Do you really care what’s under your console’s “hood?” I remember a time before P3’s and P4’s ruled the computer earth when you really cared what your processor could do. Man, I could tell you how many gigflops my mug could spit out. Now-a-days, I could care less how many gigs my processor has. I’m not even sure what it is, 2. something. Just give me some decent ram, a harddrive, a nice graphics card, and oh yeah, really good software. Aren’t we getting to the same point with console hardware? Give us something that works, just give us some really good software, i.e. games.
I can certainly respect the PS3’s and 360’s processing power, but I personally don’t care too much. Let me know what you guys think and if i’m missing something though. I just really feel that the console industry might be entering the same era that processors went through a couple of years ago when people stopped caring about power. When hardware advances so much in front of the software, users usually stop caring. (I can’t think of one instance where that’s not the case.)
Yorrike
What’s pissed me off most with the announcements of the past week and their associated fanboy drooling is the old graphics debate. If graphics mattered, the Xbox would be totally outselling the GameCube and PS2. It’s as simple as that. The only thing that matters is the games, it always has been and it always will be.
I too used to care about how fast my PC was and the number of giggle flops it could consume in an evening, but I’ve had the same computer for 3 years now, and I simply see no need to upgrade. Indeed, I have thought about downgrading to a Mac Mini in order to reduce space, power consumption and noise. I don’t game on my PC, I browse the web, do the odd bit of graphics manipulation and write university reports. Consoles are for gaming since they “just work”.
I can foresee this generation as the final console generation. You simply don’t need better graphics than what these machines are pushing. It’s not needed to better tell a story, and it’s going to cause the price of games to skyrocket due to incresing artwork requirements. I think Nintendo has seen this too, and the “4 times more powerful than the GameCube” puts my mind as ease, since Resident Evil 4, only 4 times better graphics would more than suffice. Even then, I think we’ll be reaching the uncanny valley (which I’ve written about), which is something no one wants to see.
Aside from the power aspect of this generation, I think the main factors will be related to Microsoft and Sony’s media pushing plans. If people start buying the PS3 or 360 as media centres instead of game machines, you’ll get market dilution, where there maybe ten million PS3s out there, but ony five million are used for gaming, which will end up costing Sony and MS (in regard to the 360), a lot of cash, as the machines are sold at a loss.