You're not taking into account the software lag behind hardware. Are there really any games right now that are iPad 2 specific? There are a few that have enhancements, but most games being released will still run on the iPhone 4 and original iPad. Your point isn't invalid, but it's exaggerated. There isn't really a "replacement" necessary, and even if there was, people replace their smartphones after the contract is up. You're not going to be limited to a wired connection. You'll have a wireless option with an accessory. Tablets and smartphones are currently using the same processors, so it would be both. Apple usually release their new processor in the tablet first, then adds it later in the same year to their smartphone.
But at the moment iPads are used for what could be described as 'casual' gaming yes? If they were the only option out there then people would wan't to see something a little better looking than Angry Birds and would you be happy to fork out £399 on an iPad 2 to see it limited by the outdated iPad? That's like buying a PS3 and the developer simply porting PS2 games so that PS2 users don't miss out. If/when big developers move to tablets they will want to push them to their limits to try to lure gamers in. And while we are on the point of big developers you think they will be content with pricing CoD MW 4 at current smartphone game prices? I can't see them wanting anything less than the current asking price which will make tablets more expensive in the first place but just as expensive to run. And before you say 'well it hasn't happened yet so we can't say either way' I think we can by looking at current downloadable games on other platforms. You can probably pick up INfamous 2 now in a shop for around £30 if not less and even when it was new you would get it for £40 at the most. I saw on PSN recently that they are asking £49.99 for it (full RRP) and so I had a look around and I didn't like what I saw. Games that you can get really quite cheap elsewhere are still very expensive on PSN and old games don't seem to go down in price. Whereas games on disks that sit on shelves of shops trying to make money go down in price why would Sony/Microsoft/Apple be forced to do the same? It isn't taking up stock space, what do they care if the game never goes below its RRP? You can't exactly buy a second hand download can you. If console gaming did go the tablet + online purchasing route I can see it pricing a lot of people out of the gaming world. Not completely true, I myself will soon be out of contract and I am actually thinking of keeping my Nexus One and moving to a £15/month SIM only deal again. I don't need a new phone so why continue to pay £25/month that I do now for the same number of minutes and texts?
That isn't the way that it would work. Look at the chart I just posted again. In a couple of years, smartphones and tablets will be well beyond 360/PS3 capabilities. Small developers wouldn't have to worry about horsepower, and large developers would still be operating under the same principle of current consoles, i.e., it takes several years to even max out the hardware, and users are still satisfied with the games for another couple of years after that. I don't see your point here. How is a single tablet/smartphone that eliminates the need for two additional pieces of hardware (gaming handheld + console) going to be more expensive? As for software, I could actually see more price competition with the tablet/smartphone model due to the volume of sales. Those markets are MUCH larger than the console specific markets. Your point about lower income families buying budget priced consoles later in the console generation when they're cheaper would still be possible in the smartphone/tablet model as well.
So lets say that the iPad 3 comes out next year, lets see how many iPads come out in a normal console lifespan.... iPad 3 2012 iPad 4 2013 (1 year) iPad 5 2014 (2 years) iPad 6 2015 (3 years) iPad 7 2016 (4 years) iPad 8 2017 (5 years) Do you seriously believe that developers will not get more horsepower out of the box with the updated tablets? If they didn't why would anyone bother buying the new model? No point paying £399 when the old one can play the same games right? Can you see the iPad 3 being able to play games designed for the iPad 7 with all its added power 4 years later? The XBOX 360 can still play games that come out now and that is more than 5 years old. But in this scenario we would wait years to see our new tablets being properly used! iPad 2 is out now, lets say you want people to use it for 4 years so all games for the next 4 years HAVE to be able to run on it. Then in 2015 they can say 'its too old you will need to upgrade' but wait a minute, the iPad 3 is only 3 years old so they can upgrade just a little bit but to nothing more than the iPad 3 can handle. 2016 comes around and hey look the iPad 3 is 4 years old, lets tell people they need to upgrade, but wait what is this the iPad 4 is only 3 years old we can only make games to its standard. Why would anyone buy a £399 tablet knowing they have to wait 3-4 years for the old one to be outdated before they can see what it is really capable of? But the Wii was always a cheap option, I have yet to see a single cheap new tablet.
I'll believe tablets are capable of games that match the standard of PS3/360 games when I see them come out.
I think the problem with your logic here is that you're thinking of smartphones/tablets as if they were solely intended to play games. Instead, they're really a convergence device and a new form of mass market PC. Games were developed for PC despite the fact that newer and more powerful PCs came out each year, right? Did most PC's become unusable for games after 1 year? No. It's really the same type of principle as PC games and it's already in use for smartphones and tablets. Consoles didn't really become popular because the hardware was set in stone for five years. They were popular because they were generally cheaper, easier to understand, and easier to connect to the living room TV than a PC. Those kinds of advantages look like they'll mostly fade away with the advent of very powerful smartphones and tablets. With the hardware being refreshed every year, there's always going to be a fairly good supply of used hardware out there. Original iPads look like they're selling for $250-350 on EBay, and you guys paid $250 for your 3DS. Wii was originally $250 (if you could find one).
Here's an example of a tech demo of a game that was originally developed for the Tegra2 chipset (significantly less powerful than the iPad 2 A5), running on an iPad 2. This is coming from a smaller developer as well. I just don't think people realize how powerful the mobile processors that are already available really are. Obviously this isn't really the 360/PS3 standard quite yet, but it's hard to watch this and think mobiles are very far off from that standard.
Not a deal breaker, but I do not really like diversity. If I want a smartphone (ie a cel phone) I will grab a smartphone, if I want a tablet, I grab a tablet. if I want a laptop I grab a laptop. I don't carry all three with me, if one tablet sized device did all three I wouldn't want to hold it with me 24x7. It's just not as mobile as a cel phone. If that's all I need than why carry a damn tablet? Than comes your console idea. sure it can do it, sure it's nice. But I don't want to plug it in. Plus constant nagging upgrades. Grimm has the right idea, and AlterEGO deserves a bit of credit too :x, it's a nice idea, but unless it becomes wireless, cheaper, unless they hold off on 80% of the upgrades! Unless it becomes a WHOLE lot more mobile, I just don't see it replacing the console market. But again it hardly has to... at least not the console market. CISC based processors is already muscling in on RISC based laptop mindshare and soon after will probably demolish the low end RISC based competition entirely thanks to Tablets and Smartphones. That is the inevitable conclusion, I doubt replacing consoles is even a viable target yet. You won't see these kind of ideas for many years now I assume. First laptops than, if we can get like 8-core CISC chips that can compete with desktop chips, maybe even the whole pc marketplace! But no, the pc world is entirely sepperate from the console world. Sure they make games on pc. But I can show you 3 year old PC games made for XP and DirectX9 that don't work on Win7. The world went along perfectly well with both a pc market and a console market. It'll have to coincide with a smartphone/ tablet market and a console market for a bit And I'm sure it will just fine, pc has tried to move in on console since the first mass marketed pc game! But it just can't.
Yeah I'll admit those graphics are pretty good but by the time ipad games look like that console games will look like this.
Not right now, but I'm guessing that in the next couple of years you'll see some ports of PS3/360 games to portable platforms. IMO, the upcoming console generation that includes the Wii U will be the last one where it makes sense to use the immobile box-under-the-TV standard. Competition from smartphones and tablets will probably mean that beyond this upcoming generation console makers have to come up with something that has the same form factor and flexibility: you can carry it with you and play HD games, or attach it to your TV and play HD games.
Not necessarily. If you look at the chart I posted, the increase in graphic power from the A4 in the original iPad to the A5 in the iPad 2 is gigantic. Since smartphones and tablets are refreshing every year, then it's likely going to be a dynamic similar in relationship to PC's where the console will inevitably lose ground every year, as well as having the disadvantage of not being mobile.
I guess you raise some good points there but I see drawbacks to using tablets. No disc drive. Probably got a relatively limited hard drive space. Compatibility issues. Plus I don't want to spend £300 on a games machine that will be outdated and need replacing within a year, if I wanted that shit I'd buy a PC. The power may be there soon but there's still a load of other obstacles to overcome before I'll even consider tablets as a serious gaming platform.
Saying stuff like that never made sense to me. How is this different from consoles. The hardware on consoles are generally already outdated less than a year after they launch. The difference? You just don't have another choice in the matter since you have no other options. Truth is, the mobile hardware is where it's at right now. It may be hard to see if you don't really follow it, but rewind back to 2008 and look at where we're at today. That was a matter of 20 years in the console industry
I'm never happy about spending £300 once every five years let alone every year or two. At least when I buy a console I don't have to worry about which games will work on my system or about having to upgrade at great cost to run the latest games. I spend my cash and then relax for 5 or so years, the tech may not improve but the developers' understanding of it does. Look at Gears 1 compared to Gears 2, same console but Gears 2 looked far superior. I'd rather have a console that lasts 5 years than have to spend hundreds of pounds each year just to play slightly better games each time. I enjoy the huge graphical leap that comes with every generation of consoles. New hardware every year would only lead to the uber rich being able to being able to enjoy high quality gaming while us mere mortals have to make do with "last year's product" with it's inferior power.
That's just an optical illusion to you. Just because better hardware is available out to by doesn't make your's inferior. I have a core i5 quad core processor. There's been plenty of new processors released since it came out. Does that make mine inferior? Nope. I could sit there and make excuses on how they are better than mine and what not but what sense does that make? There's plenty of people that kept their ipad and are perfectly happy with it rather than upgrade to the ipad 2. Same with the iphone 3g to 3gs to iphone 4. Apple's app ecosystem works in a such a way that the games are compatible across new and old hardware. If you bought a new game system, will your games be compatible across your new and old systems? Probably not.
You keep insisting that since the gap between ipad1 and 2 was so substantial the next one will be also. Well I don't buy it. Many new technologys are released before being optimized and once done so this initial gap is MUCH bigger than those that come after it. All AMD had to do with it's second generation fusion was add double bandwidth dimms sure they'll tweak it here and there but it doesn't always take a rocket scientist to optimize a hastily released product and it still smells like a rose. I just doubt one can assume the A6 will be SO much better than the A5 or whatever.
Actually it does. If it's not the best then by definition that makes it inferior. Backwards compatibility, PS2 had it, PS3 has it (to a degree), Xbox 360 has it, Gamecube had it, Wii has it. I suppose by the same coin there's no reason why tablets wouldn't be backwards compatible so that portion of my argument goes out the window. But more to the point I'm not expecting my new games on my new console to be playable on my old console, but then again I'm not having to keep shelling out hundreds of pounds every year just to be able to play the new games that come out like I would probably have to do with a tablet. I just think the whole infrastructure that revolves around gaming on tablets is so vastly different to that of the console market that tablets just don't pose a threat yet. I've heard talk about how the console market's "stop and start" life cylce (as opposed to the constant "flowing" of the PC/tablet market) is far from ideal. But from who's perspective it is not ideal? Let's look at it from three angles: 1. Console Manufacturer. They release a console every 5 years, so every 5 years the company be it Sony or Microsoft, earns an unholy amount of money for a couple of years then has time to develop new tech, sounds good. Now with the longer life cycles of consoles they're able to make more money during the lifespan by introducing new hardware such as Kinect and Move. 2. Games developer. They have years to get to grips with the hardware and keep improving their engines and because the consoles are around for a while their games don't seem to age as badly as they do on other platforms i.e. PC. 3. Consumer. I'd be happy buying one machine that's going to last for a few years rather than keep having to shell out cash for slightly improved versions every year and I'm sure a lot of people agree. Bottom line, the tablets themselves may be great for gaming in the future but the way the industry and the market work leave me with some reservations about the whole idea of tablets replacing the "immobile box under the tv".
Here's an excerpt of an interview with Epic Games president Mike Capps... So he's actually going a step further and saying that the current console generation may be the last one where it makes sense to use the immobile box-under-the-TV standard.
I suppose that would be all well and good if money wasn't an issue but I'm willing to bet that most people can't afford to buy a new games machine every year. Talk is just that, talk. I'll believe that consoles are redundant in the wake of the almighty mobile phone when I see it happen.