Ex-Xbox man predicts death of consoles News

Don't see it
People like owning physical property. I do at any rate, still enjoy buying dvds/cd's. I do think that eventually you would/should be able to download all and any games, no matter their size.

Too many shades of the Phil Harrison 'vision'. You lose.

you still need a box somewhere

He's not saying that games consoles won't exist, he's saying you will have one master device and then if you want to play games on it you unlock the games function, if you want to watch BD you unlock the BD function, if you want to record TV you unlock that etc.

I think that's a very clever idea. Then you don't have to have all these different variants of consoles or other hardware. The different manufacturers will all make their own version of the master device so competition will still be good.

He makes some interesting points. Not sure about the time-frame, but it does make sense to predict more convergence of similar devices and a shift towards online services and downloadable content.

Yeah, if he's proposing the game runs and renders on a virtual machine out on the network, and you just have a glorified terminal at your end, then he's being a dick. Unless something extremely drastic happens to ping times in the next few years.

He's the ex-boss for a reason!!

Haven't sony already taken the first steps towards this unified vision then?

I predict the death of XBox 360 consoles!

systems: hey, thanks for reading the article. That sounds like an even worse idea, like some sort of Nuon thing. Might have a hard time persuading Nintendo and Sony to go for a generic platform, since they make the money principally on license fees and not hardware.

Even if everything 'converges' there will still need be for a standardisation, and the actual hardware to be able to translate various data into gaming, movies, music and so on.

Having no 'box' doesnt mean will do away with everything involved, PC is a good example and the need for codec for movies download, but what form of 'codec' will be needed to be in place for gaming download to work? Flash is too limited in my view but future generation of this kind of software, yes possibly but that is perhaps assuming everything would be in bitsize and casualised? Will TV remote be standarised for gaming along the Wii remote? Will we ever see the like of FFXIII, Lost Odyssey or other large gaming data?

Interesting possibility as there will always come a 'watershed' moment where complicated system usually gives way to a simplified and people friendly (just look at Wii's success), but I believe we will still see one more generation at least after current gen, still too much money in it otherwise!

Well, that's certainly possible. Transmitting just the keystrokes (or button-presses and stick movements) to the server, and stream the image back, requires surprisingly little in the way of bandwidth and proceccing power. So it is technically viable, I suppose, and it kils piracy dead, in the same way MMORPG's do - so that's a nivce incentive for the publishers to opt for this route.

It is, however, a very vulnerable tech model. Even just a little bit of lag fubars everything; what is acceptable latency when using a server-side word processor is unplayable for a game requiring 30 to 60 Frames Per Second. So that is pretty risky, and probably not viable at all for customers not living on top of a fiber optic cable. But maybe everybody will do just that in 5 to 10 years. As well as having flying cars and jumping around on cybernetic legs of course.

My guess is that no-one will be playing games at all in 10 years time, but will just access nirvana directly by means of trancendental auto-manipulation of karmic pleasure sentres, which will upen up the chakras and in be lots better than any computer games. Well. that is my prediction, anyway.

His timeframe is all wrong. Nothing about the current generation of consoles indicates that any of the three players will not be working on the next gen. In order to meet his longer term timeframe, something seriously wrong will have to happen for everyone next time around - not likely.

And technically, the only way to ditch a 'complex' box/physical console of some kind will be to have a unified IO/Video interface that simply trades input for video, having a game entirely running from a remote server. Even on the fastest Internet2 10gb connection, the latency would be unnacceptable.

Today's multiplayer games are playable because a lot of the game can be done in realtime on the client's side. Once you put character control, movement, aiming etc on the server the lag would be horrendously apparant.

Use Remote Desktop to get an idea. It's functional for work, but wouldn't be in any situation where responsiveness matters.

Definitely will happen in the next 5 - 10 years. Because:

1. The whole world will have super-duper broadband with no constraints and outage
2. A backend server capacity to handle million of concurrent players will be in place
3. All manufacturers, developers and publishers can all migrate to a completely different business model.

All within the next 5 - 10 years. Sorted!

"Virtualised"

The word virtual has been abused heavily over the last few years. These days it seems to either mean "3D" or "online". Tomorrow it will mean "slightly happy" and "nearly turquoise".

Anyway, I can see where he is coming from even if his choice of words clearly drives me bonkers. I predict a subscription based future for games. That is my prediction, you heard it here first, etc.

Pay a scaling flat fee per month, play any game you want within your allocation. Film rental has this model already. Pay-per-play would still exist, but it would simply be one of several subscriber options.

Frankly, the box that makes this happen is irrelevant. The technology won't be key, it will be the service that makes the difference.


"Yeah, if he's proposing the game runs and renders on a virtual machine out on the network, and you just have a glorified terminal at your end, then he's being a dick."

Welol its a bit of a leap to start assuming all sorts of hard plans. The only suspect thing was the last sentence. Thats what I am talking about with the word virtualised. It means nothing and just causes confusion.

"1. The whole world will have super-duper broadband with no constraints and outage "

That was sarcasm right? Cunning, dry witty sarcasm.

Lets assume for a second it wasn't.

NEVER going to happen. What does "no constraints" mean exactly?

I agree in part. I think the future lies in software, rather than hardware. The console industry is an odd one because it has lots of conflicting and incompatible technologies and as the recent Blu-Ray/HD-DVD war (and all the similar format wars before it) have proven, consumers want a single platform. Having different consoles has only lasted this long because each has exclusives but as they become rarer (or less important) it is possible you will see a single platform in future that is manufactured by more than one company.

I certainly don't think that the market is big enough to have three different consoles in the long term. Although sales of all are healthy right now, we can already see a degredation in the sales of the 360 that even the recent price cut has been unable to halt.

I also predict the 'death' of all consoles within 5 - 10 years. All 360 consoles that is, hur de hur.

Ha, yes, you companies would like to see that eh? Well you can shuff that where the sun doesn't shine.

What does "no constraints" mean exactly?

Download caps become meaningless.

5 to 10 years?

Can't see it either. The internet in its current form (and unlikely to change in 5 years) simply couldn't handle the demands of a such potentially large bandwidth requirements to stream GT5 7 (or whatever version). It's struggling now under the weight of bit-torrent and video streaming sites.

Though what I thnk would be better is a single common or open console platform that Sony/ MS / Nintendo (unlikely to happen) to unify all platforms and bring development costs down - developers then wouldn't have to develop for 3 hardware types as at present.

Anyway ... back to reality.

AT least you wouldn't have to install games, that wouldbe taken care of at the server end. I dont think it will come as a surprise when it happens.

I am waiting for MS office to become a remote web based application, The funny thing is they tried all this back in the 80's when the Internet first started, guess what the internet made it totally unusable...You'll still need processing power at you end, otherwise you'll press jump, and you character wont jump till the server has been pinged...which will never be instant unless relativity gets changed or something.

Yes, thanks jack. And no lag. And all those other issues that affect performance and availability. Oo! And price! And... and...

@kangarootoo - I am da witty masta

Used to work with the guy, and he's certainly a clever businessman and a very nice bloke to boot.

However, I can't right now see these predictions coming true unless they give away the box with your subscription. A bit like how modems get given out 'free' with most new internet connections.

@Kangarootoo - "Virtualised"

Presumably he's talking about Virtual Machines in the same manner as with Java on mobile phones, which provides a common platform across many different devices, manufacturers and operating systems (even if the games are 95% shit). Or, indeed, the interactivity services of the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD formats.

I think that quite possibly this vision for the future is fairly accurate, except perhaps for the timescale. I'm certain the next generation of games consoles will still be proprietary, but as for the one after that, i couldn't say. This is probably going to be the only way that Dennis Dyack's standard platform vision will occur.

Indeed, given Sony's recent success with barging a standard platform into peoples living rooms using the PS3 as a lever, I wouldn't put it past them (or Microsoft) trying to do the same thing in the future.

In fact, it'll be Microsoft, and it'll be XNA & Silverlight and the .NET framework and all that.

Bless him.

'Transmitting just the keystrokes (or button-presses and stick movements) to the server, and stream the image back, requires surprisingly little in the way of bandwidth and proceccing power.'

not currently true. the processing and cost of the hardware is huge.
latency is also a massive issue even if you own and control entire network (i have worked on a commercial system which does exactly this) as your not just getting a small response back, your sending a small key press, processing bigger game data, encoding even bigger video data and then streaming that video back.

i cant see it happening in the timescales mentioned, not to rreplace consoles. yes to improve tv games for casual players but they are v different markets.

"There's hardly any technology difference between some hard disc video recorders and an Xbox 360, for example"

Agreed, but there's a big difference between a company selling two boxes that do two different things and it making less money by selling one box. There's also more for the customer to lose if a fault occurs in said box.

all you need is a server that stream the gaming image to you're tv. and a signal back to the server for control.
so technically you will only need a small settop box, a very fast connection and a controller. nice :)

except for me being a geek and wanting to own the console

5 years no. 10 years maybe.

Stick a Freeview receiver in a PS3 and you nearly have what he describes. I think convergence of devices as much as I hate it is inevitable.

As for digital distribution. MP3 eclipsing music sales is just the beginning IMO. If it can happen with music it can happen with film and games. Can anyone say Steam?

I think this is quite interesting (written in '95)
http://www.newsweek.com/id/106554


Never say never.

Wasn't the internet creaking already?

Ha ha ha... comedy gold.

It will probably happen but not that soon. Maybe in 20-30 years.

What if you live in the middle of nowhere and placing the cables etc isnt feasable? Consoles will always exist, people like stand alone games machines. Many people still use consoles offline and a decent amount of games probably cant get their heads round the internet etc. Maybe in over 50 years this might happen.

Quote from that newsweek article:

You don't know what to ignore and what's worth reading. Logged onto the World Wide Web, I hunt for the date of the Battle of Trafalgar. Hundreds of files show up, and it takes 15 minutes to unravel them--one's a biography written by an eighth grader, the second is a computer game that doesn't work and the third is an image of a London monument. None answers my question, and my search is periodically interrupted by messages like, "Too many connectios, try again later."

He must be a moron, wikipedia it!

peterfll - Sorry, I didn't mean to sound so smug. It is a bit of an ambitious statement. But a nice idea.

Ex-Xbox man states what everyone else has been predicting for the past five years

"There's hardly any technology difference between some hard disc video recorders and an Xbox 360, for example,""

Except of course that each HDD video recorder comes equipped with a HDD... :p

But convergence has some ways to go. Most important one being creating a user interface that's easy enough to access all those separate functionalities. PCs can already take care of all entertainment needs but dedicated devices are still popular because they're easy and better looking.

5-10 years is ridiculous. Flip a lot of us will still be playing PS3s then!

ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

that's what i did when i read that.

I think it's more likely that consoles will replace everything else - already they play movies (DVD/BD/Download) and soon TV (PlayTV/BTVision) and can surf the internet. Seems to me that the console is more than capable of muscling the other set-top boxes out.

Sounds a bit poo

"Virtual ownership is a hard concept for many people to swallow, and so it should be.
Virtual ownership as opposed to physical possession is a far narrower and more limited type of property, its fundamentally inferior."

Very well put, Arbiter.

Downloads over physical media, yes. But I get the impression that's not what he's talking about. If anything, the current consoles excel at downloadable content; everything on XBLA being a prime example, the online release of games such as GT5 Prologue another (althoug it's not really working yet :P).

He must be talking about virtualisation. I guess you should never say never, or there is a risk of saying something incredibly stupid that way, like Bill Gates famous "640 K is senough memory for everyone" and so on.

But I feel pretty confident saying "no way in a 10 year perspective".

On the other hand, the year 2020 is officialy The Future, of Philip K. Dick and William Gibson science fiction, so who knows what will be possible.

I don't really feel that the internet or the gaming industry has changed all that much in the last 10 years, really - hard to see how the next 10 will change everything, in the same way the last 10 year hasn't.

jack of all trades... master of none.

Well already the Xbox 360 and to a greater extent the PS3 are striving to replace the DVD player and Hi-Fi system and PCs are becoming more console-like (Media Centres) and consoles more PC-like so this evolution into one unit is already happening, although Nintendo seem totally oblivious to it!!! LOL

I'd imagine that Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony are all working on their next consoles already for release within the next six years so this 5 to 10 year prediction seems way off to me...

@systems
"He's not saying that games consoles won't exist, he's saying you will have one master device and then if you want to play games on it you unlock the games function, if you want to watch BD you unlock the BD function, if you want to record TV you unlock that etc."

Did you just describe a pc? :D

@Jack - no worries I took you at your world and my thanks were genuine!

:-)

What happens if your net connection is down? My local exchange had issues over the bank holiday and couldn't get online for 3 days.

Somehow can't see people accepting that if their broadband goes offline they can't play COD4.

Think online distribution is great for XBLA and PSN, but can't see it overtaking physical sales for many years. Unless the Government stick a penny on income tax (which they will never do) and give us all shiny optical networks then we're still stuck with laggy services.

I've got two words for it: bullshit :). But I mean it.