Pachter on why consoles are becoming obsolete

[Thierry Henry]

Without giving away too much, would you give attendees an idea of what to expect from your D.I.C.E. Europe session and why you think consoles are becoming obsolete?

Pachter: One of the things that I'm going to focus on is how technology allows publishers to bypass consoles and lets consumers download games on any device with a microprocessor. It can be a phone or a tablet or a simple box with a WiFi connection connected to a television. Microprocessors in mobile devices are advancing so fast that in a few years there will be phones and tablets that are as powerful as today's PCs.

The power of the devices I mentioned totally changes the landscape. When you eliminate the requirement of having to make an investment in an expensive console in order to play a game, then you're going to exponentially grow the market for every game.

Let's use FIFA as a simple example. My guess is that there's 100-million people in Europe that love FIFA and have never played a FIFA game. They love watching it and they love rooting for their teams. They'd probably be happy to spend money on a FIFA game, but they don't necessarily want to make a several-hundred dollar investment on a console to do it. Advancing technology will allow these people to experience a great FIFA game without a console.


The same thing goes for Call of Duty. There are probably lots of people that would love to play Call of Duty, but aren't interested in playing other games, so they don't buy a console. Back in the day, there were a lot of people that wanted to play Guitar Hero, but didn't want to buy a console. I believe that every game has a theoretical audience that's at least twice as big as its existing audience if you eliminate the need to buy a console. When you push accessibility to the masses, you're going to grow sales. Considering that the audience of D.I.C.E. Europe is mostly developers and people that work in the games industry, that's going to be good for everyone -- except the people that make consoles.

Tying all of that into D.I.C.E. Europe 2015's theme of the "Art of Engagement," do you think that the broadening you foresee will change the way developers approach engagement?

Pacther: I'm not sure that it will change much. My personal view is that games are art. They're a form of entertainment. Developers already make games for a fairly large audience. I don't think that they're going to change the way that they make games because the audience is getting broader. It's like if Nike made a great pair of shoes that stood up to a lot of punishment, they're not going to make them more cheaply because more people want them. So I don't think the idea that the product will appeal to more people necessarily means that the product itself will change at all.

http://www.diceeurope.org/news/conversa ... achter.asp


It's Pachter. So take it with a bucket of salt.

[Tanooki]

He needs to be sandpapered and rubbed in salt with a lemon juice bath most times he opens his mouth.

The problem is, it sickens me, but I think he's onto something. Consoles are selling worse too, it's not just Nintendo and Sony taking the handheld hit even if those are still doing pretty nicely. Tablets, notebooks, and phones are beating the shit out of dedicated devices because of what he said, cost of entry. The thing holding back good gamers from using those, shitty touch controls. When you start seeing stuff like the nes/snes30 controller, the nvidia shield, moga controllers popping up and going up in popularity that is a red flag. Then you have what he said about how fast these things are advancing.

Have you seen the vanilla (atom cpu, not pro) microsoft surface 3 tablet?

Using a 360 controller with it, you have Jet Grind Radio running 100% (steam release), Street Fighter 3 2nd impact (mame release), and Hokuto no Ken (pcfx2 ps2 emulator) all going slick on there. That's the stock one, not the souped up pro version, a $500 tablet.

Imagine the tech in another 1 or 2, those who can touch will, those who can't or don't do well with it (me) can just get a small controller for like $30~. Shit like that is going to kill consoles and handheld dedicated device sales. It tears down the barrier and lets anyone who already has their portable do what they need to. They start releasing EA sports, Call of Duty, and a few other super million seller trendy games to it as a focus it's going to cause a hell of a shift.

[o.pwuaioc]

Good riddance.

[Erik_Twice]

Patcher, the man who misses more than a shotgun at the county's fair.

Did you guys know that he recommended to invest on Blockbuster instead of Netflix? Or that he predicted GTA V would be released back in 2010? Or that Red Dead Redemption would not even sell 300K copies? Did you know that he thought the Wii would kill Nintendo? Back in 2009 he said that this generation of consoles was the last and there wouldn't be a successor to the Playstation or Wii or Xbox and that Call of Duty would stop selling by 2010.

He's full of shit and there's absolutely no reason anyone should ever listen to him.

[isiolia]

He's full of shit and there's absolutely no reason anyone should ever listen to him.

Eh, for this particular topic though, it's not like he's bringing some new or unique point of view. It's more stating the obvious. As Tanooki said, dedicated device sales are slowing - it's not just one market or another either. Think of the camera market, for instance, or that of portable music players or digital organizers. This is something more general purpose mobile devices have already been doing.

[Tanooki]

He's a horrible person and terrible at his job, but sometimes he is right, usually when the writing is already on the wall. When it doesn't require any real thought if you can look at how sales are going, and not having to really speculate, he tends to do ok. He's like those paid frauds who do the weather...they guess all the time, never really sure about stuff until it's almost upon you using computer models, yet they're trusted. He's kind of like that.

That tablet I linked, the ghetto version no less with the weak atom chip from intel can play that stuff and more quite well. Give it another couple years or so, and tablets will eclipse what a high ball laptop could do. That'll be a direct threat not only to the home console and handheld market, but the pc/laptop markets too. If they can overcome heat issues and pump out quality on the level of the best you have now (like the nvidia 980 chip) on a tablet that can use a keyboard, has a few usb ports, slot for a sd card, and bluetooth to use controllers for games and it'll spell real trouble. Once the phone/tablets can do anything the nicest computers can reasonably do, the always behind console/handheld market is screwed.

[isiolia]

It's less the technical capability, and more eradicating barriers of entry. Like he said, remove that "spend a few hundred dollars, then buy this game" aspect, and more people will play.

I think the bigger hurdle isn't so much graphics power or control (as mentioned, Bluetooth is a simple enough solution there). It's storage, and bandwidth to fill it. Mobile devices have a very, very long way to go before they've got the basic 500GB of storage consoles are coming with now. Most phones/tablets don't even have the space for more than one modern AAA title.

[skyknight]

Well, Patcher is the person to go to for all people with really deep pockets.

You don't have to like his opinions, but you have to respect his position and insight. And he has been more right than wrong in the last few years - otherwise he would been canned much sooner by the people he is working for.

Right now what's the real separation between a XBox ONE/PS4 and Kindle Fire TV/Apple TV/Google Play Console? It's just the matter of quality gaming, and $200 price difference. And you can see Japanese companies going down that route with Nintendo, Konami, Capcom focusing on lower development cost.

I don't know what the next few years will be, but it will be another new era.

[isiolia]

And you can see Japanese companies going down that route with Nintendo, Konami, Capcom focusing on lower development cost.

It's where the money is. Square-Enix has a bit of focus there too, but it's easy to see why. Check out their investor slide show here, on slides 17 and 18. Mobile is bringing in about twice the revenue per quarter that their undoubtedly-more-expensive-to-make console/PC MMOs are.

[Snatch1414]

Yeah I mean it's commonplace now for people to use an Xbox 360 controller on a PC. The Ouya was shit but phone games on your TV was a neat little idea. How long before big companies connect all these kinds of dots and we're pretty much downloading a game on whatever device we happen to have chosen long before we even wanted said game?

The thing is, and I know I sound old, I really like having a dedicated device. There's nothing personal about digital purchases onto a device that's not solely for gaming. I like having my 3DS, unwrapping a new copy of a game that's now mine, and playing it on the platform intended. I think that's so much better than the prospect of downloading the newest Mario game onto your Samsung tablet and playing it with their stock "gaming controller". That would make me feel really detached from the creators.