Rumour: PS4 will have restrictions aplenty

[Kageru]

I'm pretty sure they like the game rental market even less than the re-sale market. Indeed since most of the EULA seem to specifically dis-allow renting the game you are basically a pirate in their eyes already.

[apocrypha]

I know video/DVD rental outlets can't just buy a retail copy of a film and rent it, they have to pay a special price that makes it legal for them to then rent it.

I guess the same thing must happen for game rentals or else Blockbuster would have been prosecuted already.

[Kageru]

I've always wondered myself... and what sort of bill do they pay?

[Hawkbit]

In a mildly related subject, this deck was thrown around work this week.  It's a fairly fast read, and if the numbers are legit, pretty damn daunting for anyone trying to predict what is going to happen next.  From personal experience, literally one day everyone at work was thinking "What is Pinterest?" and a few days later we had someone hired to fill a content position for our Pinterest content management.  

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-future-of-mobile-deck-2012-3

I have a feeling that we're on the verge of gaming consoles being done with hard media completely.  Maybe this next generation will sell discs, but the one after that is certainly going to be a radically different beast.  

[Kageru]

I take it back... Game publishers hate second-hand sales a lot more than rental. This article on Gamesutra and some posts by Blockbuster suggesting they consider it a weapon against used game sales. And they also managed to get more money for rental copies or a revenue sharing agreement with the big rental chains.

I'd still expect that relationship to sour once they can remove used game sales from the equation though. The move to on-line components to games is partly doing that already.

Interesting slides. Not surprising at all, catching the bus into the city the number of people playing around with their smart-phones is staggering. Whereas seeing a DS has gotten very rare. I'm not sure tablet growth will boom quite as hard, the smartphone has a massive mobility and price advantage and much of the lure is apples reputation for "sexy". But yeah, anyone standing in the way of digital should be pretty nervous.

[ffc]

Replace disc rentals with paid digital demos, optionally let the money paid for the demo count toward the full game purchase, and finally flush down memories of better days.

[koro]

Interesting slides. Not surprising at all, catching the bus into the city the number of people playing around with their smart-phones is staggering. Whereas seeing a DS has gotten very rare. I'm not sure tablet growth will boom quite as hard, the smartphone has a massive mobility and price advantage and much of the lure is apples reputation for "sexy". But yeah, anyone standing in the way of digital should be pretty nervous.

Purely anecdotal, but I know several people who live in large cities in the US (NYC and DC, primarily, with some in Chicago) who own either a DS or a 3DS, yet never play them on public transportation. The one reason they all share? "It's too embarrassing." It's socially acceptable, apparently, to fiddle with a game on your smartphone, but pulling out a DS or a PSP will get you mocked as a manchild.

[Yegolev]

This is certainly the case.  I choose to not be frustrated that I can play horseshit like Angry Birds in public, but not SMT Devil Survivor.

[Sheepherder]

5) AMD x64 CPU and AMD Southern Islands GPU"

I'm a bit out of the tech loop atm, what makes this point particularly bad?

Tom's Hardware Gaming CPU Hierarchy.

[Cyrrex]

The thing that bothers me about the potential loss of the rental game is not that I won't be able to go save $5 on Mass Effect 3.  It is that I will have no reasonable way to go pick up a copy of F1 2010 or whatever) on the cheap.  Xbox Live or PSN may actually offer that game, I don't know...but I doubt it would be at a price that I would be willing to pay.  And even if it was, fuck having to download the whole thing, and fuck having to store the whole thing on the disk.

[Merusk]

As others have said, none of this is surprising.  I'd buy just about all of it and expect there to be lots of grousing but little backlash unless the console is also stupidly ($500+) priced AGAIN.

No backwards compat? Who cares, they're seeing the same thing as steam. Online digital distro is the future, so it'll be easy enough to release old games for a 'small' download fee a few years down the line.  The PS3 having had to drop it showed them that while gamers will bitch, the average consumer really didn't care too much.  After all you buy the new console to play new games, only enthusiasts hold on to and play old ones.

As for the online-only; I'd bet their research has shown the folks most likely to have their consoles offline are also those most likely to buy used games in the first place.  They don't want their money if the publishers are threatening to walk w/o some sort of DRM.

As for this rumor, I'm seriously skeptical. Dropping the Cell architecture would be a HUGE admission of failure on the part of Sony, who claimed for years that a $600 console was absolutely crucial and didn't matter because the lifecycle was a decade and OH THE CELL IS THE BESTEST CHIP ARCHICTECTURE EVAR!!!! The gigantic PSN hackery snafu is also going to hurt them if this kind of no used games always connected console thing is really what they are going to market. If the sequel to the 360 is looking to be released at the same time according to the rumors, I just don't see Sony wanting to release at the same time.

Sony just announced the replacement of their CEO yesterday in conjunction with the announcement that this will be their 4th straight year (not quarter) of BIG losses.   The new guy /says/ he wants to focus on the consumer instead of being a tech innovator.   Dropping the cell architecture would be the best example of doing just that.  Let chip mfrs design and produce chips and focus on being the entertainment provider instead.  Also, they learned with the 360/PS3 gap that being early/ at the same time is a bigger advantage than previously thought.   

It's also pretty damn embarrassing when your last-gen console is STILL in more homes than your current-gen. Source.  The number of smart-devices and pads have to be making console mfrs at least a little nervous, too.  As players move online the need to support multiple players on one device is going away, meaning those items are going to be a threat at some point.   The only thing keeping them in check right now is the size of the screen, IMO.

[sickrubik]

According to a Gamasutra article from two years back, 78% of PS3's were connected online and the 360 had 73%.

That's 78% of PS3 users that have broadband. Very, very important distinction when talking about broadband penetration (last I read was under 40% of the US) and console sales.

[Polysorbate80]

Yeah, my "broadband" is at best 832kbps down/500-ish up, and may work flawlessly all day or randomly shit the bed every few minutes (yay rural America!) 

I'm not downloading an entire blu-ray full of game data anytime soon.  I only connect my 360 to download patches, enter codes or for small DLCs. 

[Salamok]

The constant patches and nerfing is about the only thing that pisses me off about the playstation.  Shit half the time mine requires a system update I come away with the distinct feeling that the only thing they updated was the ToS.  

On the ps4 I personally could really give a crap about backwards compatibility and DRM for used games but unfortunately there are thousands of users who care enough to crack it, once that happens the cycle of nerfs and 2 patches a week begins.

If the ps4 was just a ps3 that allowed me to install my games to drive (so I wasn't constantly fumbling with disks) and never ever have to upgrade or agree to revised ToS's I would probably buy it.

If they really want to take a bite out of the used game market WTF don't they make ALL games available/installable via the PSN Store?

[schild]

5) AMD x64 CPU and AMD Southern Islands GPU"

I'm a bit out of the tech loop atm, what makes this point particularly bad?

Tom's Hardware Gaming CPU Hierarchy.

TOTALLY off topic - I have a Q9450. Had it for just shy of 4 years now (got one out of the first box of the first batch at Fry's), the computer hardware industry has given me ZERO reason to upgrade.

[sickrubik]

Yeah, my "broadband" is at best 832kbps down/500-ish up, and may work flawlessly all day or randomly shit the bed every few minutes (yay rural America!) 

I'm not downloading an entire blu-ray full of game data anytime soon.  I only connect my 360 to download patches, enter codes or for small DLCs. 

And this isn't even bringing in the topic of Data Caps.

[Yegolev]

This is less important if we all end up playing small games with shitty art assets.

[sickrubik]

I'm pretty sure the future of consoles is not Angry Birds. I think there will be MORE of that stuff, certainly... but we'll still be getting the big AAA titles as well.

[Merusk]

You will be getting a lot fewer of them because they're too all-or-nothing.

[sickrubik]

Even if we guess that their research showing that people with no broadband or keep their console offline tend to buy used, I'm not sure how that equates to less AAA titles.

[shiznitz]

How fast can "app game" quality catch up to console quality?  There certainly is a diminishing returns curve on graphics quality where incremental improvement won't be as visually obvious.  There are plenty of iPad games with almost PS2 quality visuals - just not complex gameplay. 

What are the limitations for app developers? iPad to iPad CoD cannot be that far off.

[Yegolev]

I think we are trying to connect lack of wide broadband penetration to smaller games for download purposes.  Plus the fact that crap games make tons of money on phones.

[Mrbloodworth]

How fast can "app game" quality catch up to console quality?  There certainly is a diminishing returns curve on graphics quality where incremental improvement won't be as visually obvious.  There are plenty of iPad games with almost PS2 quality visuals - just not complex gameplay.  

What are the limitations for app developers? iPad to iPad CoD cannot be that far off.

Package size, Ram, Development budget.

4 months for an app that nets you 30-100k is win. Even if that's its entire life cycle.

EDIT: also, GPU's.

[Simond]

Even if we guess that their research showing that people with no broadband or keep their console offline tend to buy used, I'm not sure how that equates to less AAA titles.

Because a flop iOS/Xbox Arcade/'indie'-style $10 game is a much smaller hit to a developer's bottom line than a flop AAA game which cost X tens/hundreds of millions of dollars to develop.