Why Do Dedicated Game Consoles Exist? | Hacker News Reader

Why Do Dedicated Game Consoles Exist?

prog21.dadgum.com

53 pointsFigBug58 comments

I was once contracted to be an expert witness in a case involving the definition of an "appliance" versus a "computer."

The bulk of the argument was than an appliance was designed (and often constrained) to doing the 'thing' it was designed to do, and a computer was designed to embrace doing many different things.

As the author points out, a game console is a computer which has sacrificed generality in order to achieve a cost advantage in the market where it competes. As the cost of generality goes down, the comparative advantage slowly evaporates.

An example of how this plays out is with robotics. You can consider your dishwasher to be a robot, it reacts to conditions (dishes, no dishes) it has various schemes for cleaning them, and that is pretty much what it does. A clothes washer is another robot of the genus 'washer' but works only on clothes. A general purpose robot could, in theory wash clothes, or dishes, and pretty much anything else if you programmed it to do so. So where do you draw the line between robot and appliance?

I posited the line was based on the relative cost/complexity advantage of one over another. When a computer was targeted to a particular task, and could do that task at a significant market cost advantage over the general purpose implementation, it went from being a 'computer' to being an 'appliance'.

Game consoles are appliances that play games, which is not to say that iPhones don't play games, but if you only want to play games then a console has a cost advantage over a phone.

As to why a system like the 2DS or 3DS or Vita is compelling when we all have iPhones or Android devices, for me it comes down to the control systems.

Touchscreens are fine for a narrow band of game types, but I wouldn't want to play the latest Mario platformer or Little Big Planet or 3D FPS with one. For lots of games I'll take the physical d-pad and/or analog sticks and physical buttons any day.

And while you technically can get such controllers to sync with touch-centric devices, it isn't quite the same if you have to carry around a separate controller. Even more importantly, it isn't the same if the controller type is not completely standardized so that games for the platform can expect it. External controllers are a fine solution for emulation on phones and tablets, but not for core games on the actual native platform.

Exactly; it's really about the form factor. However, gaming accessories for smartphones already exist, and it's only a matter of time before they become refined enough to be competitive with consoles.

>it isn't quite the same if you have to carry around a separate controller...

As opposed to carrying around a separate game console?

Speaking to the portable gaming space, I'd also add that a big part of games is the controls. Phones don't have a d-pad and buttons (or analog sticks, etc..). That pretty much makes games like Super Mario Brothers impossible. You can have your simplified endless runners, and that will probably satisfy most people. But for serious gamers, you need more precise control than a non dedicated console can provide.

Xperia Play

Check The Open Pandora Pocket Gaming Handheld. It has physical controls and IS portable. Way better than a phone for Gaming, and it comes with a full Linux distribution for more serious applications.

Still a dedicated gaming handheld.

Not sure what you mean here. It runs a linux distro so you can use it as a computer (more like as a netbook replacement) and not just a "gaming only" console. Plus, being open, you can create and port your own applications on it using standard languages.

What I mean is you're plugging how it's open and uses standard languages in a thread titled "Why do dedicated game consoles exist?". That stuff is irrelevant.

Because a lot of people aren’t technoweenies like us.

The reson why consoles sell is because largely they "just work" Hook it to the TV pop in a disc and you are rivalling the arcade. No dealing with popups, driver incompatibility, installations, etc.

Why are consoles are popular for developers? Because if they write some super spiffy game for console X it will run on ALL of them since they all have the same hardware - no-brainer to buy, not too hard to support, etc.

Where if they write something for a PC you have to cross your fingers everyone knows what sort of system they have (even Aunt Edna buying little Tommy's Duke Nukem Forever game), that their system is relatively virus free, they have the proper controllers, a decent monitor, understand what it means when they need to update a driver, etc. etc.

As far as quality, a lot of folks, don't really care. As long as the game is reasonably fun and they can take it out of the box and have it playing in under a minute. Heck I appreciate the resolution of DVDs, but frankly I don't give a darn about blu-ray, the ability to see Leonardo DeCaprio's nose hairs doesn't make really make the movie all that more enjoyable to me. Only thing that sometimes compels me about blue ray may be some exclusive feature... But again, like consoles, most blue-ray stuff is also on DVD primarily because all the DVD and Blu-Ray folk can use it and there is better potential sales.

Here's my guess: 1) It's easier to say here pay $300 and you'll be able to play graphically intensive games vs here pay $200, install this video card into your computer, update your PC and drivers, etc.

2) Much harder to pirate console games. <-- probably the main reason.

A good reply to such articles: http://www.lostgarden.com/2005/09/nintendos-genre-innovation...

> As a side note, folks who argue Nintendo should just make games for other platforms are completely missing the point. Nintendo needs to control their hardware platform in order to force innovation to occur in the control mechanisms. Other console manufacturers who rely on the hardcore audiences and standardized genres don’t see this need. They would happily standardize the console platform and make it into a commodity. Microsoft has historically made major comments about having one universal development platform.

> The moment Nintendo loses control over their hardware, they lose a major competitive advantage in terms of creating new genres.

That's easy. User maintenance is a lot easier for XBone and PS4 than it is for any general purpose PC.

And, because game developers know the precise specs of every console they target, they can reduce load times and make texture rendering... sorry, sorry, I can't do this with a straight face.

I own a PC and an Xbox. I know from first hand experience that the Xbox is easier to maintain. I wasn't joking about that.

How is an Xbox easier to maintain? When something dies in your PC, you just pop it open and replace it. You might not even need tools.

I'm talking more about software maintenance. For example, sometimes I need to respond to flash or java update messages.

I feel like PCs are a sliding scale. You have to keep updating them to play the latest games. Wheras consoles are a known - you pay once, and it's good for what, 5 years?

That's less and less true for PCs. I had to update my PC every year or so before to keep up with the latest games, but nowadays it's clearly a slower moving target, and even with a 2 years old PC (equipped with a good graphics card at the time) I play most games in full/medium details in Full HD.

This seems to be kind of artificially introduced by consoles. The current generation of consoles stuck around forever, and they so dominate the gaming market that games were basically anchored to that rough level of computing ability for years.

Yeah, totally agree. But this is also because the PC has lost a lot of exclusive games which were usually pushing the specs higher and higher. Nowadays most games are made for consoles and ported later (or at the same time) for PC. The PC is not a target platform anymore, except for a few genres.

Consoles end up feeling older and outdated as well (and games even show lag at times on consoles), just it's harder to notice when they abstract away all the graphical choices and settings from the end user (as well as generally sitting farther from the screen). It's very telling when you play a bad console port on PC and see how low quality some of the textures and draw distance are compared to games made for PC or better quality ports. Even games such as Mass Effect 3 had all sorts of low resolution textures thrown in the PC version that were glaringly obvious when playing.

PCs, you become aware of all that and how outdated things are when you realize your cannot run max settings for whatever game you're playing anymore. I guess it's sort of the "content with what you cannot change (consoles) versus discontent in realizing you no longer have the 'best' of something anymore (PC)".

In short, it's much easier to see flaws on PC overall because you realize you can do something about them (given the time to reconfigure game/pc settings or upgrade), while consoles you cannot.

At this point, unless you care a lot about keeping graphics high, I wouldn't be too surprised if you could keep a decent computer for at least 4 years. Even more so if you didn't care about resolution/played games at low resolutions (keep in mind, consoles have run games at 720p or less for the past 7 years!).

The thing is that most people who're willing to deal with pc gaming also care enough to upgrade more often, so a lot of the cost is self-imposed.

Because people are still buying them.

Once they do, they have to buy your product and it's harder to pirate, so publishers win.

Why do people buy them

A. People get a quick high when they buy objects, this is big part of capitalism.

B. They are only game machines. When you use a console there's no emails coming through to stress you out, your body relaxes in game state. (Why ebooks readers if they are smart won't add features, books are meant to be stress free)

C. 80-20 rule. The little bit of extra work on a PC can be a deal breaker, even if it's cheaper and better.

Also, they're considerably cheaper than a gaming PC. I can get an Xbox 360 for $250. I'd need at least twice that for a modest PC. While the PC would be more powerful, the optimization allowed when having every user on the same machine with the exact same specs on a closed platform makes a big difference too as far as performance goes.

You could probably buy a hardware equivalent PC for $250, or even less.

$250 PCs (I own one) suck for games.

$250 gaming PCs are possible, if self-built.

Really? LogicalIncrements says that kind of money only gets you Intel HD 4000 power with no peripherals. How is that in any way a gaming PC?

Skimp on CPU, buy AMD and budget mobo, go to eBay for GPU.

Even a modest motherboards costing $50 minimum. A cheap GPU could run less than $50 if you're lucky. A CPU's gonna be at least $100. A power supply could go for $20. A case $20. A hard drive $40. You're already over $250 and this PC won't come close to matching the graphics performance in games of an Xbox or PS3. I'm a PC gamer who uses a $1000 gaming PC and a $1500 gaming laptop, but I understand why people buy and will continue to buy consoles. It's a no brainer.

At which point your PC costs $250 only if your time is worthless.

If you need a $250 PC, your time probably is worth less. If you're buying $60 console games instead of $5-$30 PC games, I hope you're saving a lot of highly valuable time.

Why would you want to waste your time with a retail PC anyway, loaded down with time-wasting adware and free trials?

This is the same reason I buy records and CDs even though I have a massive digital music collection.

I don't want to hand-sort my digital files, click through 50 screens, wait for reboots, etc etc. I wanna shove something physical inside something else physical and let the music just play.

Plus, you can't sniff an mp3.

I've found it interesting that arcade games have gone in the opposite direction. Most modern arcade games are released on the Taito Type X, Sega Lindbergh and other similar platforms. These are basically just PCs with Intel processors, Nvidia or ATI graphics cards, and Windows or Linux.

A good example is Street Fighter. Street Fighter 3 was release for the CPS3 [0], a completely proprietary platform that ultimately only had 6 games released for it. Street Fighter 4 was on the Taito Type X2 [1], which is pretty much a PC.

[0] http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=799

[1] http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=903

This ignores another big part of the equation historically (I don't know if it applies today, and AFAIK it never applied to Nintendo) which is using a clever business model. Many consoles have been sold at a significant loss at launch. An equivalently powerful PC would have cost much more, and did, in fact, cost the manufacturer more than they were selling it for. The cost would then be recaptured in game royalties.

It's simple, they're cheaper and easier to use.

Besides the cost advantage due to the economies of scale, specialized gaming consoles offer something that both developers and gamers want: a consistent experience due to a common hardware platform.

The QA effort that goes into PC games vs a Console games is a considerable difference. The myriad of hardware configurations (amount of RAM, GPU types and its capabilities, processor speed, etc) make for complicated debugging and graphics quality compromises to capture the mean population of computer performance capability. Contrast this to console development, developers can guarantee the performance of their game and optimize accordingly because they only have to account for one hardware and OS configuration (or 2, if they are going for multi-console release). Likewise, gamers can be confident that they won't run into performance or compatibility issues.

Due to the specialization and simplification of these computer systems, gamers also get to enjoy the sheer convenience of gaming consoles. They boot quickly, jump strait into your game and are fairly no-nonsense.

At a low enough price point relative to general purpose PC's or smart phones, they are still the best experience for enthusiast-level gamers.

> Is the custom hardware so fundamentally critical to the experience that you couldn't provide it otherwise?

You could spin the question around and ask why do point & shoot cameras (analog: consoles) or SLR's (analog: PC's) exist when you're always carrying a camera in your pocket? The answer is level of control, depth of experience and quality. Such hardware will be used by enthusiasts, whereas those who just want something to snap selfies, dinners out etc will stick with whatever is most convenient.

I can play games on my phone anywhere I go but they lack the richness and intensity of playing a multiplayer FPS or RTS game on a stable wired connection and dedicated controller.

A way around this was mentioned in the article - tactile displays. A display or bezel that can raise parts of its topography into customizable shapes that react to touch. This will largely solve the input issue. It might even make it better than the fixed human-machine interface like a controller because it provides freedom for the developer (or user) to craft the input mechanism to perfectly suit the game/app.

Probably because the iPhone lacks tactile input buttons/joysticks.

Isn't iOS 7 supposed to add some sort of support for bluetooth gamepads? Will that help out?

Android has had support for bluetooth game controllers for years and has yet to get widely adopted by end users. I think there's even been some companies that have tried specializing in controllers for Android.

To be fair, developing for an iPhone is a lot closer to developing for the 3DS, because there tends to be one per year. Android devices vary, even if not by much, it's not the same. Especially when it comes to demanding games.

So while Android wins out on bluetooth support, it loses on the standardized console platform aspect.

Tactile controls are something that most phones are missing. But there seems to be a problem of culture. The games developed for mobile phones are targeted at mainstream casual markets. And there is also a culture of free beer with mobile gamers. When the client won't pay a proper price for the game, it is too much of a risk to create a large game. Which is why developers target simple casual games, and tries to nickel and dime with some targeted psychological tricks.

I enjoy more complex game, even with mobile platforms such as Nintendo 3DS. My most played games are Fire Emblem Awakening, Etrian Odyssey IV, Devil Survior Overclocked and Monster Hunter 3 U. The first three games would not even require tactile controls; but I don't think any mobile gamer in the current culture would buy them for 30 to 40 dollars.

With dedicated game consoles the culture of actually paying for a good large game is still alive and well. And I think that is the reason why developers make games for them. If the day comes when free-to-play casual games are the only mobile games available, it will be a sad day for me.

The reason I prefer console games is the control. I prefer a controller where my hands are upwards, like a Playstation, instead of a keyboard and mouse. There are peripheral controllers for PC, but since games are built with the expectation of just a keyboard and mouse, they don't make maximum advantage of the peripheral control (except flight yokes and steering wheels).

> There are peripheral controllers for PC, but since games are built with the expectation of just a keyboard and mouse [...]

These days, that's simply just not true. Sure there are a good amount of games that are just kb/m, but the many of the newer games support the have full 360 controller support (or PS3 controller if you want to fiddle around with some settings).

Haven't played video games in about 5 years, so you're right that things have probably changed.

Indeed. My living room XBMC/Steam PC has a Logitech wireless controller, and Steam highlights controller support as a feature in the game pages these days. It's pretty common, especially given so many games are cross-platform.

Personally I enjoy the ecosystem, the standardized hardware and input and the community that envelopes it.

The quality of games are significantly lower on mobile than dedicated consoles, a lot has to do with hardware, a lot has to do with strategy. A PC was a lot closer to the ps2 than an iPhone is to the ps4. Casual games may be the hot new thing, but you should be able to see the difference when you compare the production value to a Naughty Dog title.

There are very few mobile games that I want to play, and lots of console games I want to play. Most mobile games are small and simple. And I think the $1-$4 cost of most apps has killed much of the market for serious apps. Apple's 30% cut is far too much for apps over $20 and further drives developers away.

Lukas Mathis has a series of articles about Nintendo that I think is worth to read:

http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2013/08/29/nintendo/

http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2013/09/03/more_nintendo/

http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2013/09/05/lateral_thinking_wi...

http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2013/09/07/where_do_people_use...

Nintendo DS vs iPhone comparison:

Nintendo DS can be a gift to a 6 year old. I am not giving a phone with open data and calling capability and store to a 6 year old.

Also a NDS costs $200 while the iPhone is $450 for cheapest model without a phone contract (was more until recent anouncement).

A PS3 cost 400 at launch. And still plays new games till this day. SURE they are not as good quality but they work well. Meanwhile you keep having to upgrade your PC, and since I assemble my own, I can make a $600 / $700 pc, most people end up spending 1.5k+ for that.

So cost is still a huge factor.

Set design spec sheet allows developers to target their games more appropriately. Engines like Unity come in, drive more innovation. Low price point compared to a PC, and no additional hassle of making sure drivers are compatible etc.

Phones can take pictures. Why do cameras exist?

Because a phone is a shitty camera.

If the controls are the thing, maybe Nintendo should make a controller that docks to an iPhone and have exclusive games that require their controller.

The same reason modern smartphones do. PCs (whether windows, Mac, or linux) are horrid from a usability perspective. It boggles my mind how regular people manage to put up with the shit that it takes to use a computer effectively. But I know that the answer is that they don't, and the result is that they are exposed to a vastly degraded experience of using a computer compared to an expert who can easily troubleshoot and solve the vast majority of problems that they run into day to day.

Gaming consoles (and DVRs, and every other device which is basically just a computer) are simplified systems which remove a lot of the hassle of using them. Even a PS3 or a Wii-U (which are excruciating to update) is orders of magnitude easier to use than a general purpose computer.

Because games that aren't shit require buttons.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com