Epic Games technical director, Tim Sweeney believes there are too many platforms on the market at the moment, and argues some will die soon, as the mobile and console market “consolidate”, an event that will usher in the demise of some players. His quotes from the D.I.C.E summit can be quenched below.
“This is too many platforms,” Sweeney said at the summit in Las Vegas last night. “We’re seeing now iPad sales have surpassed the sales of PCs. This is a real revelation, this is a product that wasn’t invented until a few years ago and it’s basically supplanting personal computers.
Over time these platforms will be whittled down to a competing set of platforms to maybe three winners worldwide across everything – computers, game platforms, smartphones… We should expect a lot of consolidation here and winners and losers according to who picks the right directions and executes successfully.”
Sweeney continued, pointing towards the significant steps in technology that’s brought us this far, including Kinect-like motion control, cloud and augmented reality, contending we’re only now scratching the surface of such breakthroughs.
“There are a lot of technical challenges. We’ve barely scratched the surface of the consumer implications, what we can do with an iPad or iPhone today is limited by our experience of our computers and history.
I see a bright future for technology and its implications on games. The ability of game developers to exploit another thousand-fold increase in computing power on future generations of platforms.
Some of it will be consoles, some of it PC and some of it tablets. The form factor we can’t predict, but the opportunity is there. Our industry’s brightest days are yet to come.”
I tend to agree with the man, can’t have too many cooks in the kitchen, they’ll only spoil the soup.
Via GI.biz.
I can see everyone just having a tablet that can be slotted into a doc when you get home so you can use a mouse and keyboard. I can’t ever see touch screens replacing buttons for gaming though.
depends.
dont want too much but dont want too little either.
you need competition simply to drive ideas and innovation, but too many can conflict with ideas and which way the industry should go.
and big wastages, the HD DVD VS bluray race for instance.
toshiba and M$ spent a shit load of cash on that, all money down the drain!
feel sorry for the poor souls that are still stuck with it.
in fact every time i see my cuz i laugh my head off at him because he always use to give me stick about backing bluray.
The industry needs Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. IF any platform should disappear, let it me something else.
yea.
we need $ony for the high tech games, M$ for the software and online services, and ninty for the more hardcore old school games.