- Joined
- Dec 1, 2007
- Location
- Near Toronto Canada
Used to be that if you wanted to play on PC, you had to install the game, sometimes across several diskettes/CD's, occasionally install patches that you had to manually download, etc... and your graphics card would be a piece of junk within 12-18 months. With a console, you just jammed the cartridge in the slot and powered on, and you were good. That's all there was to it. And you were guaranteed that your console would be supported for at least five years (unless you were an unlucky soul who bought a Dreamcast, Virtualboy, Jaguar, etc). That was the general way of things.
Now, if you want to play on a console, you need to install the game, update the game, etc, just like on PCs. And to add insult to injury, no longer are you guaranteed your five years of hardware currentness, because there are iterative updates to hardware. You don't want to use your POS 1ish TFLOP console do you? Don't you know there's a 4ish TFLOP version now? Etc.
It all started with the "NEW" 3DS, and now we have "NEW" PS4 and soon, "NEW" Xbone. When will the madness end? Eventually everything will just converge into one box that does everything, which will inevitably be monopolized by somebody and the customer will lose.
I predict that the monopoly will be under Microsoft's belt, and that M$ will be purchasing Steam/Valve in the next 4 or 5 years.
Now, if you want to play on a console, you need to install the game, update the game, etc, just like on PCs. And to add insult to injury, no longer are you guaranteed your five years of hardware currentness, because there are iterative updates to hardware. You don't want to use your POS 1ish TFLOP console do you? Don't you know there's a 4ish TFLOP version now? Etc.
It all started with the "NEW" 3DS, and now we have "NEW" PS4 and soon, "NEW" Xbone. When will the madness end? Eventually everything will just converge into one box that does everything, which will inevitably be monopolized by somebody and the customer will lose.
I predict that the monopoly will be under Microsoft's belt, and that M$ will be purchasing Steam/Valve in the next 4 or 5 years.