Are gaming consoles reaching final form? Former PlayStation boss says no more major hardware leaps

poohbear said:

PS6 is looking at a 2027/2028 release. By then it'll be more like 6080 level cards with AI features out the ying yang.

And he's right. Hardware upgrades will pretty much plateau because video games will all rely on AI software, which requires fast networks, and wifi 7 should be standard by then. Wifi 7 has 100x lower latency than wifi 6 and supports 46Gbps, so the rendering that games can do over the network won't require hardware upgrades anymore, a 6080 level graphics card will be plenty. I'm still shocked how good Nvidia's Gefore Now works on my laptop with integrated graphics. I play any game w/ Geforce 4080 Super level detail on my Wifi 6 network. I'm sure Sony will request something similar from AMD for their own gaming service.

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Geforce Now is the best game streaming service, no-one comes close. Yet it had artifacts and compressed image quality and still latency can be felt. Tested many times on a 1000/1000 fibre wired. If you think it is THAT GOOD then you can't have tried a top tier gaming PC, playing with 200+ fps at 200+ Hz

Wifi7 is not that much of an improvement over Wifi6 either. Also, you are talking about the top Wifi7 spec, which consumers won't be running at home. 16x16 MIMO, 320 MHz etc tec. Nah. That is not how casual gamers will use Wifi7 at home and when it comes to latency, wired will win anyway.

Streaming games won't matter for gamers with high demands. I rock 9800X3D/4090 and 360 Hz QD-OLED, no way I will settle with streaming games. Latency will keep being an issue, especially during peak hours and image quality is noticably worse due to compression as well + compression artifacts.

It can work on the go, when travelling if game is slowpaced or I will still notice the latency.

No way Sony will rely on this for PS6.

We all need to fight tooth and nail to avoid a game-streaming future. Yet another subscription service they can start ratcheting up the prices, adding adverts, selling your data etc etc as soon as you are locked in.

Consoles have been less and less worth it for years. The end is in sight as basically new gen consoles will just be mini pc's, they practically are now. Nintendo is the only one doing anything unique.

Xbox is completely pointless now as its all available on PC. Why go xbox? Get a PC for the same price and you get x2 million more games and mods.

Im an old school gamer here as well along with some of you folks as stated. I started out on a black and white pong machine, colecovision, c64, etc. Progressed through the years I have played nearly every console ever released and am an avid collector.

I say that for context. I THINK the reason we feel games dont have the "magic" anymore is we are simply overwhelmed with 100s of new games if not 1000s a month. Think back in the day, every game released was super hyped and talked about. Magazines had reviews, we interviewed developers, they showcased their games and you would have just a few releases a month.

With steam and indie developers, we have more games, and cheaper games, than we have ever had. I know folks complain about prices a lot but the fact is, the gaming industry is one that has been pretty resistant to inflation. Games were $70 back in the early 2000's and they are still $70 (NES games were even $50-60 where I lived). Yes, some do go higher now days when dealing with special editions, DLC bundles, digital content and early access, I know. But we also have 1000s of games under the $30 mark thanks to indie developers.

Its like that concept of going to a buffet and psychologically unconsciously you cant decide what to eat because your brain is overloaded with options. You choose one thing and you cant stop thinking about the next instead of just diving into one dish and enjoying yourself. There is a term for this, I cant recall it but maybe one of you smarter than I knows it off hand.

I feel this is a bit of whats going on and why we feel games kind of suck now days. We have also seen so much now that there isnt a lot to be like "wouldnt it be cool if we could do this" thing when there is already a game that did that thing. I remember wanting games to be multiplayer all the time growing up online so I could play with folks over the internet as I grew up in a small town where nobody really played games. Now days everything is online, every game, I hate it, lol.

I personally dont really think the AAA games are that great anymore and feel most are really overhyped. I havent enjoyed a AAA game in a long time. I end up quitting and going to some indie dev and dropping 100s of hours into their games.

There is a corporate take over issue on gaming companies too and that is likely influencing some of the issues. They saw studios that were successful. Gaming has recently become main stream and a massive revenue maker. Large companies like MS see this and buy them up hoping for more profits but it also removes all the elements of what made those studios special and shine. Its like their souls get taken away and replaced with corporate overlords trying to tick box's for money instead of trying to make a game for... FUN.

And I haven't even touched base on the subscription models that we all loath so much. They are the bane of good consumer practice.

poohbear said:

As I wrote, Wifi 7 has 100x lower latency than wifi 6, and by 2027 Wifi 7 will be the standard. Then wifi 8 comes out in 2028. Geforce now already works really well in 2024 if you have a good internet setup (w/ my 2.5 Gbps ethernet it works flawlessly, and w/ WIFI 6E its mostly ok). People were skeptical at Netflix when it came out...but when the hardware reached a level to make it a reality, it exploded and now it's the norm.

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Wi-Fi speed inside my house and wider bandwidth won’t fix the issues I have with using cloud streaming on a 1Gbit connection connected directly to the router with a cable. That won’t go away with bandwidth and wireless latency improvements. That only goes with more streaming servers distributed across the network so your hops are reduced, better more intelligent distribution of the games logic and graphics workload between the console and the steaming host, and improved networking tech introduced by the cable/fibre companies.

What a stupid thing to say... Sony says consoles have peaked, Microsoft says the next console is going to be the biggest generational leap yet.

Who do you find more believable?

The person who is convinced a low power APU is the pinnacle of 3D rendering or the brand that absolutely brought everything to the table with the OG XBOX and truly delivered that computational gap.

PS4 forcing PS+ to play online was final bit of convincing I needed to build a pc.