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[Glix]

"We've discovered a large number of our userbase rent houses just to play Call of Duty, but we're not a part of that revenue stream... yet"

So awesome. :lol

Listen guys. Kotick only cares about one thing. Talking about revenue streams to keep the investors happy so they don't realize that he is running the company into the ground, and cashing out along the way. He finds a new potential revenue stream, and then talking about exploiting it. This happens, like, weekly.

I know it sounds silly but it is SO true.

 

[poppabk]

If the bolded happens console gaming is dead. It defeats the purpose of console gaming. You also eliminate a good portion of customers by doing this.

Why do you think this? If MS could release a hot-swappable GPU for the 360, you really think it would be a detriment to the 360, especially if it didn't effect the non-upgraders for a decent amount of time. If for $150 you could purchase an upgrade that gave you all your games in 1080p 60fps with decent AA, this would be a bad thing? Release an upgrade every 3 years or so, you will still only have 3 different GPU's to program for, and as long as they maintain the same overall architecture it would be pretty much just flipping a switch for the developers. It doesn't defeat the point of console gaming, it just blurs some of the boundaries between generations.

 

[snap0212]

Kotick is looking for financially sustainable methods to produce these games, and that either requires making games with far lower production values (which few people seems to want) or finding new revenue streams.

This is just wrong. He is not looking for ways to finance the production. Not if the game is selling 10,000,000 copies. If a game sells that much, you don't even have to think about new revenue streams to cover the production costs. Those costs are already covered a couple of times...

 

[Segata Sanshiro]

Why do you think this? If MS could release a hot-swappable GPU for the 360, you really think it would be a detriment to the 360, especially if it didn't effect the non-upgraders for a decent amount of time. If for $150 you could purchase an upgrade that gave you all your games in 1080p 60fps with decent AA, this would be a bad thing? Release an upgrade every 3 years or so, you will still only have 3 different GPU's to program for, and as long as they maintain the same overall architecture it would be pretty much just flipping a switch for the developers. It doesn't defeat the point of console gaming, it just blurs some of the boundaries between generations.

Yeah, it would sell like gangbusters. I mean, how much money did SEGA make off the 32x again? Enough for a ham sandwich or two, at least.

 

[Dennis]

I don't think upgradable GPUs are viable for consoles.

The whole point of consoles, is simplicity. People have trouble just hooking up their PS360 for HD, for god's sake! :lol

 

[panda21]

if history has taught us anything its that hardware addons for consoles always do really really well.

also making swappable upgradable GPU hardware for a console is an awesome

Spoiler

oh wait no i mean terrible

idea.

 

[charsace]

Why do you think this? If MS could release a hot-swappable GPU for the 360, you really think it would be a detriment to the 360, especially if it didn't effect the non-upgraders for a decent amount of time. If for $150 you could purchase an upgrade that gave you all your games in 1080p 60fps with decent AA, this would be a bad thing? Release an upgrade every 3 years or so, you will still only have 3 different GPU's to program for, and as long as they maintain the same overall architecture it would be pretty much just flipping a switch for the developers. It doesn't defeat the point of console gaming, it just blurs some of the boundaries between generations.

Yes, it would be the death of console gaming. The advantage console gaming price and that it is easy. Some people won't buy the upgrades and then what happens to them? Upgrades just divides up the market. Better off going 5 years and then releasing a new system instead of releasing an upgrade.

 

[poppabk]

Yeah, it would sell like gangbusters. I mean, how much money did SEGA make off the 32x again? Enough for a ham sandwich or two, at least.

Well how much has MS made off of Wireless adapters and HDD's? Just because one ill conceived upgrade system failed doesn't mean that all will.

 

[1-D_FTW]

Well how much has MS made off of Wireless adapters and HDD's? Just because one ill conceived upgrade system failed doesn't mean that all will.

Semi-essential peripherals with insane markups are completely unrelated to GPU upgrades. One is a cash cow, the other splits the userbase and turns your platform into a total mess.

 

[speculawyer]

BTW, I like how he says nothing about the fact that his main CoD team walked out the door.

He needs to make sure cod is relevant, not exploited.

 

[poppabk]

Yes, it would be the death of console gaming. The advantage console gaming price and that it is easy. Some people won't buy the upgrades and then what happens to them? Upgrades just divides up the market. Better off going 5 years and then releasing a new system instead of releasing an upgrade.

Console gaming's advantage is definitely not price, unless you mean single upfront costs. The people who don't upgrade continue to play the games in 720p and 30fps. I'm not sure how a whole new console after 5 years rather than an upgrade after 5 years helps anyone. MS and Sony lose multiple billions of dollars at every launch, the userbases are reset to zero resulting in low sales for the publishers and the consumer has to shell out $599 for a new console that includes a bunch of fix cost items that are in the one they are replacing. The Xbox -> 360 transition was a one time deal, I doubt we will be seeing console lifetimes that short again, for a 6-10 year lifetime, mid generation hardware upgrades would seem to be a good compromise between the tech chasers and the budget gamers and the just want a box that works people.

 

[ShockingAlberto]

Well how much has MS made off of Wireless adapters and HDD's? Just because one ill conceived upgrade system failed doesn't mean that all will.

Did you seriously just compare the wireless adapter to hot-swapping a GPU

 

[charsace]

Console gaming's advantage is definitely not price, unless you mean single upfront costs. They continue to play the games in 720p and 30fps? I'm not sure how a whole new console after 5 years rather than an upgrade after 5 years helps anyone. MS and Sony lose multiple billions of dollars at every launch, the userbases are reset to zero resulting in low sales for the publishers and the consumer has to shell out $599 for a new console that includes a bunch of fix cost items that are in the one they are replacing. The Xbox -> 360 transition was a one time deal, I doubt we will be seeing console lifetimes that short again, for a 6-10 year lifetime, mid generation hardware upgrades would seem to be a good compromise between the tech chasers and the budget gamers and the just want a box that works people.

Console advantage is price. You only need the console to play the games. You don't need to upgrade a console every 16-18 months like you do a pc. So yes, price is an advantage.

 

[poppabk]

Console advantage is price. You only need the console to play the games. You don't need to upgrade a console every 16-18 months like you do a pc. So yes, price is an advantage.

A PC bought 3 or 4 years ago that could play most games at a 360 level of visual fidelity should still play almost all games at a 360 level of visual fidelity. If it doesn't, then a $80 - $90 graphics card upgrade would suffice to get to way beyond 360 capabilities.

 

[Segata Sanshiro]

Well how much has MS made off of Wireless adapters and HDD's? Just because one ill conceived upgrade system failed doesn't mean that all will.

Those are different. Selling the console crowd on upgrades for existing systems that result in creating meaningful differences in graphics/gameplay is really, really hard. It also splits the userbase and creates a lot more work for developers. Console gamers wouldn't even buy CD-ROM drives. The biggest successes with anything resembling this would be the RAM pack for the N64 and the Wii Motion Plus, both of which were given away for free and neither of which was particularly successful in garnering any serious support.

Console gamers treat their consoles as disposable for all intents and purposes. They don't want to upgrade it. They want to use it for five years and throw it away for a new box with new controllers and a new name.

 

[Lonely1]

There's no current or upcomming game that won't run on a 8800GTX or 3870. people that upgrade their PC every year or so want the cutting edge experience.

 

[Zeliard]

There's no current or upcomming game that won't run on a 8800GTX or 3870. people that upgrade their PC every year or so want the cutting edge experience.

I can attest to this, as I'm still on 4-year old Q6600 and 8800 GTX and can still to this day run everything I need to comfortably at high settings. The only games that have really given me trouble trying to fully max out are graphical juggernauts like Crysis, Metro 2033, Napoleon: Total War, and such. But then those, I just turn down a couple of settings and I'm good, and they still remain at high overall graphical settings and run beautifully.

 

[speculawyer]

“We’ve heard that most Call of Duty players use electricity from the local utility,” says Mr Kotick. “We don’t really participate financially in that income stream. We would really like to be able to provide much more value to those millions of players playing on utility electricity, but it’s not our network. We are looking into options.”

 

[poppabk]

Those are different. Selling the console crowd on upgrades for existing systems that result in creating meaningful differences in graphics/gameplay is really, really hard. It also splits the userbase and creates a lot more work for developers. Console gamers wouldn't even buy CD-ROM drives. The biggest successes with anything resembling this would be the RAM pack for the N64 and the Wii Motion Plus, both of which were given away for free and neither of which was particularly successful in garnering any serious support.

Console gamers treat their consoles as disposable for all intents and purposes. They don't want to upgrade it. They want to use it for five years and throw it away for a new box with new controllers and a new name.

But MS and Sony don't want this, and it isn't sustainable, 5 years in is when they (hopefully) start seeing a profit. The upgrades we are talking about would not split the userbase unless MS and Sony decided to allow it - they would only provide increased visual fidelity and maybe some physx style type non-necessary enhancements. Console gamers have accepted micro-transactions, yearly fees, removal of features (both hardware and software), required software upgrades that remove functionality, software upgrades that require hardware upgrades, hardware that repeatedly requires replacement and a whole bunch of other things.

 

[Segata Sanshiro]

But MS and Sony don't want this, and it isn't sustainable, 5 years in is when they (hopefully) start seeing a profit. The upgrades we are talking about would not split the userbase unless MS and Sony decided to allow it - they would only provide increased visual fidelity and maybe some physx style type non-necessary enhancements. Console gamers have accepted micro-transactions, yearly fees, removal of features (both hardware and software), required software upgrades that remove functionality, software upgrades that require hardware upgrades, hardware that repeatedly requires replacement and a whole bunch of other things.

Hm. Do you really think Sony and MS would like this generation to just go on as it has? They are certainly making an effort to extend the tail of this gen to try to soak up some of the profits, but do you think Sony and MS would both be content to be second and third forever? Because if you create an upgrade market as opposed to a "new box" market, it's going to heavily favour the leader. Now, personally, I think MS would be content to just chill out in second and rake in some cash, but neither Sony nor Nintendo are going to give up the market to anyone. And all it takes is one of them breaking on it to upset the whole applecart.

And again, this only works if people want it. What makes people want any kind of new console or upgrade? Games, yeah? Why would a third party want to support this kind of model that results in costs of producing software leveling up gradually throughout the span of what would be an ordinary generation? Why would they want to make a game for the new upgrade instead of a game for the old hardware with the big userbase? Could first parties do it on their own? Possibly, I guess.

Granted, it's not impossible. But I really think for it to work it would require cooperation on a massive scale between companies who can't even have softball games with each other without fights breaking out.

 

[Lord Error]

1) Laptops are now taking over as the main PC. In fact, 2010 is the first year where Laptops beat prebuild stationary computers. Laptops have lesser power and room for power consumption than desktops which makes lower system requirements a much needed thing for these people. 2007 also brought the rise of the netbook and a whole new segment, of people going back to games that could play on that!

This is kinda worrying about PC gaming to be honest. If more people move towards laptop as a main computer, great 3D graphics are not really among the things that most laptops do well.

This is all unless of course integrated solutions become "good enough", which they might soon enough, or we get to see the success of services like OnLive taking the gaming over. In that case you could just use smartphone for all your gaming, be it on the go, or plugged into a TV. All it would need is to be good enough to decode HD video, which they all are nowadays.

 

[poppabk]

And again, this only works if people want it. What makes people want any kind of new console or upgrade? Games, yeah? Why would a third party want to support this kind of model that results in costs of producing software leveling up gradually throughout the span of what would be an ordinary generation? Why would they want to make a game for the new upgrade instead of a game for the old hardware with the big userbase? Could first parties do it on their own? Possibly, I guess.

There really wouldn't be substantial increases in costs, other than QC/QA on the different versions, and a small team for specific optimization. You wouldn't be developing for radically different hardware, just more powerful. I'm no expert in this, but I have read that a port of a $20 million 360 game to PS3 costs about $2 million and that is an entirely different architecture. I'm sure that, for the same platform with slightly different GPU's, the cost to have 2 or 3 different hardware revisions supported wouldn't be more than 1 or 2% of the budget and probably much less. And again I am not talking about splitting the userbase, everyone would get the same disk and play the same game, it would just look better on the GPU+ hardware.

Ultimately I don't see a reason for the hardware makers to not go down this road other than potential reliability problems. At the start of the generation they wouldn't even need to use it as a selling point if they feared a backlash.

 

[panda21]

And again I am not talking about splitting the userbase, everyone would get the same disk and play the same game, it would just look better on the GPU+ hardware.

Ultimately I don't see a reason for the hardware makers to not go down this road other than potential reliability problems. At the start of the generation they wouldn't even need to use it as a selling point if they feared a backlash.

but then you would start getting situations where the game only ran well on the newer hardware, or where the new hardware didnt make much difference and all sorts of shit like that.

also if you want to do more than just increase the fps/resolution it would require new shader code and stuff to take advantage of the features of the more powerful graphics card to be developed.

 

[Joel Was Right]

What he means is 'I want to buy Steam from Valve and start charging for what they offer for free'.

It'd be interesting to see whether or not Kotick would charge $50 a year. If the price was similar to that of Live, wouldn't it just undermine itself especially if those PC owners also have an Xbox?

 

[brain_stew]

Yes, it would be the death of console gaming. The advantage console gaming price and that it is easy. Some people won't buy the upgrades and then what happens to them? Upgrades just divides up the market. Better off going 5 years and then releasing a new system instead of releasing an upgrade.

Someone better tell Microsoft to cancel Kinnect then.

 

[Gorgon]

Semi-essential peripherals with insane markups are completely unrelated to GPU upgrades. One is a cash cow, the other splits the userbase and turns your platform into a total mess.

Not really. Hardware upgrades in closed systems are not a new thing and have a decent history of success when done right.

Remember, for example, the Commodore Amiga, and I give this example because it is a very familiar one for me, but there are others in the reál console space. Now, the Amiga was a closed system like modern consoles, although it was a "PC". All games would run on any Amiga version, BUT some games required 1MB of mem and you had to buy the extra 512MB expansion. Almost everyone did, and no real user-base split occurred, because it was worth it.

On the console space it would be even better, because you wouldn't need to split any user base at all. You could release a new GPU, after 3-4 years after the release of the console, for about 150$/EU tops. ALL games would still work on every machine but the difference would be that instead of, say, Killzone 2 running at 720p@30fps you would have, for those that wanted the new GPU, the game running at 1080p@60fps with, say 4xAA and 16 AF. 3-4 years after the console launch you could easily do this for 150 bucks with a GPU in a box, with it's own cooling, connected to the back of your console. Easy even for those who are scared of opening their PC cases.

Another advantage would be that console manufacturers would save a lot of money and suffer a lot less risk. Instead of launching a new console race, they could extend the life of their console for another 4 years, effectively saving costs and running less risks. Everybody would win.

Look, this would be far more vaible than stuff like Kinect or Move, which is far less usefull and runs for about the same price range. Most people WOULD buy the new GPU. Even if a substantial portion didn't, they could still run every single game for the system, except that the eye candy wouldn't be as good.

Personaly, I'm all for it, but it ain't gonna happen this gen, if ever.