Console vs. PC redux: how mobile gaming will reshape the industry (again) [15Jun11] - 0 views
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Who cares about ancient history? If you're a gamer you should, because it's happening again. This time, though, its console gamers lobbing the same lamentations at Angry Bird players, Words With Friends addicts, and ever-sneaky Fruit Ninjas. As smartphones and tablets get more powerful, the dedicated gaming machine looks more and more quaint. Where once software supported hardware in one big, happy family, it's all becoming rather more... disjointed. For a gamer like me, that's a little troubling. If app gaming does for consoles what those consoles did to the PC scene a decade ago, a lot of big game studios are going to be in trouble, and a lot of gamers are going to be pining for the good 'ol days.
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It's hard to tell at what point mobile gaming became a serious threat to the console scene, but surely nobody at Nintendo lost any sleep when Snake crawled its way into the hearts of many a Nokia user back in the late '90s. Then, just a few years later, Steve Jobs started comparing iPod sales to those of dedicated gaming machines. I initially thought the very notion was preposterous; that an iPod didn't hold a candle to the DS and PSP I took with me on every flight. In the ensuing months, however, I've changed my tune.
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In recent years we haven't exactly seen a lot of innovation on the console gaming front. Sure, there was a giant rush to jump on the motion gaming bandwagon -- Microsoft with the Kinect and Sony with the Move, even Nintendo sauntering back in with the MotionPlus -- but none of those technologies have delivered the new gameplay experiences that even grizzled veterans like myself secretly hoped they might. Nor have they succeeded in whetting my appetite for something truly new. As someone whose youth was punctuated by a three-year console cycle, booting up the same 'ol hardware almost six years later feels wrong.
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On the portable gaming front things are moving -- but slowly. Over the past seven or so years Nintendo and Sony have both been slowly refining their portable systems of choice, but not even Nintendo's glasses-free 3D technology really qualifies as something particularly innovative. It is, after all, just another graphics technique
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With nothing really changing it's mighty easy for the others to catch up, and of course those others are the smartphones, the iPods, and the tablets. They aren't there yet -- the Samsung Galaxy S II has a dual-core processor running at 1GHz while the Xbox 360 has 3.2Ghz spread over three cores -- but mobile devices are gaining ground quick. And, with services like OnLive, one could say that hardware no longer matters.
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While we'll surely get one more generation of great dedicated gaming hardware from the big three, I have my fears that it will be the last. Sony sees the writing on the wall, with its (currently half-assed) PlayStation Suite program for devices, and Microsoft is testing the waters with Xbox Live integration on Windows Phone. It's only a matter of time before everybody's following suit -- or getting left behind. But don't worry, console gamers, because it's not all bad news. We're actually on the verge of some very interesting changes which, believe it or not, could work out for the best. Think about it: all modern phones have Bluetooth, so connecting external gaming controllers is easy -- even a keyboard and mouse. HDMI output is now more-or-less standard, and hopefully WHDI ubiquity isn't far off.