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PCs, Consoles, why not both at once?
Jimmy_Scythe
Member CommonPosts: 3,586
So I'm reading this interview with Randy Stude of the PC Gaming Alliance and I've come across a few things that have got my attention. Here are a few quotes that got me thinking:
"Mainstream consumers are not buying desktops now. They’re buying notebooks. And when they buy a notebook they go to store or they buy it online. No one’s telling them, hey you know what, this is a mainstream notebook, but it [can’t] play games. We all know there are gaming notebooks that are just out if this world awesome – Alienware, Dell, many, many other folks out there making just a great gaming notebook. But there’s a much wider market of mainstream consumers that are going out there buying $700, $800, $900 notebooks and they’re doing so expecting that every piece of software they bought for their desktop will still run on their new notebook. I think in large part when they start to play those games on their notebook they didn’t know when they bought that notebook for example that it wasn’t gaming-capable or it wasn’t able to play the games they had previously enjoyed o their much older desktop"
This was in response to a question about Windows Vista ruining the PC as a gaming platform. I'm currently up for a new computer, and it will be a laptop so I guess I'm not alone in this regard. Until they make a laptop that performs as well, if not bette,r than a PS3 for less than the price of a mid-range desktop, PC gaming is going to continue to dwindle.
"The guts of every console should tell you that the capability is there for the PC to act as the central point for all the consoles. If you bought a PC and as part of that equation you said, Okay, when you’re on the phone with Dell, “Hey, Dell, on this PC, this new notebook I’m buying, can you make sure it has the PlayStation 4 option built into it?”
Well, why not? Why shouldn’t that be the case? [Sony is] certainly not making any money on the hardware. I mean, can’t they create a stable enough environment to specify that if Dell’s going to sell that notebook and say that it’s PlayStation 4 [compatible] that it must have certain ingredients and it must meet certain criteria? Absolutely they could that. Are they going to do it? I don’t know. I predict that they will. I predict that all of the console makers over time will recognize that it’s too expensive to develop the proprietary solution and recognize the value of collapsing back on the PC as a ubiquitous platform."
What he's talking about here is making computers with console hardware already on the motherboard. So when you buy a computer, it would be able to run Xbox, Playstation, or Wii games complete with DRM. The advantage for the console manufacturers is that they can charge license fees to the PC makers for the use of their tech and not actually have to absorb the cost of producing the whole console. This was kind of tried in the early 90's with the 3DO system, but they were thinking more along the lines of VCRs rather than computers.
The rest of the article talks about how much greater PC gaming is than consoles and ends with Stude contradicting one of his earlier statements about how difficult the PC is to develope for. The thing that sticks out, however, is the idea of getting a laptop with a 360 or PS3 built in. Suddenly I have the best of both worlds. I'm also wondering if such an integrated system would mean that most console games would suddenly have to support keyboard + mouse control and if that support would mirror the half-ass'd support that PC games give to gamepads. 
In the end I think it would be slightly more expensive than a standard PC, but not as expensive as buying a standard PC and a console. That wouldn't be a bad deal at all really.
Comments
This is an interesting and difficult topic.
Merging all components of a Playstation 4 (for example) onto a chip / board small enough to fit in a laptop would be expensive/ A gaming laptop such as the Alienware models would probably be cheaper than this solution. Sure, you could probably do it on current gen consoles, but when the next X-Box or PS is released, you couldn't make an economically viable chip to stick in a laptop.
Still waiting for your Holy Grail MMORPG? Interesting...
I doubt it would actualy be all of the components. More likely it would just be the chips that make up the graphics and processing of the console and then both would use the same memory, HD and DVD / Blu-ray drive. Kind of like a video card with DRM installed. There might also be something like an SD reader for proprietary memory cards and wot not. Although I'm kind of wondering if the memory speed would take a hit since consoles have radically different system architecture than PCs. Console gamepads have all gone wireless or USB, so that wouldn't be an issue either.
This isnt a difficult topic, most pc gamers, especially those who have built their own pc have also taken a console apart before, and both console and pc look very similar inside, there really is no reason why a console could not just be sold as an addon for the pc instead of entirely new device, Microsoft shouldve done this before even thinking of dumping out an xbox,
Quotations Those Who make peaceful resolutions impossible, make violent resolutions inevitable. John F. Kennedy
Life... is the shit that happens while you wait for moments that never come - Lester Freeman
Lie to no one. If there 's somebody close to you, you'll ruin it with a lie. If they're a stranger, who the fuck are they you gotta lie to them? - Willy Nelson
Because console games are dumbed down, and PC games are intelligent.
Because you play console games on a TV, and PC Games on a monitor.
Because console games are video games, and PC Games are Simulations.
S*D
There used to be significant hardware differences between a console and a PC in the passed that made this impossible. However, when you look at the XBox and PS3, you can tell they are using stripped down versions of actual PC components. The next iteration of the XBox is simply a 1 year old top of the line PC. The main difference now being that the hardware in the consoles is cheaper then PC components because they are more flexible on bad fabs since they used a striped down piece of hardware. Also consoles get better clocks because they are designed to do a narrow amount of tasks.
With advances in video cards, video cards are capable of making physics and graphics calculations far exceeding the performance of both console and other PC hardware. Its entirely possible to port an XBox 360 to run on a dual GPU setup; or a PS3 using a GPU, Blu-Ray Drive, and Cell Processor add on card with a virtualizer program. The problem now is that companies like Sony are more afraid of pirating on the PC, so they won't do it. They would rather lose $100 per console they ship then allow PCs to become a console and earn revenue from it.
PC elitists who don't know anything about console, console culture and its games are so adorable.
Some things play better on a PC..
Some things play better on a console..
I use my PS3 more for home entertainment purposes than games. I can't stand console controllers. I guess i'm just too old and stuck in my ways of using a keyboard and mouse (even though i have both for my PS3 LOL)..
Make a difference!
So... Do you make all of your posts out of pure epic fail?
here's my take on the whole situation.
But, yeah, it would be nice to have PS3/Xbox components in our laptops.....legally.
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
Who knows why they won't do it; the most obvious reason to me seems to revolve around the big three spending 3-4 years and billions of dollars in development and marketing towards a proprietary system, and seeing no point in sharing the reaped benefits if the upfront burdens weren't also shared.
Consoles are also still living room centric for now, and aren't at all moving in the direction of home computing. They're still pursuant of HD multimedia; you'll sooner see a "Xbox Powered" branded Cox DVR or "Playstation Inside" branded Sony TV before they waste time throwin' a redundant amount of tech in PC cases.