Consoles suffering same 'hardware obsolescence' as PC

via Computer and Video Games


Jaakko Haapasalo, producer at PC Shattered Horizon developer Futuremark, says consoles are now suffering the same "hardware obsolescence and upgrade cost issues" that were previously only known to plague PC gaming.

"There's some irony here in that consoles are now being threatened with the same sort of hardware obsolescence and upgrade cost issues as the PC was previously," Haapasalo told CVG.

He went on to discuss cloud gaming (in which games are processed on a remote computer and the video streamed to gamers omitting the need to own high-end hardware themselves). "With streaming, there's an undeniable convenience advantage for the player if it's done right, but the loss of control or ownership over parts of the platform and content may prove too much for some," he said.

Futuremark CEO, Jukka Mäkinen added: "With proper execution cloud gaming will seriously lower the barrier for entry into high end gaming. It will not lower the number of expensive entertainment gadgetry around our gaming sofas though. There will always a better monitor, better audio system or a better cloud-gaming-resolution-booster-lag-reducer to buy."

Look out for the full interview on CVG soon.

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"consoles are now suffering the same "hardware obsolescence and upgrade cost issues" that were previously only known to plague PC gaming."

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Hate to break it to you cheif, but you buy a new console every new generation for a reason

so whats the difference tween me buying a 200$ video card every 5 years or the new playstation every 5-6 years

It's not consoles becoming obsolete it's really the peripherals, i mean 4 years ago 20gb was enough for XBL but now most need more, it's the same with controllers needing more features and 360 ending up with hdmi and hddvd drive but the basic consoles are sound because they are upgradable.

the price of console upgrades is inflated due to Microsoft overcharging for every piece of hardware they sell as they insist on having their name on everything.

look at the cost of a 360 hard drive in comparison to a standard PC drive or 2.5inch (PS3) and you will see how much more you actually have to pay for MS branding.

PC gaming FTW

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the price of console upgrades is inflated due to Microsoft overcharging for every piece of hardware they sell as they insist on having their name on everything.

look at the cost of a 360 hard drive in comparison to a standard PC drive or 2.5inch (PS3) and you will see how much more you actually have to pay for MS branding.

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oh please sony and nintendo have done that kind of stuff for decades, that is why we have "offically licensed" everything starting with the NES, even back in the day you spent 2-3x as much for a nes gamepad than you did for a pc joystick, and the pc joystick was fully analog with more stuff to break

or even today where your forced to buy sony technology memory for your psp, yea you dont HAVE to buy sony brand but whoever you are buying is giving them a cut in licensing, ever compared MSPD to SD at the store

I am not saying "just cause they all do it, its ok" but if you want to spout your microsoft is the devil crap you should at least come up with a point that is limited to microsoft, and not the entire industry for the last 30 years

Nintendo and Sony still allow third party peripherals and backwards compatability with hardware from previous consoles, but M$ is just taking greed to another level and using fw to block every unofficial peripheral, it's only competition laws that will slow that down, thank god for unofficial Chinese crap i say.

well technically there should be no unlicensed peripherals for any company, everyone who is legally making accessories for these consoles are paying in to rightfully do so

What Microsoft is doing is protecting their interest, the last XBOX has so many unofficial garbage controllers and accessories that they may have gone a bit extreme with it, but I am sure if you showed up with a quality and serious item microsoft would be more than glad to take your money, and limit your market just like the others

for the record I think the hard disk is the worst thing for consoles, and I probably will not have one if I ever get around to buying a 360

I don't use XBL but my 20gb hdd is still usefull mainly just for gamesaves and i bought an adapter to transfer everything to and from pc, and if i want i can easily rip it open and stick a cheap 250gb 2.5" hdd in the shell, but anyway there's probably hundreds of peripheral manufacturers built over the years and removing third party peripherals all together would cost 10s of thousands of jobs and give all the money to the console manufacturers, and that's why the competition laws are there.

lol MS and quality products don't belong in the same sentence.

but that fact is Sony do allow third party hardware and make connectivity easy, look at using a optical output on both consoles, the PS3 has a separate port for for optical sound, the 360 on the other hand you have to use the component lead to get a optical port and it blocks the HDMI port (unless you strip the socket down and even then it is tight) if you want to use a optical out with a HDMI without stripping the plug on the component lead you need to buy a MS branded HDI lead costing several times the price of a standard lead.

every single piece of hardware on the 360 is designed to take money, another example, the controllers, PS3 and 360 controllers cost the same, then if you get a 360 controller you either need batteries or a rechargeable kit sold separately and a lead that is only usable on the 360 controller. how hard would it of been for MS the people who make 90% of their money from PC's to of included the battery pack in the controller and used a standard USB lead (the play and charge lead cant even be used to link the controller to a PC for play you still need a PC wireless adapter)

the point you should be asking is what on the 360 is cheaper to buy than a PS3?

as for the PSP memory cards, the memeory stick pro-duo's still have a competitive price compared to the SD/micro SD cards. so it's not as if you are being ripped off.

were as a Xbox 360 120gb hard drive is around £100, yet for a PC for around £100 you can get around 1.5tb-2tb so your looking at about 16times the size for a none MS branded drive. (the sad fact being it is only a standard western digital drive in that fancy MS case)

I am shocked by their perspective.
Did they really think that consoles aren't outdated from the day they are born?
They have always been the cheap way into the gaming market.
Did they just loose their minds or something wtf?

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the point you should be asking is what on the 360 is cheaper to buy than a PS3?

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easy you can get the system for nearly half the cost of a PS3, and at nearly 4x the price I do feel ripped off with sony memory cards

and how much does a ps3 hard disk cost? I asked one day and it was nearly the entire cost of the system

The Ps3 hdd is just a standard 2.5" drive you can buy anywhere, it even shows in the instructions how to install and format it, the 360 is cheaper if you just want to play games from disks but spec up to Ps3 level and you paying more for less.

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Originally Posted by osgeld

easy you can get the system for nearly half the cost of a PS3, and at nearly 4x the price I do feel ripped off with sony memory cards

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The PS3 doesn't require a memory card, unless you mean the PS2 which the memory cards were sh*t and companies like Datel made the best cards with 32MB as opposed to SONY's 8MB.

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Originally Posted by osgeld

and how much does a ps3 hard disk cost? I asked one day and it was nearly the entire cost of the system

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The hard disk (hard drive) is actually the cheapest part, It only cost me £40 to purchase and swap the 120GB drive in my slim to a 320GB drive with the original PS3 drive being put to good use (laptop).

No we were talking about mspd's on psp

and Yea you can get a hard disk anywhere, but if you bought one from sony expect to pay bigtime for it

Still goes back to ms is soooo expensive, well if you are smart enough to put a drive in a ps3 then is a plastic MS box going to stop you? and If your not then the MS option is still cheaper than the sony option

the MS option is still heavily restricted, until the super elite came out the max size allowed by the 360 firmware was 120gb (was put up to 250gb with the release of the super elite) as for sticking any old drive in the MS case that is not possible, it only works with several models of Western digital drive all of them requiring a hacked firmware flashed to them to even have a chance of getting the 360 to read them. (then the limit is still hard capped at 250gb by the system)

as for memory stick pro duo you can pick up a 8gig for well under £20 if you shop around and the SD cards are normally around the same price.

if you start looking at 32/64gig cards then the prices start to shoot up but then it's the same with all solid state hard drives as they are a lot faster and smaller (casing) than most PC drives. a lot of the solid state drives make the 360 hard drive seem cheap but that's just the way it is when you use high quantities of flash memory as it costs more to make and has much higher performance that a standard plate drive.

as for price difference between a PS3 and 360, you need to take into account to get the same usability you need either an elite/super elite, a play and charge kit, a Wifi adaptor and a Live sub card, add all that up and your basically at the same price. the 360 being cheap is an illusion it seems cheap because it comes heavily stripped down with everything you need being an optional extra. were the PS3 comes with everything you need to get playing right out of the box (with the exception of a HDMI lead but neither console comes with that)

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Originally Posted by osgeld

No we were talking about mspd's on psp

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Oh, PSP.

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Originally Posted by osgeld

and Yea you can get a hard disk anywhere, but if you bought one from sony expect to pay bigtime for it

Still goes back to ms is soooo expensive, well if you are smart enough to put a drive in a ps3 then is a plastic MS box going to stop you? and If your not then the MS option is still cheaper than the sony option

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The plastic box for the Xbox drives aren't too restricting, though sadly it would require flashing via linking to a PC unlike the easy PS3 drive swapping which only requires a quick format with a small USB flash drive containing the update data for the console to register. Whilst SONY have the cheaper method of updating, Microsoft have the methods of which many people wouldn't bother and end up paying for the larger drive add-on (not good).

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Originally Posted by phsychokill

for price difference between a PS3 and 360, you need to take into account to get the same usability you need either an elite/super elite, a play and charge kit, a Wifi adaptor and a Live sub card, add all that up and your basically at the same price. the 360 being cheap is an illusion it seems cheap because it comes heavily stripped down with everything you need being an optional extra. were the PS3 comes with everything you need to get playing right out of the box (with the exception of a HDMI lead but neither console comes with that)

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HDMI cables are cheap enough to not be added, all the other things show Microsoft's greed for when they saw that almost every gamer would like to play online by selling the adapter and the subscriptions.

guess it depends on your needs, I want a console to play games on a TV, the 360 fits that need and right out of the box will do that

now if i was one of the unwashed masses then maybe i would NEED all the extra stuff

but this is going way off topic at this point back to the original article, you upgrade your console as much as a pc, just usually it comes all in 1 box

A console cannot be upgraded asmuch as a PC, except for the memory capacity.

So for the topic of upgrading a console, it would be to buy the newest whereas with a PC it would be to upgrade the graphics card and maybe the operating system amongst the two to three other things, in which the PC is the very same except upgraded internally and the console an entirely new console altogether.