Two weeks have already zoomed by in 2012 and before you know it January will be waving us goodbye… it’s already doing that. So before the month’s up, I decided to take a look ahead at what gaming has to offer, and what I found is a year packed with many great experiences, but also the prospect of decline. Not for gaming as a whole, but rather the console market.
The great experiences I’m referring to include Bioshock: Infinite, Mass Effect 3, The Last Of Us, God of War 4, and many other titles to be included in my “These Ten Games Will Shape 2012″ article. It’s a year we’ll never forget. 2012 will also be the year of Nintendo’s Wii U and possibly a reveal of PS4 and the next Xbox. It’ll also be the year of PS Vita… But will all these possibilities enhance the console market? Because if we’re to really take trends seriously, cloud-based gaming is the next big thing…
I’ve always wondered where will gaming take us in the coming years, and quite honestly things are becoming very disruptive. You have companies like Gaikai and Onlive vying for venerability with their cloud-based gaming platforms, predicting the death of consoles sooner than we think. Social games have been on the rise and then there’s the smartphone behemoth that’s eating into the core of traditional gaming more than ever before.
What will gaming be like in the next 4 years? Will the hard copy model give way to cloud-based offerings like Onlive, leaving those without internet connection in the dark? Will Sony or Microsoft truly bow out because of this perfect storm heading straight to consoles?
The way I see it, there will always be a group of people who’ll never give up consoles for Onlive or Gaikai, but the real question is will said crowd be large enough to maintain the profitability for the big players to stay in.
Last I heard, Apple was planning to change the game once more with its long-awaited play to enter the TV market… Said TV will definitely not be your mundane HDTV or whatever, it’ll be an all-in-one device that can do anything. Literally. Including the capability to play videogames.
apple has not shit on the ps3 and xbox
1. it a freakin computer company
2. ps3 and xbox are for game built for it!
3.Apple is a freakin COMPUTER COMPANY
Apple may not be a “gaming” company, but iOS has disrupted portable gaming as we know it, who’s to say Apple hasn’t seen the potential in gaming? They could easily extend their reach.
Narwall that is the same thing the Sony said when Apple released the iPod they are a computer company what do they know about portable music?…….. Moreover, who can forget how Cell Phone manufactures and the tel-com industry responded when Apple released the iPhone. What do they know about making cell phones they are a computer company?…
Plus Apple technically stop being a computer on January 9th, 2007 when they switch their name to Apple Inc. That was not just for marketing purposes because since then Apple’s focus has been on consumer electronics and not computers. In fact, Apple’s core business revolves around the iPhone, iPod, iTunes and the iPad and not so much the Macintosh Computer line….
An even bigger issue here is that as gamers many of us are going through something that we never had to experience before as gamers when it comes to gaming. Not being the center of attention. For the longest the gaming industry depended us to buy their products so everything was created with the hardcore gamer in mind…. Unfortunately that is no longer the case casual gamers make up a large segment of the gaming population they may even be the majority and with the Wii, Kinect and Move that segment is only going grow larger and the market is dictated by the masses. As I am quite sure any PC gamer can tell you…
Best comment I’ve read in a bit.
not at all.
what people are forgetting is yes mobile gaming has come a long, long way, but console gaming home entertainment is also moving.
the only reason why people are ruining around with their umbrellas up predicting the apocalypse is because mobile tech has moved leaps and bounds within the past few years but home tech has not moved much.
well its utilization has not.
iphone 3 came out and within months it had apps maxing it out.
iphone 3GS came out same thing.
iphone 4 same thing.
iphone 4S same thing.
the home market has moved allot, but in comparison to the mobile market it has barley budged!
and thats about to change.
yes the gap between mobile and home entertainment is becoming smaller and smaller, but that does not mean that home entertainment will die.
that does not mean mobile phones will replace our consoles.
you have to remember phones MUST be compact, you cant carry a ps3 around in your pocket.
as tech evolves it needs more room to cool itself, we will never ever take out our phone and hook it up to the TV and play our games on there as high quality as we could get out of a home console.
consoles can be big, so they can have more power in them because they can have more fans and space.
mobile gaming will never replace home consoles, simply because there is so much more we can do with that extra horsepower and as humans there will always be a demand for improvement.
there will be a point where phones are so powerful they would produce photo perfect images, so in theory there is no need for more power.
thus making consoles and PCs obsolete.
BUT then we will find something else to use the extra power on.
then something else, and something else, and something else.
so on and so on.
there will always be demand for more processing power, there for there will always be demand for home consoles and PCs, simply because phones cannot will not produce the same amount.
as for onlive im 100% positive it will be “the norm” in the future.
how long totally depends on governments and how quickly they can embrace the digital revolution.
BUT that said allot of people like having physical copies of their games, and just like that allot of people like having physical machines.
i take immense joy taking apart my PC and putting it back together!
when i was a kid at high school i actually had a job on the side fixing consoles and computers to help pay for school and hobbies, i use to love ripping things apart and fixing them!
still do!
i could of paid someone to build my PC for me, but wheres the fun in that?
i spend a couple of days slowly building and testing it myself, and id totally do it again!
i love taking it apart and cleaning it every once in a while, making sure theres no dust build up.
turns into a hobby.
thats exactly why i cant see things like onlive killing off home consoles.
yea it saves you allot of headaches, no worrying if you have the right specs, no buying the systems in the first place, no maintenance, and no oh god dam it its broken now not only do i have to fork out to fix it i now have to say goodbye to it for a few months.
but wheres the fun in that?
id much rather have the expenses, have the hardware, because i have something physically in front of my i can see, and enjoy.
running a game off a computer half way across the word, wheres the fun in that!?
i went to JB in the city a few weeks ago and they had a 10K acer predator and alienware desktops setup with 4 curved monitors giving you 180 degrees vision.
and i laughed and giddied like a school girl!
i love seeing tech in front of me, onlive would totally destroy that!
thats why i cant see it taking over, replacing hardware.
because so many people enjoy having the hardware, the “headaches” in front of them.
yea for the lazy its great, but what about everyone else?
dont worry gaming consoles and PCs are not going anywhere!