Rabu, 26 September 2012

Game Consoles Will Die, Says Nvidia


We reported here on AMD’s investment in a cloud gaming company and now Nvidia seems to be getting ready to dive into this interesting and less known field.

The California-based fabless GPU designer might also be a bit upset that none of the next generation game consoles will integrate their chips.

The assumption that none of the up and coming game consoles will integrate any Nvidia GPU is just that, an assumption, but most of the reports are hinting at this and Nvidia’s attitude is radically changed now.

The company has benefited quite a lot from the PlayStation 3 deal as most games designed for Nvidia’s GPU inside PS3 have also been ported to the PC realm and the specific optimizations have brought higher performance numbers.

Now that there is no such deal in sight, Nvidia might be playing down the game console’s role.

Could gaming is an interesting concept for those that are OK with “good enough” quality as you need quite a powerful internet connection to ensure a decent gaming experience and most concepts we’ve seen today are focusing on the 720p video signal.

Going from 720p to FullHD will increase the needed bandwidth by a considerable 50% and pose even a higher demand on the network.

While the concept is doable, we have serious doubts about the “discless” concept.

Mr. Phil Eisler, Nvidia’s general manager of GeForce Grid Cloud Gaming division reportedly commented on the issue as follows:

"We will see [cloud gaming] gain momentum throughout next year. But if I look out five years, I think it could be a significant portion of the way people play games. [...]

There is still a gap to that [
GeForce] GTX experience for the hardcore gamer. I think it will be 10 years before we have to worry about [hardcore gamers] switching over to the cloud.

They are pretty particular about their gaming experience. I do not think we have to worry too much about that right now."

Even so, the company is taking on this sector with serious intentions and Mr. Eisler believes that cloud gaming will have a "hugely disruptive" effect on the gaming market.

He is adamant that PlayStation 4 will be SONY’s last console and people don’t want to own discs anymore.

We’d beg to differ on the latter part of his statement as we will always like to own what we pay for and have what we own.

This means that paying to play a game for a few hours might be cheaper than paying for the game, but the game, the company, your save file might vanish by various means.

There might be a server glitch, the company might go bankrupt or the game might get banned and, if that’s your favorite game, you’ll be sorry you don’t definitely own a disc with the game on it.

Also, network breakdowns, although those might be rare, will decide when you can play the game and that’s definitely not a nice perspective.

Therefore, even if game consoles will cease to exist, people would be much better off owning what they pay for and having the freedom to get the disc from a drawer whenever they please.

Via: Game Consoles Will Die, Says Nvidia

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