No game consoles after PS 5 and X box 2?
“I don’t think about it for a while, now the PS4 Pro and Switch are very comfortable. In the future, after watching the new products, let’s wait and see for a while, especially look at the price and the first game of each platform.” ‘Speaking of the upcoming PS5 and Xbox 2, senior console gamer Mr. Fu said this.
Looking forward to, looking forward to, the console game console players who have been waiting for a long time, finally have all the news. Not long ago, Sony announced that it will launch the next generation console PlayStation 5 on Christmas 2020; Microsoft announced the next generation of XBOX 2 (codenamed Project Scarlett) at the E3 show this year, which will also be officially launched in Christmas 2020. For sale.
For the arrival of a new generation of game consoles, loyal players are naturally very excited, and even have begun to discuss their respective first “escort” games. But at the same time, other voices are constantly emerging, and some insiders even said: “This generation of game consoles will become the swan song of the entire game console industry.”
Why is the sound of this year’s game consoles so strong?
There is a high price risk behind the stockage
Unlike Nintendo, which focuses on all ages and multiplayer games, Microsoft and Sony are more interested in hardcore games with superb scenes and super high quality. This choice also makes the performance requirements of the two game consoles almost the ultimate.
At present, Nintendo’s latest product, the Switch handheld mode, has a 720P effect, and the TV mode has a maximum of 1080P. The PS4 Pro and X BOX ONE have long used 4K. As for the next generation of PS 5 and X BOX 2 killers, it will not be unexpected to support 8K, and even 4K+60FPS is also very likely.
In addition, according to previous news, both game consoles will be equipped with AMD’s Navi GPU and Zen 2 CPU. PS 5’s floating point performance can reach more than 10T, while having a strongerSSD, GPU hardware includes ray tracing acceleration. As for the X box, which is always known as the pile of materials next door, I believe that there will be no inferior performance.
For gamers, they simply welcome a higher performance game console from an experience perspective. But while we are looking forward to the ultimate performance of 8K, 60FPS and even VR, we must also understand that the high performance price is high price.
From now on, if the performance of the above two killers can really reach the current rumor, whether the future retail price can hold the price threshold of 399 dollars will be a big question mark. Once the price continues to rise, some users will inevitably be blocked.
Reviewing the history of the entire game console, the game consoles with a starting price of more than $400 are almost universal in performance, including Sony’s previous generation PS 3 and Microsoft’s current home product X box one, which are historically comparable. Failed product.
In addition to the price risk of the game console, game developers are also falling into a dangerous circle.
Climate the cost and destroy the entire game ecosystem
The performance of game consoles continues to increase, and it’s hard for game openers to work because they have to work with hardware performance.
Obviously, the higher the quality of the image, the better the game optimization and the more open the map, the higher the capital investment and the longer development cycle. Looking back at some of the masterpieces of the console platform in the past two years, it is not difficult to find that they are behind unimaginable capital and time costs.
The development cost of most games in the PS era was generally controlled at the level of one million dollars; the game with the highest development cost in the PS2 era, FF12, climbed to $48 million, which once made countless players marvel at Square’s big hand. . However, it didn’t take long for the exclamation to reverberate. A year and a half later (2009), the well-known money-burning giant R Star, took out the world’s first giant GTA4 with a development cost of more than 100 million US dollars.
After ten years later, the production cost of console games will rise to what level?
At present, the cost of mainstream 3A development on the host platform is basically tens of millions of dollars, and breaking billions is no longer a new thing. In 2018, R Star developed the “Wild Dartboard: Redemption 2” overall development costs turned out to be as high as 800 million US dollars, once again refreshed the game development and production record.
At the same time, the development cycle of the game has set a new record – long8 years. Almost all of R’s studios are involved in the production, and more than 2,000 employees have come out all day and night. Of course, with such high investment, “Wild Darts: Redemption 2” also achieved dazzling results, the first weekend sales of the game reached 725 million US dollars.
As a regular player, when we are lamenting that the scale of the game is getting bigger and bigger, the picture quality is getting better and the development cost is getting higher and higher, we have to realize that not all companies are like R stars. money. This kind of “arms race” level of money running is really a rhythm to kill the small and medium players.
For many small and medium game developers, the explosive growth of game development costs is a horrible thing. It can even be said that the surge in game development costs is disastrous for them. Because it is very likely that a key investment product has failed, it has become the fuse of the entire company’s failure.
Before, there have been instances of frequent mergers and acquisitions by game developers and examples of developers working together to warm up.
For big developers, once a game with a lot of money is lost, it will not be closed down, but it will be badly hurt. Therefore, the high risk of development has made all game developers more and more cautious. In order to reduce the risk, many game developers are now willing to choose to develop those well-known IPs to continue to squeeze the residual value. After all, the risk is much smaller than the development of a new work.
Innovation has become an increasingly “luxury” thing in this industry, and we continue to see a large number of replacement games in the market, as well as a variety of crazy “fried rice.”
The game developer’s timidity is not a good thing. After all, the game console is just a carrier. What really attracts the player is the variety of game content it carries. We can’t always expect giants like R to keep making good games, just as Hollywood doesn’t always be the “Big Eight”, and the “New Six” after shuffling can’t stop the emergence of new players. The small and medium-sized developers in the game circle are an important part of the whole ecology. If this group becomes more and more fragile, it means that “black horse” will become less and less, and innovation will be far away from the player.
When it comes to this, you should really admire: “Nintendo is not a hardware-led game design concept” is too wise.
Is this the last generation of game consoles?
“Our Stadia cloud gaming platform will be available on November 19th for $9.99 a month. In addition, next year we will open a free version to the public.Stadia Base.
October 15, Google hardware product owner Rick Osterloh’s words at the “Made by Google” conference once again made the global gaming industry stand out. It is reported that the first batch of Stadia cloud game platforms will include “Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey”, “Wild Dart 2”, “Destiny 2” and other masterpieces.
Although this conference, there is no such thing as a decline in Nintendo and Sony’s stock price in the US stock market after Google announced the launch of the Stadia cloud game platform in March this year, but the global capital market and industry analysts have already given a pre-judgment. : The rules of the game industry in the 5G era are about to change.
Transfer your eyes from the game circle to the technology industry. What changes will 5G bring? Obviously, the high-speed and low-latency characteristics of 5G technology are making it necessary for technology companies to cross-border game market and even cloud games as a market breakthrough.
Since 2019, in many industry and 5G-related conferences, 5G cloud games have become the focus of discussion. For the development of the cloud game market, Yves Guillemot, founder and CEO of the famous game company Ubisoft, said in an interview with the media: “I think we can see a new generation of hosts, At the same time, we also got a good opportunity to gradually reduce the hardware. With the passage of time, streaming media will be easier for players, people no longer have to have large hardware. There will be a generation of hosts in the future, after which we Will turn to streaming media, everyone will.”
Does everyone become a “cloud player” in the future?
This problem will be difficult to achieve if it is placed in the immediate rise of 5G. However, if the game console is measured by the replacement cycle of 5-6 years, after several years of development and innovation, the mainframe market may really change greatly due to 5G.
In this regard, the relevant game industry observers understand the notes: “Whether it is a cloud game or a VR game, it will definitely not become mainstream in a short time. But the general trend of the whole industry is indeed developing to the cloud, not only Developers such as Ubisoft, hardware companies such as Sony, Microsoft, and Nvidia are also trying. So, this generation of consoles is not the last generation, but the future cloud games will become mainstream.”
[Concluding]
As a former console gamer, I prefer to nest in front of the computer while typing the keyboard and pressing the mouse.Watching the TV 搓 handle on the sofa. In the current trend of mobile games, although all host players are not willing to admit, in fact, the host game is indeed squeezed more and more marginalized by mobile games.
From the enterprise level, the PS4 currently sells more than 100 million units worldwide, but the money that Sony sells for games may not have earned a lot of mobile games from Tencent. Although the host player is standing at the apex in the scorn chain of the game circle, from the perspective of industry trends, the host game ecosystem must undergo changes under the pressure of survival. Otherwise, the game is fun, and it’s just a dream of not making money.