EA wants an open gaming platform...and a ponie

[Tannhauser]

Kidding about the ponie  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7052420.stm

EA was quoted as saying, "We are wanting as many people as possible to experience our crappy games as we buy and then dismember once proud studios."

/Ok maybe they didn't say that.

Seriously though, this 360/Wii/PS3 thing is called 'competition', where the best product on the market wins.

//Will NOT buy a Socialist gaming console.  Comrade.

[stray]

It's not socialist linux talk. Games just happen to be some of the most widely ported----hard to port----with an extremely high demand to port quickly pieces of software there is. It's gotta be a headache, y'know. Even for a company with resources like EA.

[CharlieMopps]

Damn, you posted faster than I... lol


I like this part:
He added: "Going forward that is irrelevant. Gaming will just require potentially a £49.99 box from Tesco made in China with a hard drive, a wi-fi connection and a games engine inside.

"It's basically a boiled-down PC."

****

So like... I already have a PC... so... wtf is he talking about. He wants the gaming consoles to "make way" for a single source console? er... why would they do that?

"There could be a Nintendo channel, a PlayStation channel and an Xbox channel on your set-top box,"
Ok dude... if there's no NINTENDO... Why the hell would there be a "Nintendo Channel"?!?! Why would anyone license to them? You're basically asking them to just go away and die. On top of that... this set top box will need an OS... hmm... which one, which one... Oh, I know, Windows! Oh wait... isn't that an Xbox? What an idiot.

[taolurker]

That's nearly as stupid as the SEC not stepping in about the EA Bioware purchase, because of J Riccitiello's conflict of interests.

[Trippy]

Pony.

[CharlieMopps]

Pony.

lol... yea

[eldaec]

We want an open, standard platform which is much easier than having five which are not compatible.

You mean a PC?

Also...

With space in the living room limited, set-top boxes could yet absorb console functionality

What? People keep coming up with this argument. It's stupid.

I mean, sure, space is limited, but seriously, it's not like 'oh noes, I can't fit in my armchair because there's a console in the way'.

[Venkman]

Think 15 years out. Ubiquitous bandwidth, memory, and both local and server storage. I don't think it's impossible in those circumstances. There's already iTV games. Rudimentary, sure. But think about what we were doing 15 years ago.

Not saying he's right nor that the timescale is either. Just saying it's not impossible. Our computers are a huge waste of potential being only used (for the most part) a few hours a day. Moving that stuff server-side with dumb monitors and input devices is not farfetched.

Heck, that's how my college was set up in 1988 (VAX). I wasn't playing TF2 on it, but then I couldn't have imagined playing WoW back then either.

[stray]

15 years down the line, it won't be a set top box or a PC or a console or a terminal/server setup for that matter.

[Samwise]

Ok dude... if there's no NINTENDO... Why the hell would there be a "Nintendo Channel"?!?!

Nintendo would still be a game developer.  The "Nintendo Channel" would have the Mario games and other Nintendo-made titles on it.  But your Nintendo console (if Nintendo continued to make consoles rather than just letting Dell or whoever do it for cheaper) could also play your Sony games because the Nintendo and Sony consoles would have the same APIs, so that a game written for one would run on the other.

The easy way to do that would be to have every console work like a PC and then have every game developer write PC games.  I would love for that to happen, since it would probably drive game prices down a bit and would give me access to a lot more games.  I'm not going to hold my breath, though.

[eldaec]

Moving that stuff server-side with dumb monitors and input devices is not farfetched.

It is however, a ridiculous waste of bandwidth, organisational, and development effort.

If games and other future-media ever reach a point where they can't take any advantage of ever escalating client processing power, then the client machines at their existing power level will quickly become cheap to the point of almost-free, and that point, why bother developing without those resources.


Developers will continue to use client processing resources, because client processing resources are not going to go away.

[Jain Zar]

^^  Not to mention some of us like actually owning (regardless of what EULAs think anyhow) our software and being able to use it years down the road.

[Venkman]

You console people are so spoiled. Fire up the old Genesis, throw a cartridge in, it probably works. I couldn't imagine the hoops I'd have to jump through to get an 18 year old PC game to work on my current rig :)

If games and other future-media ever reach a point where they can't take any advantage of ever escalating client processing power, then the client machines at their existing power level will quickly become cheap to the point of almost-free, and that point, why bother developing without those resources.

This is all academic really. Who the hell knows how it'll all play out. And besides, the "set top box" from that article is pretty much a client machine anyway. Just something someone else owns ;)

But, just imagine replacing modern manufacturing, distribution and retail channel processes for new consoles which get replaced every four years with bandwidth, obviously under the lens of some heretofore unknown intertube technology I wouldn't know anything about (Ansibles, wormholes, strings, whatever :) )

[schild]

EA wants an open gaming platform eh?

I suppose that's to be expected. They're spending a fortune making bad games for lots of systems. Would be better to pump out MORE bad games for one system.

Doesn't matter though, they're not Japanese. Whether it's Sony or Nintendo, we're always going to have a machine from the west now and a machine from the east. They need to just deal with that. Unless they buy Japan.

[HaemishM]

^^  Not to mention some of us like actually owning (regardless of what EULAs think anyhow) our software and being able to use it years down the road.

Your innocence is cute. Don't change a thing.

Seriously, a set-top game machine/word processor/internet portal machine is where we SHOULD be going. 15 years is probably a bit early, but maybe 20-30 years out.

Consoles are inefficient hunks of plastic, most of which the company doesn't even make any money on for the first 3 years of its life cycle. The real money is and always will be in the software. One standardized set of hardware (you know, like televisions, DVD players, etc.) is the last piece to making video games truly ubiquitous, but again, it's another 20 years out at least.

[Roac]

They want to commoditize the console market, and it's understandable why; they're a software company, and any software company eats costs when they have to limit themselves to a single platform (whether we're talking consoles, OS, or whatever).  I also find it incredibly unlikely that they'll get their wish in 15 years, or even 30.

No matter what platform you setup, you still need an OS++ of sorts to run the thing.  You want to keep tight control on the parts list, because driver issues and differing ranges in hardware specs are some of the bigger challenges facing the PC market today.  Who gets to pick that standard?  Right now that's part of the secret sauce of console manufacturing, and isn't something that there's much incentive to give up.  If you did work it out, you're left dealing with the OS level (and I lump in any DirectX or OpenGL type library here as well).  Who writes that?  If it's a standards body, you're left with similar issues as we have in just looking at web pages in IE vs FireFox vs whatever else.  Again, this is part of the problem with the PC market now, and why consoles are attractive.

Or put another way, everything they're wishing for?  That's what the PC market is NOW (considering the prevalence of Windows, it's basically the single virtualized environment they're wishing for).  And it's not as successful as the console market. 

[ahoythematey]

This may be anathema to most at this board, but I don't want to ever see video games ubiquitous, and I definitely don't think we should go in that direction.  Certain parties saying they want one, unified method of game delivery might be altruistic in their hopes, but you can sure as fuck be sure that publishers like EA and Activision are not so.  They are looking for the ultimate way to leverage as much money out of each game property as possible, and a single set-top is a pretty sure way to do just that.  We let them provide content singularly through an online connection like that, and pretty soon we would be paying monthly fees for fucking single player games.

[Samwise]

You console people are so spoiled. Fire up the old Genesis, throw a cartridge in, it probably works. I couldn't imagine the hoops I'd have to jump through to get an 18 year old PC game to work on my current rig :)

Not nearly as many hoops as you'd have to jump through to get that Genesis cartridge running on your Wii, though.   

Actually, for the PC it's only one hoop -- Google for the appropriate emulator and install.  They're surprisingly easy to use.