"Former EA CEO: Chasing console graphics on mobile is a mistake"

[TopWargamer]

http://www.polygon.com/2013/7/30/4572706/former-ea-ceo-chasing-console-graphics-on-mobile-is-a-mistake'>Source (Polygon)

 

Interesting...what do you think about this? Do you think Riccitiello is right? 

 

[EChondo]

Personally, I agree. I could never see phones and tablets as a viable gaming medium.

[joelthezombie15]

I think that trying to get amazing graphics on mobile is a waste. Look at what the most popular games are. Angry birds,Temple run, Candy crush saga. Not many people care about amazing graphics on mobile, they want something fun that is also very rewarding and doesnt make you feel like you have to sit and play it for a long period of time.

[Yoinkerman]

All of you go eat a turnip I want to play XCOM on my phone.

 

I think that trying to get amazing graphics on mobile is a waste. Look at what the most popular games are. Angry birds,Temple run, Candy crush saga. Not many people care about amazing graphics on mobile, they want something fun that is also very rewarding and doesnt make you feel like you have to sit and play it for a long period of time.

[EChondo]

All of you go eat a turnip I want to play XCOM on my phone.

Jokes on you, I love turnips.

[mgsstar]

Yea. I would agree on it because usually when you try to achieve console graphics on mobile, it usually generates lots of heat.. NFS Most Wanted was a pretty good game in terms of its graphics imo.

[Yoinkerman]

That doesn't mean we should stop trying to get there.  Through better more efficient tech or batteries or heat dissipation or whatever.  Moving forward should always be the answer.

 

Yea. I would agree on it because usually when you try to achieve console graphics on mobile, it usually generates lots of heat.. NFS Most Wanted was a pretty good game in terms of its graphics imo.

[EChondo]

That doesn't mean we should stop trying to get there.  Through better more efficient tech or batteries or heat dissipation or whatever.  Moving forward should always be the answer.

The problem with mobile market is that it is segmented in too many ways. You could make X game, but unless you want a wide install base, you'll have to make it so all phones can run it, if you make a game for only high end phones, well, you'll have a way smaller install base.

 

Things are moving forward in the mobile market, but not the way you want them to go in. Hardware is constantly changing and developers can't make a game to only run on a certain set of hardware, they wouldn't be making any money on it.

[IPCharger]

I agree. Even when smartphones have the hardware to have better graphics, 95 percent of games will still look like shit because of their low budget.

[Xorbot]

The posts above me could not be more incorrect.

 

I believe mobile will replace consoles before the next console life cycle is out.  I think the biggest assumption and mistake that people make is that they see a future where we are all playing Call of Duty on a touch screen.  I will summarize the vision I have since this post could turn into an essay.

 

The future "gaming console" will be as follows:

- person comes home from school or work, throws cellphone onto the coffee table and plops down on the couch

- using wireless connectivity with the latest standards advanced in the next 10 years, person picks up charged wireless gamepad from dock

- again, using wireless connectivity, the phone automatically streams the display from cellphone to any 46" TV (e.g. Chromecast generation 3+)

 

Will the gaming PC be more powerful? Yes, of course it will and always will be.  Gaming consoles are about ease-of-use, and they have decent enough graphics for mostly everyone.  Would wireless induce lag in gameplay? It already does in multiple facets on current consoles (via wireless gamepads, and atrocious framerates).

 

I am going to file the "I could never see phones and tablets as a viable gaming medium" comments under "640K ought to be enough for anybody" section.

 

Feel free to bookmark my post if you think I am wrong.  Let's reconvene in 10 years and see what had transpired.  I am not shooting my mouth off as though I am some sort of mobile fanboy.  I've witnessed the progression of cellphones ever since 1999, and it has been an insane rate of progression.

[onionring]

catching up console graphics can t be that hard... i mean look at current consoles, we re almost there already, o wait actually phones and tablets can already beat nextgen consoles.

how? nvidia shield streaming ability.

a streamed titan pc game cannot be worse than nextgen consoles graphics.

now we only need to get a cloud computer service going on.

[sof006]

I do not care for amazing graphics on a mobile platform. Nor do I care for it in a mobile console such as the DS.

 

I want my phone to be a phone, not a battery draining power house. I want my tablet to be a tablet... again not a battery draining power house.

[EChondo]

The posts above me could not be more incorrect.

 

I believe mobile will replace consoles before the next console life cycle is out.  I think the biggest assumption and mistake that people make is that they see a future where we are all playing Call of Duty on a touch screen.  I will summarize the vision I have since this post could turn into an essay.

 

The future "gaming console" will be as follows:

- person comes home from school or work, throws cellphone onto the coffee table and plops down on the couch

- using wireless connectivity with the latest standards advanced in the next 10 years, person picks up charged wireless gamepad from dock

- again, using wireless connectivity, the phone automatically streams the display from cellphone to any 46" TV (e.g. Chromecast generation 3+)

 

Will the gaming PC be more powerful? Yes, of course it will and always will be.  Gaming consoles are about ease-of-use, and they have decent enough graphics for mostly everyone.  Would wireless induce lag in gameplay? It already does in multiple facets on current consoles (via wireless gamepads, and atrocious framerates).

 

I am going to file the "I could never see phones and tablets as a viable gaming medium" comments under "640K ought to be enough for anybody" section.

 

Feel free to bookmark my post if you think I am wrong.  Let's reconvene in 10 years and see what had transpired.  I am not shooting my mouth off as though I am some sort of mobile fanboy.  I've witnessed the progression of cellphones ever since 1999, and it has been an insane rate of progression.

Mobile gaming is not a viable medium and what you have describe doesn't help. You're using a mobile device to stream stuff onto a bigger screen and play with a controller. Mobile gaming is playing on a mobile device while be mobile not sitting down playing on a big TV with a controller.

 

I do agree, I would love to have my phone be the processing power, but in ten years TV's could have this power built in, so what would be the point of a phone doing the graphics if you're going to be playing on a large TV anyway?

[Kajornkeat]

I think mobile will replace handheld console pretty soon. They already have the hardware to do it. Only problem is the battery won't last long enough for a long gaming session + mobile phone is getting thinner = Less space to put battery. For me personally, I'm more interested in nvidia shield. That thing will be a mobile console killer for sure.

[Emperor_Piehead]

At the current moment i don't think it's very viable unless the platform is small or closed in like IOS or Ubuntu. Android is simply to big, something like 37% of android devices are at version 2 or gingerbread.

[Yoinkerman]

I'd buy a shield 3.0 or 4.0 if I could play games decently standalone.  There are a lot of times where streaming through the cloud or over home wifi isn't viable.

 

At the current moment i don't think it's very viable unless the platform is small or closed in like IOS or Ubuntu. Android is simply to big, something like 37% of android devices are at version 2 or gingerbread.

[Whiskers]

Agreed. Sort of. Rant ahoy!

 

Mobile games right now suck. They're limited and repetitive, unoriginal and bland. Only a few are truly unique or memorable - Angry Birds amongst them. Our devices are more powerful than a PlayStation 2 and original Xbox. Yet we do not have a single mobile game which is comparable to the likes of Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy X, Halo and Metal Gear Solid to name a few. 

 

Mobile games are in my opinion universally flawed because of how they are designed - focus on one strength, and forget about everything else.

 

I'll exemplify this by having a look at the top 10 grossing games on Android and noting the one strength each has:

 

     #1 Candy Crush Saga - focus is on gameplay.

     #2 The Simpsons Tapped Out - focus is on gameplay.

     #3 The Hobbit: Kingdoms - ahem. I guess the focus is on gameplay...

     #4 Top Eleven - gameplay

     #5 Pet Rescue Saga - gameplay

     #6 MARVEL: War of Heroes - gameplay

     #7 Megapolis - gameplay

     #8 Despicable Me - gameplay, though it's really just a skinned version of Temple Run

     #9 Minecraft Pocket Edition - gameplay

     #10 Age of Warring Empire - gameplay

 

And when I get to the first game which isn't all about gameplay, things aren't much better.

 

     #16 Fast & Furious 6: The Game - graphics. All of dem graphics.

 

Good games have more than one strong point. Kingdom Hearts had good graphics, story and characters - likewise for Metal Gear Solid and Halo and countless others. So, why are there none of these games on mobile?

[Yoinkerman]

I thought the driving factor for most of those games was to make zillions via microtransactions and screw everything else.  How do we trick people into spending money for features that should just be in the game?

[bob345]

good graphics on mobile devices will come, just not for a couple years. This was posted here a week or two ago

 

[carolkarine]

he should have said:

 

"Chasing PC graphics on consoles is a mistake."

[Xorbot]

Mobile gaming is not a viable medium and what you have describe doesn't help. You're using a mobile device to stream stuff onto a bigger screen and play with a controller. Mobile gaming is playing on a mobile device while be mobile not sitting down playing on a big TV with a controller.

 

I do agree, I would love to have my phone be the processing power, but in ten years TV's could have this power built in, so what would be the point of a phone doing the graphics if you're going to be playing on a large TV anyway?

 

I don't agree that TV's would have the same processing power as mobile devices at the same point in time.  Though, I feel the least sure about this.  I am going by Linus's assessment that Smart TV's have been an utter failure.  It wouldn't make much sense to add a few extra hundred dollars to a SoC that the vast general public will never use, along with the clumsy Smart TV UI's.

 

In terms of mobile, we appear to have a different assessment on the term.  Indeed it is quite a broad subject.  To some, mobile could mean low power usage.  To others, it could mean gaming while on the bus.  Mobile can either be used to describe a dedicated portable gaming console such as PS Vita or Nintendo DS, and some would say that mobile means only cellphones and tablets.  To clarify, I refer to mobile as the thing that's getting all attention in the industry right now, which is more powerful phones and tablets, with seemingly exponential growth from the previous years.

 

So I refer to mobile as in my cellphone becoming more powerful and to the point that it could even replace every single thing that I use for non-gaming and work (game programmer).  I could use it for Twitter, email, livestreams, what I propose as console/social gaming in front of the TV, and so forth.  I currently own 3 tablets, 2 laptops, and 2 cellphones, and 2 consoles (though that's mostly because I am a programmer, and those devices were bought for that reason).  I can envision everything that all of these devices can do in a single Power Phone in the future.  If it comes to serious gaming, I would do it on my powerful PC with 2x GTX 680's in SLI.  When friends are over and we want to play some less-serious games such as Call of Duty, I can also see this being done via my mobile phone provided the growth in processing power increasing at the current rate.  I would love to not have to have an Xbox One or PS4 on my shelf next to the TV.

 

When John Riccitiello speaks about mobile gaming, he does so with a very narrow vision.  Let's remind ourselves that he was likely fired for not possessing a vision with broad horizons.  Actually, at one point, he would have been my boss. :P  I also would say that probably no one would think that Farmville or Angry Birds would be multi-100s-of-million dollar grossing games back in 2005 when Facebook was starting to become popular.  I really don't see the power in those new devices going directly into sub-surface photon scattering of light in to the rendering of crops and bird wings.

 

Once there are 100's of millions of devices out there that are at least powerful enough to run OpenGL 3.0, and do it very well, it becomes a numbers game.  It is easy to envision a Battlefield 6 port to Android if phones within 5 years have 8 GB of RAM and 16 cores of processing.  Plop that thing into a dock connected to a monitor, and then play BF6 using just a 5mm thick cell phone.  Take this phone to your friend's house or Lan Party (i.e. mobile), and do the same.

[Hyydrah]

I think that trying to get amazing graphics on mobile is a waste. Look at what the most popular games are. Angry birds,Temple run, Candy crush saga. Not many people care about amazing graphics on mobile, they want something fun that is also very rewarding and doesnt make you feel like you have to sit and play it for a long period of time.

On those platforms, I agree. But what about future technologies like VR contact lenses, etc.? Android/iOS gamers tend to be "softcore" whereas these new technologies will probably garner support from people like us, including Linus.

[Giddyguy]

I think the main issue with smartphone or mobile gaming is money. I believe making a graphics intensive game is quite expensive and the average Smarphone user doens't want to spend more than $0.99 (or wte the equivalent cost is around the world). I've never bought a game myself, I always go for the free ones.

[EChondo]

All of you go eat a turnip I want to play XCOM on my phone.

Just thought I'd let you know, Civ5 can be played on a Windows 8 touch device, so I bet XCOM will have support very soon.

[joelthezombie15]

On those platforms, I agree. But what about future technologies like VR contact lenses, etc.? Android/iOS gamers tend to be "softcore" whereas these new technologies will probably garner support from people like us, including Linus.

While it would be cool, i doubt it. until something that requires even less work is made hardcore gamers will not be removed from there keyboard/mouse/controller. Look at the kinect or the PS move or the wii everything is very cool and rather extraordinary but they require too much effort and i have a feeling that the omni may suffer from the same flaw. it takes more effort to do anything.