Originally posted by tordurbarTo answer the OP - I don't care. I am a big MMO fan but have no desire to play an mmo using touch screen. I do use a tablet. It has replaced my mini laptop. But all I use if for is for looking at news and reading books. The only game I play on it is Freecell. I see no reason that I should give up a 19 inch monitor and 84 key input for a 10 inch screen and touch screen input (or the shake!).
here is where I see the evolution of gaming possible.
For tasks that do not involve skill and/or dont require you to feel like you are in the world then those game functions can be accessed by tablet or phone.
So for example, managing your shop. crafting tasks, farming at your house. All features you can also do in the full experience mode with all the graphic richness on your PC but also do on your phone or tablet if you like. In fact, if done right one might be able to play a great deal of the game completely from the tablet. Just not combat things.
I am continually amazed that this hasn't already happened. I keep expecting to see games with highly integrated mobile apps, or at least mobile websites, yet it doesn't happen. The Secret World seems like it would be the idea candidate for this kind of thing. I mean, if my stupid bank can create a mobile website that works as good or better than the full website, I would think a game developer could create something for a mobile device that lets me look at my auctions.
Where have you been?
You can use an iphone app to do auctions in WOW, check your calendar, look up loot and even chat with your guildie.
Originally posted by tordurbarTo answer the OP - I don't care. I am a big MMO fan but have no desire to play an mmo using touch screen. I do use a tablet. It has replaced my mini laptop. But all I use if for is for looking at news and reading books. The only game I play on it is Freecell. I see no reason that I should give up a 19 inch monitor and 84 key input for a 10 inch screen and touch screen input (or the shake!).
here is where I see the evolution of gaming possible.
For tasks that do not involve skill and/or dont require you to feel like you are in the world then those game functions can be accessed by tablet or phone.
So for example, managing your shop. crafting tasks, farming at your house. All features you can also do in the full experience mode with all the graphic richness on your PC but also do on your phone or tablet if you like. In fact, if done right one might be able to play a great deal of the game completely from the tablet. Just not combat things.
I am continually amazed that this hasn't already happened. I keep expecting to see games with highly integrated mobile apps, or at least mobile websites, yet it doesn't happen. The Secret World seems like it would be the idea candidate for this kind of thing. I mean, if my stupid bank can create a mobile website that works as good or better than the full website, I would think a game developer could create something for a mobile device that lets me look at my auctions.
Where have you been?
You can use an iphone app to do auctions in WOW, check your calendar, look up loot and even chat with your guildie.
Well 2 things.
1. we want to be clear we are talking about using the phone as input into the gaming world. not just to see what is happening and/or chat so depending on what you mean by 'do auctions' it might be different.
2. we are also wanting an interface that is more 'game like' granted it wouldnt have the best graphics but I see no reason why my house (for example) couldnt be the extact same house in 3d just different skins to safe on memory
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Originally posted by Quizzical Originally posted by lizardbonesOriginally posted by ScotYes what we need are more platforms, creating ever more bad imports and making us use stupid input devices. The only Tablet I want to see is the one thats a tomestone. Tablets R.I.P.
I would think that what we're going to move to is people walking around with a cell phone/tablet, and that is there PC, Laptop and their Gaming Rig all in one package. There will be a point when the graphics available on a phone will be 'good enough' and it will be 'easy enough' to have the phone use some external input system in addition to the touch controls for the screen. People won't even plug their phones into anything to have it work, they'll just lay their phones on their desk, and when the monitor turns on, it'll be displaying what the phone tells it to display and when the user taps the keyboard, it'll just go to the phone.That's not going to happen in the foreseeable future. Even in the unlikely event that Moore's Law survives until we're able to place individual atoms exactly where we want them--meaning that even a single atom out of place kills the entire chip--even that wouldn't be able to deliver today's mid-range gaming desktop performance in a cell phone form factor. Today's mid-range gaming desktop might be good enough today, but do you think people will still think exactly the same level of performance is good enough twenty years from now, and not want expect further graphical improvements in that time?
Getting high performance in a low power form factor would take a really radical revolution in chip design, and would probably require replacing the transistor entirely by something vastly lower power. We had such a revolution like this when transistors replaced vacuum tubes, but I don't see another one coming on the horizon. Apart from such a revolution, you'll always be able to pack far more performance into a 200 W desktop than a 1 W cell phone.
The hurdle isn't the graphics hardware or the processing hardware. My tablet will display video at a higher resolution than my XBox 360. It's nearly 'good enough' already . I'm not saying it's not an issue at all, but it's not the issue.
Just using the things is the problem. A touch screen just isn't a great interface for gaming, unless you're playing "Frozen Bubble" or "Mine Sweeper". If I could play Alan Wake on my cell phone, but using my TV to see it and my blue tooth controller to control it, and at the same time take it with me anywhere I go, why would I buy an XBox?
I could be totally wrong too. Just because it's possible to have something in your pocket that will be your web interface, office document editor, remote connection to your security cameras, in addition to letting you play video games and watch movies through your existing television doesn't mean it will actually happen. It doesn't mean that developers would want to enter the nightmare death match of developing for the devices if they ever did come into existence.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Originally posted by ScotYes what we need are more platforms, creating ever more bad imports and making us use stupid input devices. The only Tablet I want to see is the one thats a tomestone. Tablets R.I.P.
I would think that what we're going to move to is people walking around with a cell phone/tablet, and that is there PC, Laptop and their Gaming Rig all in one package. There will be a point when the graphics available on a phone will be 'good enough' and it will be 'easy enough' to have the phone use some external input system in addition to the touch controls for the screen. People won't even plug their phones into anything to have it work, they'll just lay their phones on their desk, and when the monitor turns on, it'll be displaying what the phone tells it to display and when the user taps the keyboard, it'll just go to the phone.
That's not going to happen in the foreseeable future. Even in the unlikely event that Moore's Law survives until we're able to place individual atoms exactly where we want them--meaning that even a single atom out of place kills the entire chip--even that wouldn't be able to deliver today's mid-range gaming desktop performance in a cell phone form factor. Today's mid-range gaming desktop might be good enough today, but do you think people will still think exactly the same level of performance is good enough twenty years from now, and not want expect further graphical improvements in that time?
Getting high performance in a low power form factor would take a really radical revolution in chip design, and would probably require replacing the transistor entirely by something vastly lower power. We had such a revolution like this when transistors replaced vacuum tubes, but I don't see another one coming on the horizon. Apart from such a revolution, you'll always be able to pack far more performance into a 200 W desktop than a 1 W cell phone.
The hurdle isn't the graphics hardware or the processing hardware. My tablet will display video at a higher resolution than my XBox 360. It's nearly 'good enough' already . I'm not saying it's not an issue at all, but it's not the issue.
Just using the things is the problem. A touch screen just isn't a great interface for gaming, unless you're playing "Frozen Bubble" or "Mine Sweeper". If I could play Alan Wake on my cell phone, but using my TV to see it and my blue tooth controller to control it, and at the same time take it with me anywhere I go, why would I buy an XBox?
I could be totally wrong too. Just because it's possible to have something in your pocket that will be your web interface, office document editor, remote connection to your security cameras, in addition to letting you play video games and watch movies through your existing television doesn't mean it will actually happen. It doesn't mean that developers would want to enter the nightmare death match of developing for the devices if they ever did come into existence.
well in all fairness there is a huge difference hardware wise between screen resolution and intearactive 3d enviorment in the same res. that said, your point is still completely valid in my mind. The interactive world doesnt have to be the same resolution for it to be much more rich than a webpage
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Originally posted by ScotYes what we need are more platforms, creating ever more bad imports and making us use stupid input devices. The only Tablet I want to see is the one thats a tomestone. Tablets R.I.P.
I would think that what we're going to move to is people walking around with a cell phone/tablet, and that is there PC, Laptop and their Gaming Rig all in one package. There will be a point when the graphics available on a phone will be 'good enough' and it will be 'easy enough' to have the phone use some external input system in addition to the touch controls for the screen. People won't even plug their phones into anything to have it work, they'll just lay their phones on their desk, and when the monitor turns on, it'll be displaying what the phone tells it to display and when the user taps the keyboard, it'll just go to the phone.
That's not going to happen in the foreseeable future. Even in the unlikely event that Moore's Law survives until we're able to place individual atoms exactly where we want them--meaning that even a single atom out of place kills the entire chip--even that wouldn't be able to deliver today's mid-range gaming desktop performance in a cell phone form factor. Today's mid-range gaming desktop might be good enough today, but do you think people will still think exactly the same level of performance is good enough twenty years from now, and not want expect further graphical improvements in that time?
Getting high performance in a low power form factor would take a really radical revolution in chip design, and would probably require replacing the transistor entirely by something vastly lower power. We had such a revolution like this when transistors replaced vacuum tubes, but I don't see another one coming on the horizon. Apart from such a revolution, you'll always be able to pack far more performance into a 200 W desktop than a 1 W cell phone.
The hurdle isn't the graphics hardware or the processing hardware. My tablet will display video at a higher resolution than my XBox 360. It's nearly 'good enough' already . I'm not saying it's not an issue at all, but it's not the issue.
Just using the things is the problem. A touch screen just isn't a great interface for gaming, unless you're playing "Frozen Bubble" or "Mine Sweeper". If I could play Alan Wake on my cell phone, but using my TV to see it and my blue tooth controller to control it, and at the same time take it with me anywhere I go, why would I buy an XBox?
I could be totally wrong too. Just because it's possible to have something in your pocket that will be your web interface, office document editor, remote connection to your security cameras, in addition to letting you play video games and watch movies through your existing television doesn't mean it will actually happen. It doesn't mean that developers would want to enter the nightmare death match of developing for the devices if they ever did come into existence.
What it takes to be "good enough" depends greatly on what you're doing. If all you want to do is watch videos, check e-mail, and read web sites, then it doesn't take that much computing power to be good enough.
But if you want to play complex 3D games with high resolutions and frame rates, and graphics that make each particular frame look as good as modern games can? Well then, that takes vastly more computing power. Even most laptops will struggle with that, in spite of outperforming cell phones by an order of magnitude or more.
Yes, the interface is a problem. But it's not the only problem.
Originally posted by Scot Yes what we need are more platforms, creating ever more bad imports and making us use stupid input devices. The only Tablet I want to see is the one thats a tomestone. Tablets R.I.P.
I would think that what we're going to move to is people walking around with a cell phone/tablet, and that is there PC, Laptop and their Gaming Rig all in one package. There will be a point when the graphics available on a phone will be 'good enough' and it will be 'easy enough' to have the phone use some external input system in addition to the touch controls for the screen. People won't even plug their phones into anything to have it work, they'll just lay their phones on their desk, and when the monitor turns on, it'll be displaying what the phone tells it to display and when the user taps the keyboard, it'll just go to the phone.
That's not going to happen in the foreseeable future. Even in the unlikely event that Moore's Law survives until we're able to place individual atoms exactly where we want them--meaning that even a single atom out of place kills the entire chip--even that wouldn't be able to deliver today's mid-range gaming desktop performance in a cell phone form factor. Today's mid-range gaming desktop might be good enough today, but do you think people will still think exactly the same level of performance is good enough twenty years from now, and not want expect further graphical improvements in that time?
Getting high performance in a low power form factor would take a really radical revolution in chip design, and would probably require replacing the transistor entirely by something vastly lower power. We had such a revolution like this when transistors replaced vacuum tubes, but I don't see another one coming on the horizon. Apart from such a revolution, you'll always be able to pack far more performance into a 200 W desktop than a 1 W cell phone.
I think the next paradigm shift in computers will be quantum computing. It's probably a few decades away but it will be very interesting. From what I've been reading a quantum computer with enough qubits can outperform today's supercomputers by factors of one million.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. -- Herman Melville
I think the next paradigm shift in computers will be quantum computing. It's probably a few decades away but it will be very interesting. From what I've been reading a quantum computer with enough qubits can outperform today's supercomputers by factors of one million.
I'm certainly not an expert on this, but my understanding is that there are some problems that quantum computers would perform incredibly well at, and some that they wouldn't perform well at at all. So even if they ever can be made practical (which is a very big "if", as it's far from guaranteed), it wouldn't be a simple case of, now everything is a lot faster than before.
Furthermore, even if quantum computers ever become practical for some purposes, it doesn't automatically follow that they'll be practical as consumer devices. Nuclear reactors have practical purposes, but having one in your home for use as a generator isn't one of them.
I think the next paradigm shift in computers will be quantum computing. It's probably a few decades away but it will be very interesting. From what I've been reading a quantum computer with enough qubits can outperform today's supercomputers by factors of one million.
I'm certainly not an expert on this, but my understanding is that there are some problems that quantum computers would perform incredibly well at, and some that they wouldn't perform well at at all. So even if they ever can be made practical (which is a very big "if", as it's far from guaranteed), it wouldn't be a simple case of, now everything is a lot faster than before.
Furthermore, even if quantum computers ever become practical for some purposes, it doesn't automatically follow that they'll be practical as consumer devices. Nuclear reactors have practical purposes, but having one in your home for use as a generator isn't one of them.
I'm not a physicist so I don't completely under them either. I've just been reading more and more about them lately.
What caught my attention was their theoretical ability to factor very large numbers in seconds (something todays fastest computers couldn't do in any reasonable time frame). That would make most of our current public key cryptography systems useless.
Maybe they will never make it as handheld devices or even personal computers. I just think the possiblities are amazing.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. -- Herman Melville
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Authored 139 missions in VendettaOnline and 6 tracks in Distance
Originally posted by Quizzical Originally posted by lizardbonesOriginally posted by QuizzicalOriginally posted by lizardbonesOriginally posted by ScotYes what we need are more platforms, creating ever more bad imports and making us use stupid input devices. The only Tablet I want to see is the one thats a tomestone. Tablets R.I.P.
I would think that what we're going to move to is people walking around with a cell phone/tablet, and that is there PC, Laptop and their Gaming Rig all in one package. There will be a point when the graphics available on a phone will be 'good enough' and it will be 'easy enough' to have the phone use some external input system in addition to the touch controls for the screen. People won't even plug their phones into anything to have it work, they'll just lay their phones on their desk, and when the monitor turns on, it'll be displaying what the phone tells it to display and when the user taps the keyboard, it'll just go to the phone.That's not going to happen in the foreseeable future. Even in the unlikely event that Moore's Law survives until we're able to place individual atoms exactly where we want them--meaning that even a single atom out of place kills the entire chip--even that wouldn't be able to deliver today's mid-range gaming desktop performance in a cell phone form factor. Today's mid-range gaming desktop might be good enough today, but do you think people will still think exactly the same level of performance is good enough twenty years from now, and not want expect further graphical improvements in that time?Getting high performance in a low power form factor would take a really radical revolution in chip design, and would probably require replacing the transistor entirely by something vastly lower power. We had such a revolution like this when transistors replaced vacuum tubes, but I don't see another one coming on the horizon. Apart from such a revolution, you'll always be able to pack far more performance into a 200 W desktop than a 1 W cell phone. The hurdle isn't the graphics hardware or the processing hardware. My tablet will display video at a higher resolution than my XBox 360. It's nearly 'good enough' already . I'm not saying it's not an issue at all, but it's not the issue. Just using the things is the problem. A touch screen just isn't a great interface for gaming, unless you're playing "Frozen Bubble" or "Mine Sweeper". If I could play Alan Wake on my cell phone, but using my TV to see it and my blue tooth controller to control it, and at the same time take it with me anywhere I go, why would I buy an XBox? I could be totally wrong too. Just because it's possible to have something in your pocket that will be your web interface, office document editor, remote connection to your security cameras, in addition to letting you play video games and watch movies through your existing television doesn't mean it will actually happen. It doesn't mean that developers would want to enter the nightmare death match of developing for the devices if they ever did come into existence. What it takes to be "good enough" depends greatly on what you're doing. If all you want to do is watch videos, check e-mail, and read web sites, then it doesn't take that much computing power to be good enough.
But if you want to play complex 3D games with high resolutions and frame rates, and graphics that make each particular frame look as good as modern games can? Well then, that takes vastly more computing power. Even most laptops will struggle with that, in spite of outperforming cell phones by an order of magnitude or more.
Yes, the interface is a problem. But it's not the only problem.
One thing that is going to be the factor (beyond what I said is going to be the factor...um...yeah) is whether or not people want something like that. If people want it, then it'll happen. It won't matter that a desktop has more horsepower. It doesn't matter now that a desktop has more horsepower than an XBox 360. They still sell those things.
Again, none of this means it'll actually happen. But...Motorola has their little docking stations, so you can play HD video through your television. They also have those docking stations for using your phone as a mini-laptop (a guy at work is going on and on about those things - that might be Samsung). Another company is working on a general purpose docking station for using your phone as a laptop like device. Finally, Razer has their project Fiona - a true gaming tablet. I don't know if Project Fiona will do any general purpose work, but the game they're showing on screens is Firefall.
Whether the horsepower is there or not, the companies are moving in that direction. All that remains is for people to decide whether or not they want to buy that stuff. Oh, and make a wireless video standard that doesn't exist yet.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
One thing that is going to be the factor (beyond what I said is going to be the factor...um...yeah) is whether or not people want something like that. If people want it, then it'll happen. It won't matter that a desktop has more horsepower. It doesn't matter now that a desktop has more horsepower than an XBox 360. They still sell those things.
Again, none of this means it'll actually happen. But...Motorola has their little docking stations, so you can play HD video through your television. They also have those docking stations for using your phone as a mini-laptop (a guy at work is going on and on about those things - that might be Samsung). Another company is working on a general purpose docking station for using your phone as a laptop like device. Finally, Razer has their project Fiona - a true gaming tablet. I don't know if Project Fiona will do any general purpose work, but the game they're showing on screens is Firefall.
Whether the horsepower is there or not, the companies are moving in that direction. All that remains is for people to decide whether or not they want to buy that stuff. Oh, and make a wireless video standard that doesn't exist yet.
Video decode is easy. 3D gaming is hard. Will there be phones that people use for gaming 10 or 20 years from now? Sure. Will they be a serious replacement for desktops? Not any more than they are today.
After the complete fiasco that was the Razer Blade, let's assume that Fiona is an overpriced piece of junk until proven otherwise. Don't hold your breath.
Originally posted by lizardbones One thing that is going to be the factor (beyond what I said is going to be the factor...um...yeah) is whether or not people want something like that. If people want it, then it'll happen. It won't matter that a desktop has more horsepower. It doesn't matter now that a desktop has more horsepower than an XBox 360. They still sell those things. Again, none of this means it'll actually happen. But...Motorola has their little docking stations, so you can play HD video through your television. They also have those docking stations for using your phone as a mini-laptop (a guy at work is going on and on about those things - that might be Samsung). Another company is working on a general purpose docking station for using your phone as a laptop like device. Finally, Razer has their project Fiona - a true gaming tablet. I don't know if Project Fiona will do any general purpose work, but the game they're showing on screens is Firefall. Whether the horsepower is there or not, the companies are moving in that direction. All that remains is for people to decide whether or not they want to buy that stuff. Oh, and make a wireless video standard that doesn't exist yet.
Video decode is easy. 3D gaming is hard. Will there be phones that people use for gaming 10 or 20 years from now? Sure. Will they be a serious replacement for desktops? Not any more than they are today.
After the complete fiasco that was the Razer Blade, let's assume that Fiona is an overpriced piece of junk until proven otherwise. Don't hold your breath.
I was actually thinking something like 10 years. Time for the next generation of consoles to come out, get old and then have people looking for an entertainment replacement.
I can't hold my breath for 10 minutes, much less 10 years, so there's no danger of me turning blue and hitting my head on my way down to the floor. :-)
** edit ** @OP - If you do a search for MMO on Google Play, there's a good sized list of the things. I don't know if that means they're good though. The ones that were out last year (Pocket Legends, Order & Chaos, etc.) I think are the ones that are going to be 'good'. Unless what you're looking for is some kind of retro style game, that's been updated as an MMORPG. Again though, nothing that looks new, or better than what Pocket Legends or the others have done.
** edit edit ** Also, how dare you speak out against Razer? Do you not know the power of the Cult of Razer?!? Oh, wait. They had that keyboard where the J key only worked if you put a quarter on the media touchpad thing. Nevermind...I'll just mosey on over here and play some more The Walking Dead.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Also, how dare you speak out against Razer? Do you not know the power of the Cult of Razer?!? Oh, wait. They had that keyboard where the J key only worked if you put a quarter on the media touchpad thing. Nevermind...I'll just mosey on over here and play some more The Walking Dead.
The problem with the Razer Blade is that it cost about 2-3 times as much as the internal hardware could justify. Razer wanted $2800 for a dual core processor and a fairly low end video card. When you manage to make even a MacBook Pro look like it has bargain basement pricing in comparison to your product, you're probably doing something wrong.
One of the business sites I follow had an article a few weeks back talking about the potential of a console / tablet hybrid that would ship with a game controller.
To me, that with a wi-fi connection would make for a decent portable gaming platform.
Ken Fisher - Semi retired old fart Network Administrator, now working in Network Security. I don't Forum PVP. If you feel I've attacked you, it was probably by accident. When I don't understand, I ask. Such is not intended as criticism.
What it takes to be "good enough" depends greatly on what you're doing. If all you want to do is watch videos, check e-mail, and read web sites, then it doesn't take that much computing power to be good enough.
But if you want to play complex 3D games with high resolutions and frame rates, and graphics that make each particular frame look as good as modern games can? Well then, that takes vastly more computing power. Even most laptops will struggle with that, in spite of outperforming cell phones by an order of magnitude or more.
Yes, the interface is a problem. But it's not the only problem.
It is the only problem that needs solving though to answer the OPs question. Hardware is only a matter of time, and it has already progressed further then you're giving credit. Tablets have caught up with current-gen consoles, so we're looking at an offset of about 5 years, and that margin will only get smaller.
Originally posted by Quizzical Originally posted by lizardbones Also, how dare you speak out against Razer? Do you not know the power of the Cult of Razer?!? Oh, wait. They had that keyboard where the J key only worked if you put a quarter on the media touchpad thing. Nevermind...I'll just mosey on over here and play some more The Walking Dead.
The problem with the Razer Blade is that it cost about 2-3 times as much as the internal hardware could justify. Razer wanted $2800 for a dual core processor and a fairly low end video card. When you manage to make even a MacBook Pro look like it has bargain basement pricing in comparison to your product, you're probably doing something wrong.
Yeah, one thing you can't say about Razer is that their stuff is inexpensive.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
What it takes to be "good enough" depends greatly on what you're doing. If all you want to do is watch videos, check e-mail, and read web sites, then it doesn't take that much computing power to be good enough.
But if you want to play complex 3D games with high resolutions and frame rates, and graphics that make each particular frame look as good as modern games can? Well then, that takes vastly more computing power. Even most laptops will struggle with that, in spite of outperforming cell phones by an order of magnitude or more.
Yes, the interface is a problem. But it's not the only problem.
It is the only problem that needs solving though to answer the OPs question. Hardware is only a matter of time, and it has already progressed further then you're giving credit. Tablets have caught up with current-gen consoles, so we're looking at an offset of about 5 years, and that margin will only get smaller.
here is what they can do.
Take non-combat game features (things that exist like lets say housing and farming as well as things that havent been created yet which there are plenty of ideas in that space), create all the models for those EXECPT for the skin of the models. If the player is on tablet, skin (low res) is applied. If its a PC the high res is applied.
That is a short version of how I see it going anyway.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
What it takes to be "good enough" depends greatly on what you're doing. If all you want to do is watch videos, check e-mail, and read web sites, then it doesn't take that much computing power to be good enough.
But if you want to play complex 3D games with high resolutions and frame rates, and graphics that make each particular frame look as good as modern games can? Well then, that takes vastly more computing power. Even most laptops will struggle with that, in spite of outperforming cell phones by an order of magnitude or more.
Yes, the interface is a problem. But it's not the only problem.
It is the only problem that needs solving though to answer the OPs question. Hardware is only a matter of time, and it has already progressed further then you're giving credit. Tablets have caught up with current-gen consoles, so we're looking at an offset of about 5 years, and that margin will only get smaller.
You're wildly wrong there, unless you mean the Wii, which was considered very underpowered on the day that it launched. I'll use the Xbox 360 for a comparison.
First and most trivially, it's a gap of more than 5 years. The Xbox 360 launched in 2005. Five years ago was 2007.
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Next, tablets haven't caught up to Xbox 360 graphics. Let's compare the graphics in the Xbox 360 (ATI Xenos) with the graphics in AMD's latest "Hondo" or "Z-01" tablet chip, as that's as clean of a comparison as we're likely to find. Xenos has 240 shaders if you count them the way AMD does today (48 VLIW5 blocks). Hondo has 80. Advantage, Xenos. Xenos also has 16 texture units. Hondo has 4. Advantage Xenos. Xenos is clocked at 500 MHz, while Hondo is 276 MHz. Again, advantage Xenos. So the Xbox 360 offers more than 5 times the shader power and 7 times the shader power of a Z-01 powered tablet. Hondo certainly hasn't caught up to the Xbox 360. Not even close.
But maybe other tablets have? Not so fast. Hondo has some serious advantages over other tablet chips here. First of all, it has a TDP of 5.9 W. That's high for a tablet, and more power consumption lets you pack in more performance. Try to bring that down in the future to something more tablet-friendly and you lose performance.
Hondo is also built on a 40 nm process node. All else equal, smaller process nodes mean lower power consumption. For comparison, Nvidia's latest and greatest Tegra 3 (e.g., Asus Transformer Prime) is also on a 40 nm process node. The Apple A5X chip of the iPad 3 is built on a 45 nm process node.
Hondo is also extra specially binned for use in tablets. All of the Apple A5X chips that Apple makes have to either go into iPads or possibly iPhones (I'm not sure about this one) or be thrown in the garbage. Thus, if Apple decides that the iPad 3 requires specs that only 10% of the chips that come back from the fabs can meet, then they have to throw the other 90% of the chips away. That's not a way to make money. Analogous things are true of nearly all of the other chips that go into tablets.
Except for Hondo. AMD has a bunch of dies come back from the fabs, and they try running them at very low voltages, to reduce power consumption. They can set the Z-01 bin requirements to be something that 90% of the chips can't handle, and pick out the best 10% of the chips for use in tablets. The reason they can do this is that they have other uses for the remaining 90%: laptops and desktops (well, nettops really). In fact, if you buy a nettop or a low power budget laptop, and don't buy a completely stupid product (i.e., Intel Atom), you're probably snapping up a die that could have gone into a tablet except that it used too much power. One of the other bins features the same performance as the Z-01, except that it is allowed to use 9 W rather than 5.9 W.
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Third, the rate of performance gains over the course of the last several years are likely to be faster than what we'll see in the future. For many years, chip designers were able to basically ignore power consumption and go for maximum performance. For a while, this meant roughly that every two years, you do a die shrink that doubles your performance, but at the cost of 40% more power consumption. Doubling performance every two years is pretty good.
If you have to keep power consumption steady, however, then you can't double performance like that. Instead, you can only get about 40% more performance withint he same power envelope as before. Instead of doubling performance every two years, you double it every four years. That's the future for tablets, unless you see a market for tablets that put out 50 W. I sure don't--and even if you do, that's still eventually the future for tablets.
So if we were able to double performance every two years in the past, but only every four years in the future, is the time gap between a given level of performance being available in consoles versus tablets likely to narrow or widen? That transition would mean that the time gap doubles.
It's also important to note that I assume that Moore's Law continues unabated. We know that eventually, Moore's Law will fail. The nature of quantum mechanics demands it. You can't have transistors smaller than the smallest elementary particles, and you probably can't get anywhere near that limit, either. We only don't know when Moore's Law will die. But if it happens sooner rather than later, then the time gap will greatly widen--think decades or maybe even centuries, not years.
One of the business sites I follow had an article a few weeks back talking about the potential of a console / tablet hybrid that would ship with a game controller.
To me, that with a wi-fi connection would make for a decent portable gaming platform.
That would basically be a Game Boy or its successors and competitors in a tablet form factor. While I could easily see that happening, I don't think it will lend itself to MMORPGs. How many MMORPGs are there for PlayStation Vita or Nintendo 3DS?
I am not sure Moore's law even holds for PC's now, have we really seen a doubling of processing power in PC's every two years over the last four?
Also I have noticed a drop in what PC games are demanding from PC's each new year. Just as well as PC's have not been getting that much better each year. It may be that game companies are looking to ensure maximum sales by making sure older PC's can play their games, that only used to happen in MMO's?
I am not sure Moore's law even holds for PC's now, have we really seen a doubling of processing power in PC's every two years over the last four?
Moore's Law says that we'll see a doubling of transistor counts. Whether we see a doubling of processing power depends on what is done with the extra transistors. A full node die shrink means that the same die space can get you double the performance of before, but at the expense of using about 40% more power consumption. If you decide that the old chip already used quite enough power and you don't want the new one to use any more, then you can only increase performance by about 40%.
The die shrinks have still been coming about every two years for a full node. If you track transistor counts direclty, they have also steadily increased. One thing that has happened in processors in recent years is that rather than simply adding more cores that programs wouldn't necessarily be able to put to good use, they've integrated other features into the same die as the processor: the memory controller, PCI Express controller, graphics, etc. For that matter, integrating more functions into fewer chips was essential to make smartphones possible at all, as you don't have room for a 12" x 9" motherboard inside a smartphone.
Sorry for the thread res; I just thought people would be interested to note that the game I vid-linked to previously is now available on the Windows Store as a prototype.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Authored 139 missions in VendettaOnline and 6 tracks in Distance
Comments
Where have you been?
You can use an iphone app to do auctions in WOW, check your calendar, look up loot and even chat with your guildie.
Well 2 things.
1. we want to be clear we are talking about using the phone as input into the gaming world. not just to see what is happening and/or chat so depending on what you mean by 'do auctions' it might be different.
2. we are also wanting an interface that is more 'game like' granted it wouldnt have the best graphics but I see no reason why my house (for example) couldnt be the extact same house in 3d just different skins to safe on memory
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
That's not going to happen in the foreseeable future. Even in the unlikely event that Moore's Law survives until we're able to place individual atoms exactly where we want them--meaning that even a single atom out of place kills the entire chip--even that wouldn't be able to deliver today's mid-range gaming desktop performance in a cell phone form factor. Today's mid-range gaming desktop might be good enough today, but do you think people will still think exactly the same level of performance is good enough twenty years from now, and not want expect further graphical improvements in that time?
Getting high performance in a low power form factor would take a really radical revolution in chip design, and would probably require replacing the transistor entirely by something vastly lower power. We had such a revolution like this when transistors replaced vacuum tubes, but I don't see another one coming on the horizon. Apart from such a revolution, you'll always be able to pack far more performance into a 200 W desktop than a 1 W cell phone.
The hurdle isn't the graphics hardware or the processing hardware. My tablet will display video at a higher resolution than my XBox 360. It's nearly 'good enough' already . I'm not saying it's not an issue at all, but it's not the issue.
Just using the things is the problem. A touch screen just isn't a great interface for gaming, unless you're playing "Frozen Bubble" or "Mine Sweeper". If I could play Alan Wake on my cell phone, but using my TV to see it and my blue tooth controller to control it, and at the same time take it with me anywhere I go, why would I buy an XBox?
I could be totally wrong too. Just because it's possible to have something in your pocket that will be your web interface, office document editor, remote connection to your security cameras, in addition to letting you play video games and watch movies through your existing television doesn't mean it will actually happen. It doesn't mean that developers would want to enter the nightmare death match of developing for the devices if they ever did come into existence.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
well in all fairness there is a huge difference hardware wise between screen resolution and intearactive 3d enviorment in the same res. that said, your point is still completely valid in my mind. The interactive world doesnt have to be the same resolution for it to be much more rich than a webpage
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
What it takes to be "good enough" depends greatly on what you're doing. If all you want to do is watch videos, check e-mail, and read web sites, then it doesn't take that much computing power to be good enough.
But if you want to play complex 3D games with high resolutions and frame rates, and graphics that make each particular frame look as good as modern games can? Well then, that takes vastly more computing power. Even most laptops will struggle with that, in spite of outperforming cell phones by an order of magnitude or more.
Yes, the interface is a problem. But it's not the only problem.
I think the next paradigm shift in computers will be quantum computing. It's probably a few decades away but it will be very interesting. From what I've been reading a quantum computer with enough qubits can outperform today's supercomputers by factors of one million.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
I'm certainly not an expert on this, but my understanding is that there are some problems that quantum computers would perform incredibly well at, and some that they wouldn't perform well at at all. So even if they ever can be made practical (which is a very big "if", as it's far from guaranteed), it wouldn't be a simple case of, now everything is a lot faster than before.
Furthermore, even if quantum computers ever become practical for some purposes, it doesn't automatically follow that they'll be practical as consumer devices. Nuclear reactors have practical purposes, but having one in your home for use as a generator isn't one of them.
I'm not a physicist so I don't completely under them either. I've just been reading more and more about them lately.
What caught my attention was their theoretical ability to factor very large numbers in seconds (something todays fastest computers couldn't do in any reasonable time frame). That would make most of our current public key cryptography systems useless.
Maybe they will never make it as handheld devices or even personal computers. I just think the possiblities are amazing.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
*ahem*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QmWs11PM-o
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
That's not going to happen in the foreseeable future. Even in the unlikely event that Moore's Law survives until we're able to place individual atoms exactly where we want them--meaning that even a single atom out of place kills the entire chip--even that wouldn't be able to deliver today's mid-range gaming desktop performance in a cell phone form factor. Today's mid-range gaming desktop might be good enough today, but do you think people will still think exactly the same level of performance is good enough twenty years from now, and not want expect further graphical improvements in that time? Getting high performance in a low power form factor would take a really radical revolution in chip design, and would probably require replacing the transistor entirely by something vastly lower power. We had such a revolution like this when transistors replaced vacuum tubes, but I don't see another one coming on the horizon. Apart from such a revolution, you'll always be able to pack far more performance into a 200 W desktop than a 1 W cell phone.
The hurdle isn't the graphics hardware or the processing hardware. My tablet will display video at a higher resolution than my XBox 360. It's nearly 'good enough' already . I'm not saying it's not an issue at all, but it's not the issue. Just using the things is the problem. A touch screen just isn't a great interface for gaming, unless you're playing "Frozen Bubble" or "Mine Sweeper". If I could play Alan Wake on my cell phone, but using my TV to see it and my blue tooth controller to control it, and at the same time take it with me anywhere I go, why would I buy an XBox? I could be totally wrong too. Just because it's possible to have something in your pocket that will be your web interface, office document editor, remote connection to your security cameras, in addition to letting you play video games and watch movies through your existing television doesn't mean it will actually happen. It doesn't mean that developers would want to enter the nightmare death match of developing for the devices if they ever did come into existence.
What it takes to be "good enough" depends greatly on what you're doing. If all you want to do is watch videos, check e-mail, and read web sites, then it doesn't take that much computing power to be good enough.
But if you want to play complex 3D games with high resolutions and frame rates, and graphics that make each particular frame look as good as modern games can? Well then, that takes vastly more computing power. Even most laptops will struggle with that, in spite of outperforming cell phones by an order of magnitude or more.
Yes, the interface is a problem. But it's not the only problem.
One thing that is going to be the factor (beyond what I said is going to be the factor...um...yeah) is whether or not people want something like that. If people want it, then it'll happen. It won't matter that a desktop has more horsepower. It doesn't matter now that a desktop has more horsepower than an XBox 360. They still sell those things.
Again, none of this means it'll actually happen. But...Motorola has their little docking stations, so you can play HD video through your television. They also have those docking stations for using your phone as a mini-laptop (a guy at work is going on and on about those things - that might be Samsung). Another company is working on a general purpose docking station for using your phone as a laptop like device. Finally, Razer has their project Fiona - a true gaming tablet. I don't know if Project Fiona will do any general purpose work, but the game they're showing on screens is Firefall.
Whether the horsepower is there or not, the companies are moving in that direction. All that remains is for people to decide whether or not they want to buy that stuff. Oh, and make a wireless video standard that doesn't exist yet.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Video decode is easy. 3D gaming is hard. Will there be phones that people use for gaming 10 or 20 years from now? Sure. Will they be a serious replacement for desktops? Not any more than they are today.
After the complete fiasco that was the Razer Blade, let's assume that Fiona is an overpriced piece of junk until proven otherwise. Don't hold your breath.
I was actually thinking something like 10 years. Time for the next generation of consoles to come out, get old and then have people looking for an entertainment replacement.
I can't hold my breath for 10 minutes, much less 10 years, so there's no danger of me turning blue and hitting my head on my way down to the floor. :-)
** edit **
@OP - If you do a search for MMO on Google Play, there's a good sized list of the things. I don't know if that means they're good though. The ones that were out last year (Pocket Legends, Order & Chaos, etc.) I think are the ones that are going to be 'good'. Unless what you're looking for is some kind of retro style game, that's been updated as an MMORPG. Again though, nothing that looks new, or better than what Pocket Legends or the others have done.
** edit edit **
Also, how dare you speak out against Razer? Do you not know the power of the Cult of Razer?!? Oh, wait. They had that keyboard where the J key only worked if you put a quarter on the media touchpad thing. Nevermind...I'll just mosey on over here and play some more The Walking Dead.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
The problem with the Razer Blade is that it cost about 2-3 times as much as the internal hardware could justify. Razer wanted $2800 for a dual core processor and a fairly low end video card. When you manage to make even a MacBook Pro look like it has bargain basement pricing in comparison to your product, you're probably doing something wrong.
Not next gen but certainly awesome.
One of the business sites I follow had an article a few weeks back talking about the potential of a console / tablet hybrid that would ship with a game controller.
To me, that with a wi-fi connection would make for a decent portable gaming platform.
It is the only problem that needs solving though to answer the OPs question. Hardware is only a matter of time, and it has already progressed further then you're giving credit. Tablets have caught up with current-gen consoles, so we're looking at an offset of about 5 years, and that margin will only get smaller.
Yeah, one thing you can't say about Razer is that their stuff is inexpensive.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
here is what they can do.
Take non-combat game features (things that exist like lets say housing and farming as well as things that havent been created yet which there are plenty of ideas in that space), create all the models for those EXECPT for the skin of the models. If the player is on tablet, skin (low res) is applied. If its a PC the high res is applied.
That is a short version of how I see it going anyway.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
You're wildly wrong there, unless you mean the Wii, which was considered very underpowered on the day that it launched. I'll use the Xbox 360 for a comparison.
First and most trivially, it's a gap of more than 5 years. The Xbox 360 launched in 2005. Five years ago was 2007.
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Next, tablets haven't caught up to Xbox 360 graphics. Let's compare the graphics in the Xbox 360 (ATI Xenos) with the graphics in AMD's latest "Hondo" or "Z-01" tablet chip, as that's as clean of a comparison as we're likely to find. Xenos has 240 shaders if you count them the way AMD does today (48 VLIW5 blocks). Hondo has 80. Advantage, Xenos. Xenos also has 16 texture units. Hondo has 4. Advantage Xenos. Xenos is clocked at 500 MHz, while Hondo is 276 MHz. Again, advantage Xenos. So the Xbox 360 offers more than 5 times the shader power and 7 times the shader power of a Z-01 powered tablet. Hondo certainly hasn't caught up to the Xbox 360. Not even close.
But maybe other tablets have? Not so fast. Hondo has some serious advantages over other tablet chips here. First of all, it has a TDP of 5.9 W. That's high for a tablet, and more power consumption lets you pack in more performance. Try to bring that down in the future to something more tablet-friendly and you lose performance.
Hondo is also built on a 40 nm process node. All else equal, smaller process nodes mean lower power consumption. For comparison, Nvidia's latest and greatest Tegra 3 (e.g., Asus Transformer Prime) is also on a 40 nm process node. The Apple A5X chip of the iPad 3 is built on a 45 nm process node.
Hondo is also extra specially binned for use in tablets. All of the Apple A5X chips that Apple makes have to either go into iPads or possibly iPhones (I'm not sure about this one) or be thrown in the garbage. Thus, if Apple decides that the iPad 3 requires specs that only 10% of the chips that come back from the fabs can meet, then they have to throw the other 90% of the chips away. That's not a way to make money. Analogous things are true of nearly all of the other chips that go into tablets.
Except for Hondo. AMD has a bunch of dies come back from the fabs, and they try running them at very low voltages, to reduce power consumption. They can set the Z-01 bin requirements to be something that 90% of the chips can't handle, and pick out the best 10% of the chips for use in tablets. The reason they can do this is that they have other uses for the remaining 90%: laptops and desktops (well, nettops really). In fact, if you buy a nettop or a low power budget laptop, and don't buy a completely stupid product (i.e., Intel Atom), you're probably snapping up a die that could have gone into a tablet except that it used too much power. One of the other bins features the same performance as the Z-01, except that it is allowed to use 9 W rather than 5.9 W.
-----
Third, the rate of performance gains over the course of the last several years are likely to be faster than what we'll see in the future. For many years, chip designers were able to basically ignore power consumption and go for maximum performance. For a while, this meant roughly that every two years, you do a die shrink that doubles your performance, but at the cost of 40% more power consumption. Doubling performance every two years is pretty good.
If you have to keep power consumption steady, however, then you can't double performance like that. Instead, you can only get about 40% more performance withint he same power envelope as before. Instead of doubling performance every two years, you double it every four years. That's the future for tablets, unless you see a market for tablets that put out 50 W. I sure don't--and even if you do, that's still eventually the future for tablets.
So if we were able to double performance every two years in the past, but only every four years in the future, is the time gap between a given level of performance being available in consoles versus tablets likely to narrow or widen? That transition would mean that the time gap doubles.
It's also important to note that I assume that Moore's Law continues unabated. We know that eventually, Moore's Law will fail. The nature of quantum mechanics demands it. You can't have transistors smaller than the smallest elementary particles, and you probably can't get anywhere near that limit, either. We only don't know when Moore's Law will die. But if it happens sooner rather than later, then the time gap will greatly widen--think decades or maybe even centuries, not years.
That would basically be a Game Boy or its successors and competitors in a tablet form factor. While I could easily see that happening, I don't think it will lend itself to MMORPGs. How many MMORPGs are there for PlayStation Vita or Nintendo 3DS?
I am not sure Moore's law even holds for PC's now, have we really seen a doubling of processing power in PC's every two years over the last four?
Also I have noticed a drop in what PC games are demanding from PC's each new year. Just as well as PC's have not been getting that much better each year. It may be that game companies are looking to ensure maximum sales by making sure older PC's can play their games, that only used to happen in MMO's?
Moore's Law says that we'll see a doubling of transistor counts. Whether we see a doubling of processing power depends on what is done with the extra transistors. A full node die shrink means that the same die space can get you double the performance of before, but at the expense of using about 40% more power consumption. If you decide that the old chip already used quite enough power and you don't want the new one to use any more, then you can only increase performance by about 40%.
The die shrinks have still been coming about every two years for a full node. If you track transistor counts direclty, they have also steadily increased. One thing that has happened in processors in recent years is that rather than simply adding more cores that programs wouldn't necessarily be able to put to good use, they've integrated other features into the same die as the processor: the memory controller, PCI Express controller, graphics, etc. For that matter, integrating more functions into fewer chips was essential to make smartphones possible at all, as you don't have room for a 12" x 9" motherboard inside a smartphone.
Sorry for the thread res; I just thought people would be interested to note that the game I vid-linked to previously is now available on the Windows Store as a prototype.
See Incarnate's post here:
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/1/26544#323561
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
Thanks,
Mike
Working on Social Strategy MMORTS (now Launched!) http://www.worldalpha.com