To be fair, we did get lots of incremental upgrades to the 360, they just didn't change the name. The 360 selling now is much different than the one I bought 9 years ago.
You got power and noise/fan savings and hardware fixes. In almost 9 years you went through 3-4 generations of video card technology, yet the 360 I buy today has similar performance of the one that shipped in 2005.
My PC from 2005 would be a joke to game on.
I think a lot of this shows the lack of competition in this area and plain greed. Why redesign when we can milk the current design? Our only real competitor feels the same and those critical of this will just buy PC games. Seems like console gamers are being abused a bit by these policies and the gaming world is always many years behind on consoles.
I don't think it shows a lack of competition and greed. As far as I can tell, it illustrates a fundamental attribute of consoles: They are a fixed target. Game developers can hyper-optimize for the specific hardware in a console because 100% of the people using that console will be using that hardware configuration.
With PCs, there's the question of how well your computer will play a game. With consoles, this question is instead binary: Either your Xbox 360 will play the game exactly as well as all the others or it will not play the game.
Either your Xbox 360 will play the game exactly as well as all the others or it will not play the game.
That's not the case, or at least it shouldn't. PC's aren't magic. You can ship a game with low res textures and high. So if you have the Xbox1 2013 you get the low, but if you have the Xbox1 2015 you get the high and maybe a bump in resolution.
This is a solved problem in the PC world. I understand its different than the status quo, but its silly to think it can't be done.
I suspect the console makers are simply scared to make the early adopters have a worse experience than the kid with the new box and it serves them to make the generation last as long as possible from an economic pov.
Regardless, I hope someone disrupts this duopoly. I had higher hopes for android gaming devices, but who knows, its still early in the game. I could see a deviation on the steambox really shake things up.
I also imagine the economics get better as time goes on and you don't make a profit until sale # x million. Considering how much cheaper hardware is nowadays, I wonder if this formula still applies. You can make a gaming box that beats these next gen consoles for not that much.
Comments
To be fair, we did get lots of incremental upgrades to the 360, they just didn't change the name. The 360 selling now is much different than the one I bought 9 years ago.
You got power and noise/fan savings and hardware fixes. In almost 9 years you went through 3-4 generations of video card technology, yet the 360 I buy today has similar performance of the one that shipped in 2005.
My PC from 2005 would be a joke to game on.
I think a lot of this shows the lack of competition in this area and plain greed. Why redesign when we can milk the current design? Our only real competitor feels the same and those critical of this will just buy PC games. Seems like console gamers are being abused a bit by these policies and the gaming world is always many years behind on consoles.
I don't think it shows a lack of competition and greed. As far as I can tell, it illustrates a fundamental attribute of consoles: They are a fixed target. Game developers can hyper-optimize for the specific hardware in a console because 100% of the people using that console will be using that hardware configuration.
With PCs, there's the question of how well your computer will play a game. With consoles, this question is instead binary: Either your Xbox 360 will play the game exactly as well as all the others or it will not play the game.
That's not the case, or at least it shouldn't. PC's aren't magic. You can ship a game with low res textures and high. So if you have the Xbox1 2013 you get the low, but if you have the Xbox1 2015 you get the high and maybe a bump in resolution.
This is a solved problem in the PC world. I understand its different than the status quo, but its silly to think it can't be done.
I suspect the console makers are simply scared to make the early adopters have a worse experience than the kid with the new box and it serves them to make the generation last as long as possible from an economic pov.
Regardless, I hope someone disrupts this duopoly. I had higher hopes for android gaming devices, but who knows, its still early in the game. I could see a deviation on the steambox really shake things up.
I also imagine the economics get better as time goes on and you don't make a profit until sale # x million. Considering how much cheaper hardware is nowadays, I wonder if this formula still applies. You can make a gaming box that beats these next gen consoles for not that much.