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Could hybrid consoles be the future??

I

Ironman_Bad

Member
So we obviously are headed towards a streaming fate be it 10+ or less years from now however has anyone entertained a possible hybrid console like cars? So we are talking maybe half the actual hardware power on board or less and the cloud rendering the rest through streaming?? Would allow for some form of home power still without totally relying on your internet to do the grunt work also keeping costs down?
 
Ironman_Bad said:
So we obviously are headed towards a streaming fate be it 10+ or less years from now however has anyone entertained a possible hybrid console like cars? So we are talking maybe half the actual hardware power on board or less and the cloud rendering the rest through streaming?? Would allow for some form of home power still without totally relying on your internet to do the grunt work also keeping costs down?
Click to expand...
Xbox tried this during xbox one. Nothing came of it because it wasn't a very good way to do it. They might even try again:

 
What is old is new again...

xboxonecloudhero.png
 
I am not sure, honestly.
Is it really much more profitable than current model? Big players (Apple, Google. Sony, Nintendo, Valve) seems comfortable with 30% cut from software sales, and they also already have successful subscription services; Xbox game pass is not the most successful financial example either.
If anything, I think big players (except maybe Microsoft) want the current model to stay as long as possible.
 
Definitely not the type of consoles I would want. Considering how much problems I had with flight sim 2024 even though I have a 1Gbs connection, no thanks. Don't want my experience to be compromised due to server conditions or how far I live from the nearest server. Some lighter streaming like flight sim 2020 or the recent Call of Duty games with higher resolution textures is fine. Heavy asset streaming would lead to some wildly inconsistent performance for players (favoring those that live in big cities due to the nearest server probably being very close to them).
 
Not really a future I want given cloud streaming hasn't been great so far latency wise, and even the services that are starting to solve that have already increased subscription costs over time like Nvidia.

I also suspect if the services get used more, the enshittification will only get worse as we've seen with other cloud media streaming (Spotify, Netflix, etc.) increase cost over time.

Having a hybrid solution will yield the same issue + I gotta still buy the local hardware. To really sell it you'd need some killer app games pushing insane graphics or complex multiplayer features doing some Ready Player One stuff...otherwise most games I'd just tone down the graphics than pay the sub. With Corsair now using Chinese RAM, I think the costs are gonna start to go back down anyway in a year.
 
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No, I don't believe streaming is the future.

Why?

If you look into it streaming comes with serious limitations that prevent you from playing whenever you want.

And, I'm not talking connection wise, the brainiacs behind streaming have added timers so you can only play for X period, which like the streaming fees will only get worse overtime.
 
If I can be John Sony for a moment, the future would be a PS branded Steam Machine, with exclusive first party, streaming-only games with far higher tech targets than could be achieved by finding millions of 5090 owners to buy it.
 
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I love playing my library through the cloud on my Portal

But it's still limited to 4k@60fps (which is great, I know) so it can't replace real hardware which can go above
 
there's no need for the cloud when you can fit the compute needed. the doom and glooming about cloud & taking away physical hardware is delusional. It's objectively worse and this coming from a guy who uses geforce now regularly.
 
The consoles of the future will be Linux based emulation devices as all the platform holders have long abandoned their own services, shut down servers and moved on to something even more customer hostile.
 
Ironman_Bad said:
So we obviously are headed towards a streaming fate be it 10+ or less years from now however has anyone entertained a possible hybrid console like cars? So we are talking maybe half the actual hardware power on board or less and the cloud rendering the rest through streaming?? Would allow for some form of home power still without totally relying on your internet to do the grunt work also keeping costs down?
Click to expand...
It's just about supporting mouse and keyboard officially, it's that simple.
 
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