How does Pachter still manage to get news coverage?
[update]I want add to this before anyone starts reading... it isn't JUST that Pachter is often horrendously wrong. Predictions are like that. What makes Pachter's predictions "special" is the extra information he supplies to help back up his predictions that seem based in some alternate reality. In the end, I feel even the times he gets the outcome right, it I negated by the fact that most of what he bases his outcomes on is rubbish.[/update]
Every time I've seen this name associated with a prediction in the past 3 years it has been ASTRONOMICALLY wrong. And I have a feeling that this one is largely the same. This one seems a lot more feasible however than past ones. But, if he ends up being right, even vaguely, about numbers, he will still be wrong about the reason.
My absolute favorite section was the part where the cost of consoles is ridiculed, and then continuing to talk about gaming on phones. But wait, what is the average MSRP for the average phone? I'd wager it has a good chance of actually being MORE expensive than the average console. And smartphone contracts get gradually more ridiculous every year to hide the cost from the consumer. Clearly, absolute cost of the console is not a major factor here.
The next greatest section is the talk about when current phones and set top systems reach a point where they can faithfully reproduce AAA titles. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... HAHAHAHAHA... HA.
There are 2 HIDEOUSLY large problems here. Firstly, modern AAA titles are pushing the limits of consoles which are still several generations ahead of any cost effective SoC or cheap GPU/CPU. And consoles are a few generations behind gaming PCs. And, for the foreseeable future, this isn't changing. The notion that cost effective or mobile solutions will "catch up" any time in the near future is predicated upon the assumption that either the rest of the gaming industry will sit still or games will stop pushing the boundaries of high end gaming solutions. Unfortunately, there is absolutely NO indication of either of those things. Many titles can have the settings cranked up and make even the most expensive gaming rigs squeal.
And lets not pretend that any of these chipset makers would ever sell such a chipset so cheap. Top of the line graphics cards don't cost thousands because they cost that much to produce. They cost that much so that the manufacturer has a tiered pricing structure they can readily exploit and which will continue to ensure that there will NEVER be a sub-$500 mobile chipset that can outperform a console gaming system. It would ruin their business model.
And the other problem is that even you put the same guts from a PS4 into an iPhone, it still wouldn't be able to compete with the PS4 in gaming. As I've said in the past, you're talking about operating systems stripped down and custom built with gaming in mind. From minimizing services and other OS bloat to a development kit designed to allow developers to get the most out of every cycle on both the CPU and GPU.
Which leads to the final problem for these ecosystems. SDKs and app stores. AAA game developers need tools and a platform purpose built for gaming performance. They are immediately hamstrung by ANY current mobile (as in phone or tablet) or set top offering. And the next is distribution. These companies don't mind digital downloads, but they also prefer to be able to ship physical discs both to maximize their profit and to provide extra to their fans.
And lastly, there is controllers. Phones have eaten into console sales, but not stopped them for a good reason. And input mechanism is a big one. Touch screens are terrible for most games, as are accellerometers, sensors and cameras. And nothing is worse than a TV remote. These companies don't have the design experience that MS and Sony have, and they aren't marketing this way either (probably because they don't even want to be seen as competing with consoles).
At the end of the day, the gap in power difference isn't closing fast enough (partially artificially sustained by tiered pricing) to present any near term threat of new AAA titles actually defecting to these systems. The platforms themselves are ill-equipped for the AAA companies, the ecosystems are too restrictive and take too big a slice of the pie and the most important input devices are either non-existent or left to 3rd parties.
Sales may stagnate and not exceed the prior generation or not by much. But I don't think that the sales are going to retract beyond this point. As with PC sales, we're simply hitting a point where the devices aren't trendy. So we get fewer impulse buys and fewer people just jumping on the bandwagon, but there is still have a sufficiently large base of dedicated users to keep the industry going without substantial declines for probably another 2-3 cycles.
Every time I've seen this name associated with a prediction in the past 3 years it has been ASTRONOMICALLY wrong. And I have a feeling that this one is largely the same. This one seems a lot more feasible however than past ones. But, if he ends up being right, even vaguely, about numbers, he will still be wrong about the reason.
My absolute favorite section was the part where the cost of consoles is ridiculed, and then continuing to talk about gaming on phones. But wait, what is the average MSRP for the average phone? I'd wager it has a good chance of actually being MORE expensive than the average console. And smartphone contracts get gradually more ridiculous every year to hide the cost from the consumer. Clearly, absolute cost of the console is not a major factor here.
The next greatest section is the talk about when current phones and set top systems reach a point where they can faithfully reproduce AAA titles. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... HAHAHAHAHA... HA.
There are 2 HIDEOUSLY large problems here. Firstly, modern AAA titles are pushing the limits of consoles which are still several generations ahead of any cost effective SoC or cheap GPU/CPU. And consoles are a few generations behind gaming PCs. And, for the foreseeable future, this isn't changing. The notion that cost effective or mobile solutions will "catch up" any time in the near future is predicated upon the assumption that either the rest of the gaming industry will sit still or games will stop pushing the boundaries of high end gaming solutions. Unfortunately, there is absolutely NO indication of either of those things. Many titles can have the settings cranked up and make even the most expensive gaming rigs squeal.
And lets not pretend that any of these chipset makers would ever sell such a chipset so cheap. Top of the line graphics cards don't cost thousands because they cost that much to produce. They cost that much so that the manufacturer has a tiered pricing structure they can readily exploit and which will continue to ensure that there will NEVER be a sub-$500 mobile chipset that can outperform a console gaming system. It would ruin their business model.
And the other problem is that even you put the same guts from a PS4 into an iPhone, it still wouldn't be able to compete with the PS4 in gaming. As I've said in the past, you're talking about operating systems stripped down and custom built with gaming in mind. From minimizing services and other OS bloat to a development kit designed to allow developers to get the most out of every cycle on both the CPU and GPU.
Which leads to the final problem for these ecosystems. SDKs and app stores. AAA game developers need tools and a platform purpose built for gaming performance. They are immediately hamstrung by ANY current mobile (as in phone or tablet) or set top offering. And the next is distribution. These companies don't mind digital downloads, but they also prefer to be able to ship physical discs both to maximize their profit and to provide extra to their fans.
And lastly, there is controllers. Phones have eaten into console sales, but not stopped them for a good reason. And input mechanism is a big one. Touch screens are terrible for most games, as are accellerometers, sensors and cameras. And nothing is worse than a TV remote. These companies don't have the design experience that MS and Sony have, and they aren't marketing this way either (probably because they don't even want to be seen as competing with consoles).
At the end of the day, the gap in power difference isn't closing fast enough (partially artificially sustained by tiered pricing) to present any near term threat of new AAA titles actually defecting to these systems. The platforms themselves are ill-equipped for the AAA companies, the ecosystems are too restrictive and take too big a slice of the pie and the most important input devices are either non-existent or left to 3rd parties.
Sales may stagnate and not exceed the prior generation or not by much. But I don't think that the sales are going to retract beyond this point. As with PC sales, we're simply hitting a point where the devices aren't trendy. So we get fewer impulse buys and fewer people just jumping on the bandwagon, but there is still have a sufficiently large base of dedicated users to keep the industry going without substantial declines for probably another 2-3 cycles.
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