This year we’re seeing a lot of consoles. The Ouya, PS4, next Xbox, Steamboxes, the Game Stick and likely more on the way will be hitting the street. So, here’s the ones we know about, and both their upsides and downsides.
The PS4
The Upsides: Sony has a strong platform, a lot of legacy IPs, and it desperately needs a console to be a hit. So it’s made the PS4 much easier to develop for compared to the PS3, meaning there will be fewer cross-platform problems.
The Downsides: The price, which is currently rumored to be around $400. That’s not a PS3 launch price, thank God, but $400 is a bit higher than seems strictly necessary.
The Next Xbox
The Upsides: Microsoft wants to create a fully integrated entertainment platform, and the Xbox is the center of that. Also, they’re trying to build a freaking Holodeck. However you feel about the Kinect, it seems likely that Microsoft is going to make a bid to create a gaming console unlike any other. This ties heavily into the new exclusive games the company is building and keeping under wraps.
The Downsides: Rumor has it this console will require an always-on Internet connection and block used game sales. So it might be innovative, but it might also be a system nobody buys.
The Ouya
The Upsides: It’ll play any Android game, and there’s already an enormous collection of hardcore games on the platform ranging from RPGs to FPS games to retro games. And the Ouya team has announced that they’ll be getting 450 games developed exclusively for the platform. And it’s also dirt cheap, at $99 for the console and controller.
The Downsides: So far, it’s got a small userbase built around its Kickstarter, which may mean larger devs stay away. Also, even though the games are backwards compatible, and the console itself is cheap, having a new version of the console come out every year is… a bit much.
Steamboxes
The Upsides: It’s a hardware standard, not a console, so there can be lots of them, from different manufacturers, and built into everything from set-top PCs to, in theory, tablets. Also, Steam!
The Downsides: Anybody can make one, and so far the pricing has been more high-end PC than affordable console. Also, the real coding work is still ongoing, as Steam for Linux is still being built. So the early Steamboxes are going to be rough, especially compared to those coming in 2014.
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PS4 it is. Suck dead donkey dick Microsoft.
To be fair, these are rumors… but they’re unfortunately consistent rumors.
Blizzard selling 12 million copies of Diablo III under these onerous restrictions does not bode well.
How many of those came after launch day though? Did bad word of mouth have any effect?
Well I wanted a ps4 but 400 seems steep.
Wait a few months until the slim comes out and grab it cheaper then or used.
No used games is a dealbreaker. I don’t buy, I rent.
$400 isn’t bad if you’re looking at a system with a six year lifespan. You just need to convince people that it’s worth $400 more than the PS3 they already have.
Yeah, for me that’s a tough sell, except it’s my job to buy this stuff.
$400 is a bit rich, I think I’ll wait it out a year until all the bugs get worked out like I did with the PS3
bingo
Well, well. Looks like this is the year I finally get a PS3. Time to see about this “Uncharted” I’ve been hearing so much about. I assume PS3 prices drop through the floor in this scenario.
Considering the OUYA is basically just smartphone guts shoved into a cube the hardware refresh cycle almost seems like a necessity. I plan to buy the first one and replace it in two years if I’m still using it, averaging out to $50 that’s a better deal then XBLA. If Sony starts the PS+ subscription stuff at launch I may preorder a PS4 and fill it full of discounted games. No XBOX for me this time around, sorry Microsoft.
I’m still convinced people who want Valve to build a Steambox have never actually used Steam. It is quite possibly the worst big name software product I have ever used. I would not trust their Ubuntu variant or their Steam for Linux software at all.
Early 2000s called they want their opinion of steam’s performance back.
Steam works perfectly for me. I’ve used far worse, to be honest. That said, Steam for Linux is still in beta for superb reason.
A friend has to block and unblock em to message me every day.
If I leave it running for more than a day I just get chat windows that wont be able to be opened.
I’ll get stuck in an update loop where it keeps trying to update to the latest version until I clear the cache.
And to top it off it regularly crashes when exiting the program.
That sucks your having problems, but do you think steam would be nearly as successful as it is if the problem you’ve experienced was the average user experience? I don’t think so…
I have literally none of those problems. At all. Then again I am horribly anti-social.
Ill wait for the PS4 Slim then plunk down the loot. I can justify the cost with the amount of games I play as well as my continued, and come Arrested Developments release, increased use of streaming services.
The Ouya is gonna be emulater heaven son.. i cant wait
I’ve been an Xbox follower since the beginning, always on their side when it came to the Microsoft vs. Sony debate.
Until this.
I can’t stop seeing the always-on connection rumors, which bothers me enough as is. But the ABSOLUTE dealbreaker is this ridiculous bullshit about having to plunk down $60 any time I want to try a different game. No renting, no borrowing from a friend, NO USED GAMES? No. No. No. No. NO.
If I pay over $20 for a game it must be something I truly have been looking forward to for a long time. I might buy ONE new game in a calendar year. Yes, these are at this point still rumors, but like Dan said, they are annoyingly persistent rumors. If it comes to pass that I can’t jump over to a Redbox and rent a game, or to Gamestop to trade in 5 old games I don’t play anymore to help offset the cost of something new, then I won’t be upgrading past my current 360. Plain and simple.
Blame Gamestop and then blame the developers for taking the stick approach instead of the carrot.
Hello smartphone market. Hello subscription service. Hello subsidized consoles.
$400 too rich for you, you piggy pig pig piggy pig? 2 year contract @ $25/month and new releases are 33% off. No used games because there aren’t “used” games anymore. There’s just the library! The library is simply your console provider’s storehouse of all the games they have licensed after ripping off the arms of their competitors and beating them with the NDA’s still clutched in their tiny little fists. You can drag a game icon from the library onto your playing sphere – and you can have up to 10 active programs in your playing sphere at any one time. As you play, finish, and lose interest in games you can eject them from your playing sphere back into the library. All your saved games for every game you’ve ever played will forever be stored in the cloud whether the game is in your playing sphere or shelved in the library – you can restore them at any time or start fresh – it’s up to you.
Updates suck, don’t they? Especially when you’ve just purchased a game and you want to play it. Who wants to download updates for two hours before you can even play? Hey, I understand and I’m glad I asked myself. Your console provider isn’t just a game jockey, you can have access to movies and TV shows, and really fucking awesome 5-second films as well. How will that placate gamers while updates are installed? Jesus, enough already. I have a really bad attitude.
PC Gamer 4 Life.
Considering that Nvidia has made a console, which is an explicit admission that selling graphics cards ain’t going to carry them, I would not get smug just yet, my PC friend.
The nVidia shield is is designed to stream games from your PC, aside from the android games it plays – pushing high end GPUs go hand in hand with pushing their ‘console.’
nVidia has also been in the mobile space for a long time, this is less about ‘omg video cards don’t sell like they used to, better enter mobile arena’ and more ‘time to take advantage of our two main products. They wouldn’t release Titan to a market doesn’t exist.
It’s not “designed to” stream games. It CAN stream games IF you have a specific chipset, but its primary purpose is to be a portable console.
It makes sense if you think about it: Desktops and laptops are a saturated market, and the real growth is in tablets and smartphones. As people realize a tablet with a keyboard will cover most of their needs, that’s just going to accelerate.
Well, I didn’t mean to imply that was it’s only purpose, though it is designed to do so, I also think saying ‘if you have a specific chipset’ is pretty much a moot point as well because that specific chipset is the gtx 600 series, which as Im sure you are aware has been in production for a long time…that’s not to say its in widespread use, but if someone goes and gets a new nVidia card then it will be capable of that streaming. – “Portable Handheld PC gaming.” is the title of their device’s site…I’m pretty sure its a large aspect of the device, The streaming comes hand in hand with the product, as they knows it can deliver better content then banking on some mobile A/CPU to handle what it cannot.
Whether it will be successful or not remains to be seen, I think it will have some mild success, but nothing major. Needless to say I think saying the shield is a sign that video cards aren’t going to carry them is a bit of a silly point considering they have been doing more than graphics cards for some time now, it’s something they determined ages ago – It’s merely an aspect of their business at this point, and the shield is designed to leverage all of the aspects their involved in.
We’ll see of course, but I think streaming is one of the big points of the shield – There is a reason the main title of the shields website is “Portable Handheld PC gaming.” and it’s not because its running android and can play android games
2more cents,
“It makes sense if you think about it: Desktops and laptops are a saturated market, and the real growth is in tablets and smartphones. As people realize a tablet with a keyboard will cover most of their needs, that’s just going to accelerate.”
Those people weren’t going to buy Nvidia’s high end cards anyway, so I’m not sure how relevant it is…it certainly DOES impact their business in some fashion, but generally speaking the person who wants a high performance PC with a high-end GPU – for whatever reason -is not the same person who feels like a tablet or smartphone will address all their needs, it’s not that straightforward.
As somebody who has had a Genesis, N64, and PS3 at launch price. I think a $400 dollar launch price of the PS4 is kind of amazing and not breaking the bank.