Pachter on why consoles are becoming obsolete

[BoneSnapDeez]

I worked in an elementary school for a few years.

Minecraft is a phenomenon. It's huge.

Also, the local library here has two clubs: book club and Minecraft club. And this is rural Maine.

[Erik_Twice]

I agree with Marlowe. I think most of us who don't play Minecraft really don't grasp how huge this game is.

Yeah, my point is, as huge and incredibly popular it might be, I don't think it's going to be most influential game since Super Mario Bros because influence is more than popularity.

I don't think Pokémon was particularly important in its artistic influence and it was huge too so dunno

[BoneSnapDeez]

Well Pokémon led to a whole genre of "monster" games that many consider separate from JRPGs proper.

I don't know enough about Minecraft to comment on any direct imitators or similar games. But I imagine there are many given its enormous popularity.

[Forlorn Drifter]

As I have already stated, there are very hard limits to how you can balance between control methods, and even if you think you can, some folks will always pony up for more expensive, more precise equipment. Street Fighter IV on PC allows you to use keyboard, pad, or joystick. You can guess which one is best for competitive play. The default controller for PS4 and XBone is a pad. They haven't balanced pad play against the superior joystick. If you want to play at that level you have to go buy a joystick. That's just how it goes. FPS games are very similar. Unless you somehow design your controls to disadvantage mouse and keyboard players, pad players will always have a slight disadvantage.

No, I don't know which control method is best used for PC fighting games. You seem to lean towards joystick, but I've had my ass kicked many times by M/KB players while using a joystick.

I get the idea that some of the thoughts of how couch gaming will change will lead to more unification between platforms and such. But that all goes out the window, and defeats the point, if players are going to be worried about getting kicked from games for their controller type, its going to lead to split playlists and servers. And developers will have to sit and think about which control type they want to be the main one used, with the same problems and fractured playerbases already found.

[Erik_Twice]

Let's go back a little. Is there any actual proof console sales are lower in this generation compared to the previous one? Because I'm checking and I'm not sure that's the case at all at least for Microsoft's and Sony's consoles.

[marurun]

Sales numbers aren't what you want to look at for success. You want, instead, to look at profits resulting from titles. If a company sells a small number of games but still makes a profit, great. If they sell 5 million copies but barely scrape by because they spent too much making the game, that's not so great. So it's about not just the installed console base and buyers but also the expectations put on game makers in terms of big budgets and whatnot.

[marurun]

No, I don't know which control method is best used for PC fighting games. You seem to lean towards joystick, but I've had my ass kicked many times by M/KB players while using a joystick.

Watch any fighting game tournament with the highest-level players. They're all joystick players, almost no exceptions.

And that's the thing, at mid-level play of course there's a wide variety of skills and control devices. But high-level play filters out the people AND the tools that don't cut it.

[marlowe221]

The Minecraft phenomenon mostly reminds me of the Pokémon craze of the mid nineties. It might not be as omnipresent across all media as Pokémon was then, but in schools it's easily a match. Kids are nuts for minecraft. Pretty much every kid I know has played it, and if I say I'm into video games, the first question asked is 'do you play minecraft?' Many of the most successful YouTube channels almost exclusively play Minecraft and make millions from doing so.

Minecraft is big enough that you can buy Minecraft Lego, despite the fact that Minecraft is essentially digital lego anyway.

Whilst I'm certainly not convinced Minecraft will have as big an impact on console design in future as the likes of Mario did (most modern consoles are more than capable of running a version of minecraft, and the home console I'd argue would make the most sense for Minecraft -The Wii U, thanks to it's touch screen - is the only one without a port) I certainly think it's going to drive a lot of game design philosphy.

And that's my point - I think that Minecraft will drive game design philosophy to such an extent that it could actually influence hardware design decisions.

And yeah, I was around for the Pokemon craze of the 90s too but I am not convinced that the Pokemon craze is really comparable to Minecraft. For one thing, Minecraft cut across age groups in a way that Pokemon did not, even at the height of its popularity. Minecraft has captured the hearts and minds of 8 year olds and 35 year olds alike. It is purely anecdotal, but I have known a couple of 50+ folks who have taken up Minecraft.

The 35 year olds who are playing Pokemon now are, by and large, the ones who were in middle school in the 1990s...