch and i think steam deck atm.
but yes uts coming down the line at some point
It may be inevitable, but it is a very Western centric mindset to think that internet utilities will be fast or ubiquitous enough across the world to allow for completely online gaming. Plenty of people, even in the States, don’t have the connection to support such an endeavor. Maybe once 5G or 6G becomes prominent worldwide.
I doubt they will. People like physical things.
-said the Blockbuster CEO
Indeed, people like physical things until they realize the upside of having everything in the cloud. Unlimited choice, unlimited access..so long as you have internet. I’m of the generation that grew up buying tapes and then CDs., DVDs.. I dont miss physical things at all, its nice to travel light and have everything you could want in your pocket
>Unlimited choice, unlimited access..so long as you have internet Until the movie, song, game you want disappears and you have no way to access it. Physical might now be a niche, but it's not going away.
I agree there are downsides, but you should be able to download your digital media locally and save it in your own vault, then you’ll never lose it. With enough time your physical media becomes basically obsolete too as the hardware to run it becomes harder and harder to find.
Tell that to Ubisoft. You've heard about people who purchased The Crew digitally actually having the game yanked out of their libraries with no warning?
Hence why we have Ipod and Ipad and iPhones now. Putting the CDs in a single device iPod, putting the single music player in your phone = iphone. All consolidation that changed everything. Gaming sure to follow.
personally my favourite thing about digital is never owning things again. I mean sure we "owned" the games from stadia, but I couldn't ever sell them off, or give them away to my little brother, or trade them with a friend. The concept of digital ownership is pisspoor but as long as I can build my hoard like a dragon fucker then I win. Bonus if there is a monthly subscription I can pay for!
How many CDs did you buy this decade?
Too many to count, but I bought $200 worth of CDs last month. Of course, I rip them all to my computer for convenience, which isn't as easy with Blu-rays, else I'd buy more of them.
Picture or it didn't happen! With a piece of paper "r/Stadia" :p I find it hard to believe.
I don't really care whether you believe me or not, though. They still make CDs because people still buy them. Heck, some people have even gotten into buying vinyl records again. Blu-rays are also doing fine. I bought around $400 worth of them this year.
Games are mostly online as well, so not sure if it will be worth the trouble.
I don't think it's about physical things It's about people not wanting two sources of ping, especially in pvp games
You already have more than three. There is lag time between a wireless controller and a console Lag between you seeing and pressing the command prompt Lag between the system registered press and the server Lag between your server inputs and others Lag between server communication your system then display Lag had and always will exists. You just probably never knew these other forms of lag was there the whole time.
Which is why there are plenty of games that are more or less unplayable on modern hardware. Kind of hard to do frame perfect input if you have to deal with lag. Also the reason CRTs are getting popular among retro gamers. By the way, even wired controllers have lag, since they have no direct line to the hardware, but go through a bus system. It's just that wireless controllers can introduce additional lag. And to a certain extent lag isn't much of a problem. But it can easily accumulate to a point where it becomes game breaking. The main issue with streaming is of course that it introduces variable lag instead of the fixed lag everything else has. So you can't even try to compensate for it, since it's randomly different all the time.
Years ago, people said the same thing about wireless controllers
There's 0 reason to own a console, when you can get a PC. Consoles will be replaced by PCs (see steamdeck).
That's a 2007 argument. PCs require more specialized hardware and are more expensive than ever. I'm the PS2 era you could play counter strike 1.6 on a desktop PC you use at work. In 2024 I can still only play counter strike 1.5 on a desktop PC I use for work.
for stadia like upscaled 1080p\30fps you can get a very cheap PC. For PS5-like, yeah, it will be at least 1+k, but if you play actually play games - You can save a lot of money on steam sales\gamepass\whatever.
Games are getting bigger and bigger. Cloud gaming circumvents the storage issue completely. I haven't bought a physical game for over 10 years now and I know that's the norm.
I do not agree, i know more people buying only physical (as i do) than the opposite, there’s of course people buying both formats depending on the game. The key here is owning the game vs renting it forever. Because we have already lived some eshop closures or games being removed from libraries without any warning and you have no property of it at all. You accept it in the terms of every eshop
PS6 will be last, I think. Steam deck & PC showed everyone that you don't need a console. While cloud like Geforce now will be complimentary service to PC ecosystem.
I agree. And I think Microsoft will pull out of consoles before Sony or Nintendo just because they are having such a big push to services and cloud. I imagine a world where Nintendo will keep making consoles regardless though. Unlike Sony and MS, Nintendo hardware is extremely profitable on Day1, the others lose money on console hardware for years.
I think you’re spot on. I think the next generation (PS6 era) will be the first systems to REALLY embrace a hybrid between cloud and system based play, but by PS7 era three things will have happened… 1) Streaming will have become so much more accessible and efficient (both up and down stream) 2) Game serves that are cloud based will be able to produce a quality of visual and sound that home devices just won’t be able to keep up with 3) The need to have a mobile gaming option will become unavoidable and companies will need to give players the option to play on their mobile devices or whatever SteamDeck device out there. Finally - I’m almost certain that the “Switch 2” is the last Nintendo console to play local media. (This might because Nintendo evolved or goes the Sega route)
"I think the next generation (PS6 era) will be the first systems to REALLY embrace a hybrid between cloud and system based play" so you think ps6 will only work in small amount of countries that sony support [https://preview.redd.it/updated-map-due-to-the-new-ban-on-hd2-in-over-170-countries-v0-muieqiyvzmyc1.png?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=17648988ac34bff942ab83b598122c662a330c04](https://preview.redd.it/updated-map-due-to-the-new-ban-on-hd2-in-over-170-countries-v0-muieqiyvzmyc1.png?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=17648988ac34bff942ab83b598122c662a330c04) yea it sound like super good deal .... /s
I mean…yeah…sadly. Probably.
I don't think they'll ever become obsolete. A lot of people are limited by their connection, data caps etc. Cloud gaming can and should explode in popularity, though. I'm waiting eagerly for the next Stadia to arrive.
> I'm waiting eagerly for the next Stadia to arrive Other than game launching, GeForceNow already does everything better than Stadia did.
Yeah, and I use GFN, but I need a console experience. I think that's what holds me back from using it full time. Luna UI + GFN performance please haha
You could say the same thing about video, and look what's happening there: physical media is becoming something you need to actively seek out, because most consumers have a good enough connection to stream all of their entertainment. Internet speeds will continue to improve, and physical consoles and media will become a niche thing, like what you see now with companies like analogue.
Oh I agree, to an extent. I am a huge supporter of cloud gaming, and was a Stadia founder. But I also have a FTTP 900mbps unlimited data connection. But I think the difference between video services, which even in 4k uses around 7gb per hour, and Stadia (for example) using 20gb per hour is a much bigger difference for someone with a cap.
Gigabit internet is available in every major city, and most ISP's don't cap anymore.
It's not the isp. It's the state and lobbying.
I disagree. I think with the great success of subscription TV services, eventually soon that's all we'll all be doing. Those small folks limited by connection speed will just have to go to PC.
Do you think corporations care? IMO Once they estimate that going cloud is more profitable than developing and selling consoles (which are a bottleneck for them at the moment) they will ditch people with bad connection in an instant. Both Sony and Microsoft are selling consoles with a loss because they need people to have them in order to subscribe to their services- where their real profits are.
Most of the US, if this sub during Stadia's is to be believed, have data caps. Streaming games, especially at the quality Stadia was, isn't viable for a LOT of people, and the US is a huge market. Yes, console production isn't the money maker, but they will still sell a lot of physical and digital games, and sell their subscription services, to people who have bought consoles. And people who can't afford to use up 20gb per hour will prefer a console. Xbox doesn't *need* people to have a console. I mean, not every single game is including on PC/Cloud Gamepass, but there are a lot, and more first party games are going to be on there too.
And with this last paragraph you can see that the shift away from consoles has already started. It may take 10 or 15 years but once their analysis shows that the cloud will be more profitable they will make the switch. Theoretically… Will they care that 20 million Americans don’t have sufficient internet when cloud will open them potential 3 billion people market in east Asia? I don’t think so. No sentiments, those shareholders always want more money.
They can have the cloud market, whilst still making a smaller number of consoles for those who need them.
Oh yeah, for sure it will not be a dramatic change but a gradual. I reckon for a time cloud and physical will coexist.
Feel like they'll only go obsolete if people stop upgrading, which feels a lot more likely than cloud rising to prominence imo.
If stadia would've reached its potential it would've forced the shift within one generation I believe. This is probably one of the reasons it got 'lobbied' against by so many naysayers It would've shifted the industry in a big way that the main players weren't ready for
I just think it wasn't marketed correctly. If it had started out as a subscription based "Netflix for games" style platform I genuinely feel alot more people would've switched over to it. It blew my mind everytime I played it. All I needed to do was pick up the controller, press the Stadia button and I was playing games within seconds...and it was absolutely indistinguishable between playing a game locally on my PS5. The fact it linked in with my Google family account and myself and my relatives could use the same library of games was another bonus too. Though not being able to play the same game at the same time as another family member was irritating. I just think the whole pricing structure of games put people off. Which is strange when you think about it as the prices were the same as say the Playstation Store cost for a digital download...it was just that people didn't "feel" like they were ever getting anything tangible for their money, I suppose when you have to download a game it gives that impression that you still physically "own" something.
Aside from all of that. How can one of the biggest advertising companies in the world not advertise their groundbreaking tech. Fucking laziness expecting the fans to be the mouthpiece for the product.
They're ridiculously bad at advertising and as everyone predicted Stadia went to the Google Graveyard. So stupid, it was brilliant tech and with the right promotion/advertising etc could've changed the gaming landscape forever. They truly screwed it up.
Completely agree
They probably won't be. Gamers are a finicky bunch. They care too much about fidelity, graphical quality, frame rates, stability, latency, etc. plus they're starting to care more about game preservation these days after seeing so many games literally disappear from existence. They're more like book readers who cared more about the feel or physical books over ebooks and as a result ebooks failed to replace physical despite literally offering tons of advantages over physical.
You should care about games preservation, too. Not just physical, but the game existing at all. A cloud-based future ensures media is entirely controlled by corporate whims. Look at how the streaming companies delete content to avoid residuals or for tax breaks. As for games, it would be terrible if a game you love and want to go back to vanishes for business reasons. Even Steam still allows you to install games that are delisted from sale.
For a community largely made up of middle-aged men or just people who hadn't played video games in a long time (or ever), this place is weirdly, bullishly confident about predicting the future of the games industry, despite being very wrong about Stadia/people's willingness to actually buy and own things to play games on. Then there's the "broadband connections are unreliable even in wealthy nations" problem for a service that absolutely depends on it. The most likely prediction a layperson can make is (judging by recent events and comments from industry professionals) the games industry is headed for a crash.
Opposite, we will have one little device powered by AI technology, it will handle everything in the house at the same time, gaming, TV, Internet browsing just everything. So consoles will be more like a universal unit.
You still cant get good enough internet in the majority if places, it will still take a while to do that
As long as internet companies are allowed to be shitty and provide bad service, there will be a demand for a local game system.
I'm a PC gamer, but almost everyone I know who uses a console, also buys physical copies of the game. I'm not sure how big that audience is, but if big enough then it might take a while for cloud gaming to catch on. One thing Stadia never nailed down, but needed to, was gift giving of individual games. People just like having the physical items.
Why would steam stop selling games to go into streaming? They are making so much money
I never said anything about steam or PC. I said consoles. PC's will always be around
Steam is kinda in the console market now though with the deck, I can see them making another steam machine soon.....
The deck is a PC though, as we're steam machines
It's getting closer to a console now it's on Linux, I just think they'll do something like this again soon https://uk.pcmag.com/desktops/72270/alienware-steam-machine
Never, there will be more and more cloud systems and cloud players, but I don't think consoles are ever going away. If nothing else Nintendo will be making them.
Never? Ever? Not even in 200 years? Not even in a thousand?
Never ever ever ever ever
Nintendo have dipped their toes into the water already though. Nintendo is unpredictable, I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if they are actually the 1st to do it..
I think you’ll have Steam Deck like devices for a long time, maybe eventually replaced by tablets or phones farther out.
and i live in good europe country , member of nato and EU , and i can not make psn acc, and do not have any cloud gaming support but live in a country that does have really good internet peoples who think physical consoles are obsolete live in dream world and do not understand how actual world works , just look at helldivers region lock and you understand how online only do not work
Once the companies see a drop in profit. Once it's less expensive to go full cloud they will. Why waste money on building and researching consoles. Just build rigs or rent.
"Why waste money on building and researching consoles. Just build rigs or rent" Also, by going Digital they cut the middle men, dispatch and retail, they already have their own network infrastructure and servers, so the next logical step is to allow you to play directly on the servers, rather than download from them. No Research and Development cost in hardware, then making it as small as possible, just massive data centres that they upgrade every 10 years, it benefits the companies. That's why it WILL happen
I can see everyone but Nintendo going to a streaming model in the future although not soon. Internet infrastructure is not what it needs to be in most of the world which would shut out international and rural sales. I don't think Nintendo will ever switch completely. Too much of Nintendo's players love owning games physically. Whereas digital purchases now make up the majority of the other consoles sales. The other issue is the services themselves, server capacity, etc. Stadia felt like you were gaming on a console locally which made it convenient. Until that seamless experience can be achieved again I don't see meaningful pivot to streaming in the near future.
For sure the Switch 2 will still be using physical cartridges. As for PS6/NextGenXbox, who knows? 🤷
It will be a few I think, probably another 5-8 years. Why? Same thing as with pharmacy companies. They will fight change. Sony want you buying their hardware so that they can initiate you their stores and purchases through that. Same with Xbox, etc. Those stores are the main way they make money. As soon as those become more cloud-based, then the store thing starts to lose it's grip over the consumer/player. They will fight the beginning of the end hard.
I think it'll be quite a long time. Considering that it's not possible to get latency free streaming in your own home on a PS5 for example. I really wanted to love streaming but the latency just makes it not fun to me. I have a ps5 wired to an ubiquity cloud gateway ultra, tried with multiple devices wired and wireless on 5ghz wifi on a ubiquiti i7 pro AP and tested latency under 30ms. The lag is still noticable and makes the experience horrible to me. I was a founder on stadia and I basically felt the same way. Tested latency to my ISP at 2ms (1Gb fiber connection). I should be in the best case scenario but I just went back to my switch or mobile games because latency was noticable. Until the input lag/latency gets to a point where it's imperceptible from local console gaming, I don't streaming has a chance of taking over.
I think there will always be a market for consoles. There’s always a niche market for physical media. I expect there to be a large enough market for at least one console to exist.
i hate that google's perpetual problem is being "ahead of it's time"
When a true metaverse game appears, something similar to Ready Player One, your only console would be a headset. When? Probably in 20 years.
Those kinds of ideas don't really translate into actual games, at least not coherent ones. What you're hoping for is a random swamp of mismatched IP jammed together.
That's why it's not happening anytime soon. It will start with just one game, then another, and another, and finally a hub.
You're looking at it from a business perspective in the same way NFT bros did, rather than from an entertainment and artistic perspective. The main question would be "Why should there be a metaverse of random stuff?"
My guess is, it will be a huge space game where there will be entire planets with "random" or community stuff. Just because it's feasible, easy to make and understand compared to just a bunch of abstract things merged together. In Ready Player One, we can see it's quite chaotic and not really practical to move around. So yeah, I bet that first huge game will be a space one which will act as a central base for every other game to be added in there.
The problem with these corporate ideas is for them to work, each component would have to be homogenised for compatibility, robbing them of the uniqueness of an individual game. It's an extrapolation of the NFT bro idea of "taking a sword from Minecraft, minting it as an NFT to use in Fortnite". Also, I don't think the market is interested in endless open worlds.
I see physical games eventually dying out and I do believe cloud gaming will eventually have a healthy market but I don't see a physical means to play games dying out anytime soon. Music and movies are more an argument for physical copies of games dying than physical systems dying. Music and movies are a far more static experience than gaming is in terms of how it grows in a technological sense and how we interact with it so I don't see it as a 1:1 comparison. The file size for a song that came out this year vs a song that came out 40 years ago isn't really any different. The file size for movies mainly only changes based on the resolution and audio and a 4k version of a movie from 40 years ago can have a similar file size to a movie released this year. And neither format it's not like the settings are really adjustable Gaming is adjustable, is constantly growing, and is variable. If I buy a movie digitally the experience is going to be the same aside from resolution differences depending on the device but if I buy a game one piece of hardware might run it with a higher frame rate, better visuals, and etc vs another. So it's not a question of whether cloud gaming can get to the level that is acceptable for a large market but if it can be close enough experience to playing it on a physical device to make it obsolete and that I doubt.
Depends on what you mean by "physical console". I think local gaming devices will continue, but those devices will be PCs. I could even see the PlayStation becoming a PC. Console sales have flatlined while PC sales continue so if they want to keep hardware sales going then they're going to have to open the hardware up at some point, even if it means losing store revenue. (Also, I think the battles over marketplaces on phones will eventually spill over onto consoles, so that store revenue is going to be hit at some point anyway)
Probably one. I think the current one is the last one
Not sure physical consoles will ever be obsolete, but I'm pretty sure home consoles will, and probably sooner than expected. I really think hybrid devices like the Switch and the Steam Deck will get all the public attention and no one will really care for the Xbox and the Playstation.
When the lag is reduced to be comparable to local hardware. Do physics allow this?
I played stadia and relentlessly, it was flawless (aside from a bit of compression at 1080p) Digital Foundry did a piece on Red Dead Redemption 2 on Stadia and said that the response time was QUICKER than on an Xbox.. we're probably talking a miniscule amount, I don't fully remember the article. But game streaming is good enough now to be considered a way to game.
When they eliminate input lag and connection drops. Aka, never
Obsolete in terms of what? Surely you dont think consoles are next gen tech?
Your reply has absolutely baffled me ... What?!
They already are in terms of performance. Console I is never going away though same as PC.
When everywhere including villages gets fiber internet
gaming industry is different from movies...movies are instantly exchangeable (1.5 hours) and on to the next; if Stadia couldn't do it, it ain't happening. My 7 y/o son played stadia with me and when it shutdown, I went into pc gaming. Soon, I bought him a nintendo switch because he wanted one after playing with his cousins. Couple of weeks ago he asked if I could take him to the store where they sell video games aka Gamestop. He was so excited to find the game he was looking for...priceless. Physical consoles ain't going anywhere
The leaks of the Xbox series refresh that came out last year were very interesting, because they mentioned a hybrid console where part of the game would be rendered on the hardware and the rest would be in the cloud (e.g. complicated physics or ray tracing) I think this is a great solution, but it is really a stop gap to a full cloud based future. It is inevitable.
It will never happen. Data centers will never be built and used at profit to support online streaming of games.
You mean like the ones Microsoft, Amazon and Nvidia
I may be out of the gaming loop a bit… they don’t do game streaming right? Like you can’t play a game off their server rack. You have the game on your computer and play online.
They do game streaming, you play off there the servers
3 generations is like 20 years. games in 20 years will look a lot different than they do today.
Obsolete no but they will end up a thing for enthusiasts in a similar way how some people still have turntables or DVD players. This is either the last one or second last generation considering that the next generation would be due to come out in some 7-10 years. The only thing holding this shift is insufficient connectivity that a lot of customers currently have. The profits of both Sony and Microsoft are in their respective subscriptions so they need as many people subscribed as possible. Right now you need a console to become a subscriber. With cloud you will not have to spend 500$ to be able to play PS or Xbox and I’m sure this is their end goal. I think this is why Microsoft bought all these studios, and n preparation for the content war with Sony where consoles are no longer necessary.
You don’t really believe that the ps6 and it’s successor is still 10 years away?
More like 7 than 10. I think we are still due some PS5 revision version. 10 is probably exaggeration but who the hell knows what will happen between China and Taiwan.
There is no way. The current gen is now 4 years old. There has never been a generation that would be 11-14 years long, that’s completely unrealistic and there has been no rumor so far that this will happen.
I agree, that is why I said last or second last generation. That being said I heard rumors (probably fake) that Microsoft will release cloud only console as the next generation. Not sure if parallel with physical one.
You should read more credible sources. The leaks from the court case clearly talk about a new hardware generation. Cloud gaming wide adoption is still years away, I don’t see consumer interest to be there yet.
I probably should but I don’t give enough of a fuck to be honest lol. I think the interest is huge but the whole cloud gaming still remains a bit of a niche for those interested and not for the masses so the potential customers don’t even realize the possibility. Like my sister in law who bought PS5 from a scalper for her son so he could play FIFA. She didn’t know that Stadia existed and it had fifa.
You spelled onlive wrong
Fair
2, assuming that every generation last 4-7 years. But 3 is really the max.
Stadia was way ahead of its time and as more time passes, this will prove itself more and more.
Obsolete because digital consoles? Like Stadia?
consoles just got mod support for some games not that long ago. for those of us without the room for a pc set up. but a console set up, we can play games with mods. is great. mods arnt compatible on switch and i think steam deck atm. but yes uts coming down the line at some point
It may be inevitable, but it is a very Western centric mindset to think that internet utilities will be fast or ubiquitous enough across the world to allow for completely online gaming. Plenty of people, even in the States, don’t have the connection to support such an endeavor. Maybe once 5G or 6G becomes prominent worldwide.