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Along the Mirror's Edge

Tuesday 25 April 2023

Is console gaming ever going to evolve?

 That's feeling like a solid- 'no', right now.

Console gaming is forever improving and reiterating upon itself thanks to the push to improve hardware that each manufacturer is drawn to by merit of their competition. Unless your name is Nintendo. They... they don't care about their hardware. The whole eight-year cycle that consoles go through is actually increadibly slow considering how often tech improves and changes, what with maximum processing power doubling every year, but that does mean every new iteration of a console has the potential to be a huge step forward in capability; which is typically why these huge companies end up selling at loss from cramming all the latest boards and cards in their power house machines and make up the change on the otherside through leeching customers for subscriptions or first-party high quality games. It's also why all those start-up companies that want to make their own competitive consoles really don't have a chance to compete before they've even started planning; what kind of start-up can eat those same sorts of production costs? Not one lacking a vast portfolio of investor's, that's for sure.

Yet some surprising how, despite this procession of new console iterations that are constantly being pushed out of the door, it always feels like console gaming is holding back the potential of the industry from where it could be. As if the hardware limitations are the shackles around the ankles of developers trying to redefine genre's but having to play by the rules of rendering available to them for fear of getting into another 'Cyberpunk 2077' situation where no one can play their damn game for half a year without a supercomputer attached to their rigs. Even this current generation of stupidly expensive glowing trite consoles somehow has it's teething problems when it comes to what should be the basic requirement of modern gaming- getting it's software to run at a consistent 60 frames per second. Not even 120- but just bog standard smooth 60. So what's going on?

Already we've had a plethora of miffed reactions to Arkane's vampire shooter game, but no so more when it was revealed that Redfall was going to be launching on Xbox without a 60fps mode at all. Two play modes, neither are smooth enough to match modern day gaming standards. And it's not as though the game is incapable of reaching 60 frames, considering Arkane have already promised a post-game patch adding in such a mode. Such really does demonstrate the order of prioritisation considered by modern day developers, who consider their games done and fully shippable before they can achieve a descent framerate for a console crowd. 60 frames, in their mind, is a bonus that such a crowd should be lucky and thankful to receive. A perception we should be very familiar with after the similar situation with Arkham Knights. 

Modern consoles seem to have standardised the concept of 'Performance modes' which are versions of the game where the higher graphics settings are automatically down-tweaked in order to reach the best possible performance. (A practice that just about any PC gamer out there is probably more than familiar with.) But this does betray the gulf of separation between getting the most visual appeal out of your games and making them play to the highest quality; such that previously unheard of graphic options are not available to console players! That's how impossible it is to combine these two extremes of performance with console technology! I'm not sure about you but personally I can't help but find that to be a depressing middle ground.

We're currently in an age of gaming dominated by computer component superiority, during a recession of said computer components. Of course it's nowhere near as bad as it was, thanks to the collapse of the crypto market killing off the desire for people to seize up graphics cards for mining purposes; but the greed-driven arm of industry has firmly stamped it's foot down on the basics of market negotiations. The last few years of gaming computer components have gotten prohibitively expensive for causal gamers and there's no possible chance of these components becoming more affordable with time, as was usually the case with literally everything else in the world. Meaning that at it's current trajectory, high level computer gaming is only going to become more and more elitist with less people being able to fully enjoy them without spending a ridiculous amount off the bat to get started. Which sucks.

Which kind of makes it seem like I'm praising the idea of throttling the development of software industry-wide to fit the confines of the console market's hardware... and yeah, I kind of am. Left to their own devices, the wild arms of development would probably see a wild variety in the styles of games developed; with some built to cater for the highest end computers of all and some, probably those made by big companies with an interest in actually making money, would try to match the general wave of tech. But there would be a distinction. We would have more games like Crisis, out there; optimised so badly that computers 10 years on from it's release couldn't run the thing in max settings. With the kiddie gloves of the console industry to base it's advancements around, software can be standardised to reach the most people, keeping the gaming community together and allowing it to grow as a unit. See- stronger isn't always better for everyone.

Of course, it's only ever comparative. Consoles will never be able to match what PC's can do at anypoint in their lifespan. The time it takes to design and mass-produce any sort of console to the market is enough time for a whole new series of graphics cards to be released, meaning that anyone looking for top-of-the-line in the console market is always, even on the launch day, going to be at least one generation behind. Every year that divide widens until the breaking point where games physically cannot improve anymore and a new generation has to begin. PC builds have that inherit upgradable superiority about them and there's no real way of matching that in a standardised level- unless we do something with consoles that no company has been able to manage before.

I've said it before but STADIA was it's own reaper, because the ground it walked on was solid enough in concept. A 'console' that really just connects to a top-of-the-line mega console that really runs the games is pretty much the only way that the console generation could ever reach the heights of PC- and that's evident in the way that Microsoft and Sony are both committing efforts to realising their own game streaming platforms. Honestly, the future of console gaming is probably going to be in the cloud, and when that happens it's going to be a total shift in fortunes as the market of computer upgrade parts will be the limiter of software development. Console gamers will surpass anything the PC market can feasibly reach- and the elitism will switch like a light switch because everyone has to be looking down on someone. Bliss.

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