Richard Garriott: "…fundamentally [consoles are] doomed."
After having scored one interview with Lord British, Industry Gamers has come back with a second exclusive Richard Garriott interview…or, rather, a profile of the Ultima creator and his status as a game industry legend.
For the most part, the discussion is what we’ve come to know as the standard Garriott fare for 2011; it covers the history of Ultima, touches on Origin Systems and EA (and EA’s failure to capitalize properly in the online gaming space), and even gets into a bit of a discussion about the evolution of technology using CD-ROMs as a key example.
What most of the Internet is abuzz about, however, is a prediction that Garriott makes in the latter half of the interview:
IG: With each of these technology shifts you mentioned, it seems that new companies arose to take advantage of them, and older companies had difficulty dealing with these shifts.
RGC: That’s true completely. I mean, if you think about that Blizzard wouldn’t be able to be nearly as dominant in the MMO space if Electronic Arts had managed to capitalize on it properly.
IG: It’s always tough to completely change the way you look at things. The bigger the company, the more conservative they tend to be. Do you think consoles as we know them are doomed, or are we going to get a new generation, or is it just becoming irrelevant?
RGC: I think we might get one more generation, might, but I think fundamentally they’re doomed. I think fundamentally the power that you can carry with you in a portable is really swamping what we’ve thought of as a console.
IG: If we’ve got a smartphone that can do Xbox level graphics, which we’ve almost got, and I can hook that up to a TV and use a controller, what’s the difference between that and a console? It’s just whatever games are available.
RGC: Yes, exactly. That’s why I think there may be one more round of consoles left, but not many.
I did a bit of analysis regarding the relative gaming and computational power of modern mobile devices versus modern consoles in the last RIOT, and by and large that same comparison is what Garriott is getting at here. Given the choice between something with Playstation 3 power that fits in our pocket and something with Playstation 3 power that doesn’t, a lot of people are going to opt for the one that lets them take their games along.
And when you consider that, already, some mobile phones can pipe video out to an HDTV and become defacto gaming boxes and controllers all in one, it’s not hard to imagine that in the none-too-distant future, mobiles might even supplant consoles as the go-to multiplayer option as well. I mean, how many more generations of iPhone do you think we’ll see before four players can split-screen a match of Angry Birds Whatever (or anything else, for that matter) on an HDTV over AirPlay, using their phones as controllers?
Err… yeah for once I’m gonna have to disagree with Richard Garriott.
While I can certainly see mobile device *eventually* taking over the handheld market, and perhaps the 3DS and PS Vita will be the last generation of handheld console as we know it (I can already picture Sony aiming at a Vita handeld/mobile phone hybrid down the road…), consoles are not going away anytime soon.
It’s a market that covers tens of millions of devices, with ten of millions of game. Now granted, we’ll be getting close to PS360 quality on mobile device soon enough… but the next generation of consoles is just around the corner and is gonna be bringing a LOT of horsepower that mobile device won’t be getting anytime soon.
The fact is there is a huge market for high end console gaming so it’s not going away anytime soon. Could a mobile high end device were you could plug controller and move arround happen down the road? Sure, and it probably will… but no way it’s gonna take over the console before at least a couple decades.
As a matter of fact I can see mobile and tablet devices taking offer PCs for the Mass Market public (ie. the one who basically use PCs to go on the internet, facebook and check their mails) long before it’s gonna take over consoles.
Sorry Richard, but I think you’re wrong for once 😛
Devices will continue to converge, as they have been doing, until they reach a ubiquitous singularity. Whether it’s holographic and contact lens displays, RFID chips, wireless audio/video streaming between mobile and stationary devices, or a cable spike into the ol’ spinal cord, the future is coming.
Of course – but not that soon.
Consoles are lazy people’s computers. The back office of the industry will decide if they become less profitable than supplanting technologies such as open platforms running on devices they don’t manufacture or sell. They’ll shift software development resources accordingly.
It is that soon. Well, hopefully not the cable spike, but in the next decade we’ll be seeing these things in consumer products.
Lets compare a 5-6 year old machine to one built today. Not surprised the highest end is comparable in specs.
Might be one last generation of consoles? Definitely at least one more generation of consoles.
Look at the apple tv. It’s like a media computer/tv hybrid thingy. That you can now play your iphone games through using the phone as a controller.
Could you imagine apple as the next console maker? GOD NO! I DON’T WANT A 2000 DOLLAR CONSOLE!!! Besides my reputation of never buying any apple product ever…
The console market is a HUGE percentage of gaming. I’m sure sony, ms and nintendo aren’t going to let their precious pretty boxes go the way of betamax without a fight.
On a side note, it’d be strange having to decide whether to get a 3ds phone or vita phone. And I’d feel weird about having two phones for my gaming needs. Although I would have bought the 3ds in a heart beat if it was a phone running android.
True…but note too that we’re also comparing something that sits beside your TV and isn’t portable at all with something that fits in your pocket and still leaves room for your keys.
I think you, like Garriott, are correct here: there will be another console generation. But I also think it will be characterized by greater…cross-platform playability, I guess might be a term for it. We’re seeing it with Sony and the Vita; they want any game released for the Playstation to have a Vita version as well, and they are planning to have shared savegames between both devices. Microsoft is doing something similar on the Xbox/Windows Phone 7 side of things, and they’re going one further and building XBLA capability into Windows 8. Indeed, I’ve seen a few rumours in the last week or two suggesting that the next Xbox way well run on a Windows 8 variant.
Or you can hook the phone up directly; the 4S supports HDMI output.
They went there once. Not sure they will again…but I think they will do a lot more to integrate their to-TV video delivery capabilities with the iPhone’s (and iPad’s) formidable gaming power (and formidable catalogue of games).
They’ll go where the money is. If that continues to be as producers of gaming hardware, they will indeed fight to stay in that business. If it becomes more lucrative to go the way of SEGA and become primarily publishers of software, they will go that route instead. (I actually think this is the fate in store for Nintendo.)
I think the problem with these dedicated game device manufacturers is that they just don’t iterate their hardware often enough. That more than anything is why mobile (phone/tablet) gaming has taken off like it has: the hardware platform keeps iterating, keeps getting more powerful, every six to eighteen months. Whereas it’s been HOW long between the PSP and the Vita?
And this gets back to what I pointed out…twelve months from now, there will be a new iPhone, and it will be about as powerful as the Vita, if not more powerful. There will be a new iPad, also as powerful or more powerful than the Vita. And a year after that, there will probably be another iPhone, with substantially more power than the Vita. And probably a new iPad as well, again even more powerful. Sony is either going to have to iterate portable consoles on a two-year cycle to stay mostly current and appealing to both developers and players.
Do you see that happening? I don’t.
“If it becomes more lucrative to go the way of SEGA and become primarily publishers of software, they will go that route instead. (I actually think this is the fate in store for Nintendo.)”
I wouldn’t go that far yet. The difference between Nintendo and SEGA at the time of their (hardware) demise… is that Nintendo consoles are still selling like hotcakes. Wii-U will probably make or break them as far as home consoles goes (especially since it takes like the opposite approach of Wii), though I’d agree it does not bodes well for them in the long run if they don’t aim to a more multimedia/phone mobile gaming approach.
“I think the problem with these dedicated game device manufacturers is that they just don’t iterate their hardware often enough. That more than anything is why mobile (phone/tablet) gaming has taken off like it has: the hardware platform keeps iterating, keeps getting more powerful, every six to eighteen months. Whereas it’s been HOW long between the PSP and the Vita?
And this gets back to what I pointed out…twelve months from now, there will be a new iPhone, and it will be about as powerful as the Vita, if not more powerful. There will be a new iPad, also as powerful or more powerful than the Vita. And a year after that, there will probably be another iPhone, with substantially more power than the Vita. And probably a new iPad as well, again even more powerful.”
I’d argue the issue in your equation here is that you forget that a LOT of people do NOT want to spend 500 or 600 bucks every couple of years to get the new best phone/tablet. Hell a lot of people are not even willing to spend that much for a first place (I know I ain’t, I’d love an Ipad or such… but if I have 500 bucks to spare I’d rather wait for the next Wii/Xbox/PS to use on my 46″ 3DTV – there are people who cares about gaming being a grand thing :P)
Sure, consoles (whether handheld or not) used fixed hardware which age… but it means even 5 or 6 or 7 years after it’s out you can still get games for your consoles knowing they’ll run properly. I’d argue this is also an advantage for developpers because they don’t have to cope with hardware upgrading all the time and can actually focus on getting the best out of the existing hardware as dated as it is – and it’s also what has allowed such quality games to be crafted on consoles. With a new Iphone or Ipad coming out every two years, it’s a frustration for gamers I think because it’ll go “yeah well sorry you Ipad4 can’t use our new UE5 game, get an Ipad5 it’s only 900$ out tomorrow!”
Now there’ll always be tech savies (and members of the cult of the Apple :P) who’ll go and get blindly each new interation of their phone/tablet… just like there are hardcore PC gamers who’d get the new video card ASAP and such… but I don’t that going well with the mass market who actually buy those consoles and handheld – most likely they’ll be happy with having a dated Smartphone or Tablet as long as it works (if Nintendo’s latest endeavours prove anything is that the mass market don’t care about fancy graphics).
In all seriousness, the day consoles gaming turns out like the Iphone/Pad model with a new model every two years is the day I’ll stop console gaming altogether.
Fair point…but the same will also be true amongst the Windows Phone 7 and Android phones, which have kept more or less lockstep pace with Apple hardware, and which in fact use the same basic hardware underneath the different OSs. Strip away the Android, iOS, or WP7 and you’ll find the same ARM Cortex chips, the same PowerVR graphics chips, and the same Broadcom communications controllers in pretty much every phone (barring those that are powered by e.g. Tegra).
And remember: the WP7 and Android phones come in at a lower price point, and game development technologies (especially engines and other middleware) are rapidly moving to support publishing to these other platforms. Especially Android.
It’s a question of similarity. If the consoles eventually become so generic that they can be ‘cloned’ (like what happened to the IBM PC), then that will be the end of the console manufacturers as we know them, although the concept of a ‘console’ as that piece of hardware that usually sits next to your TV may remain with us.
I will always respect Richard Garriott for giving us Ultima and in particular Ultimas IV and VII, but frankly to me he is the George Lucas of video games. His early works were great but somewhere along the way he lost his vision. This started to be evident with Ultima VIII but we were all willing to chalk that up to rushed deadlines. With Ultima IX it was apparent (to me at least) that the bloom was beginning to fade from the rose. I will always be grateful for what he gave us, but as with the Star Wars prequels I am very dubious about anything he has said or produced post 2000.
Also I would add that as long as there are televisions there will be a device of some type that allows you to play video games on them. This is here to stay. Whether that exists as consoles as we now know them is debatable.