Why would it need to stay that way though? Once a phone has similar processing power there’s no reason you couldn’t hook it up to any screen and Bluetooth a controller.
We’re a few decades from that if I had to guess (based on very little, I’m not an expert at all), but seems totally plausible to me.
I imagine chess players laughed in a similar way when pong came out.
High powered computers, and desktop setups, are today’s current gold standard. But maybe not the futures.
We’re at the point where a phone could power a desktop computer, with a suitable dock.
Phone input methods certainly are adaptable, you could get switch style connectors for a phone, or some human-based motion tracking.
Projectors, foldable phones, display glasses, are ways to make the screen bigger for gaming.
Phones are in everybody’s pockets, they’re getting fast enough, most of them are fast enough, to run games from 5 to 10 years ago no problem. I routinely watch people play games on their phones for over an hour on the train. The gaming’s here already
I don’t think mobile gaming will ever be the pinnacle of current gaming, but it will be the ubiquitous platform that is targeted in the future.
We’re at the point where a phone could power a desktop computer, with a suitable dock.
No we aren’t, the hardware is light-years behind. Maybe that will happen eventually but that’s certainly a different thing than today’s mobile phones. Kind of weird to insist it’s just the same thing.
The hardware is on par. Especially when you look at the apple chips. The m1 is a direct successor to the iPhone chips. Yeah they make a couple different power trade-offs. But the same chip in the MacBooks is being used in the iPads.
I’m not saying it’s a daily driver for people today. But it’s so close
Dude there is not a reference in the world that will convince me a current phone can remotely touch my desktop. The apple m1 barely rivals it at all but that’s not what we are talking about. Laptop does not equal phone
You claimed it was lightyears behind to be fair, nobody said it’d be an equal to today’s gaming rigs but the gap has certainly closed a bit.
Current phones are more powerful than a switch already, which is releasing AAA games that people are buying so some people are perfectly happy playing a game with moderate gfx and performance. I can absolutely see AAA games being designed for phones in the future and docking in a similar way.
Saying you could plug in a phone in place of a desktop is like saying you don’t need a car because you can just walk. Technically, they fill the sale role, but its a night and day difference in capability and just due to laws of physics, that isn’t going to change.
Connection stability, performance, and controller support all have a had a lot of time to get better, why would we expect it to happen now but not before? Mobile gaming is popular with kids but it also sucks. I think kids are just playing what they have, when they have a choice they won’t necessarily stick with mobile.
How? I’ve emulated games on phones before and it’s ok at best for the types of games they can handle. You’re never going to get something like fallout or borderlands or Baldurs Gate running well on phones compared to consoles and PCs without a dock and external controller as well as enough processing power to be beyond overkill as a mobile device. Fuck metroidvanias suck on mobile and games like stardew are playable but much worse.
I think that the mobile share will for sure continue to grow before it plateaus, but I have a hard time believing that all markets will converge to mobile within any relevant time frame. Just by virtue of not being mobile, desktop builds will always have options for larger hardware with better performance and cooling compared to their mobile competitors
True. But right now even Apple iPhones are the same power or the same chip architecture as their desktop counterparts. So the convergence is already happened. The interface of desktops will always be better. My thesis is that desktops, uneven consoles are going to become niche for their markets.
Using Mac as an example of gaming when they compose a smaller percent than even Linux users, is ridiculous. You make some interesting points elsewhere, but you completely lost me with this one.
You might be right (I don’t know enough about Apple proprietary hardware to know otherwise), but that’s not the same for PC or console. There’s no reason that I can think of to assume that those platforms will stop development. For any generation, I can’t see PC hardware being less powerful or less efficient than its mobile counterpart, it just makes no sense to me. Therefore, there will always be a group of users with no mobile needs who want the best performance who will keep the platform alive.
It’s also worth noting that mobile’s market share growth hasn’t come mostly from people switching from console/PC to mobile, but from new gamers starting off on the mobile platform.
(FWIW I don’t think you deserve nearly the amount of downvotes you’re getting)
Depends on your POV. My phone is more powerful than the first computers I’ve had.
Thanks to Apple everyone has to take arm processors seriously, since M1 it’s not the “efficient, but shitty” processor, everyone needs to support it.
Phones are slowly getting there. Sure, we’re not seeing 4070 GPU equivalent in the near future. But most people’s computers are really shitty as well, including the low-end gaming computers.
Phones have already replaced PCs for lots of people. 20 years ago almost every household had a desktop but 95% of what was completed on it can now be achieved with a phone, to the extent that plenty of houses don’t even bother with a computer any more.
Eventually the technology gets to a point where it can fill that slot for gaming too, it’ll never replace all of it and specialist equipment will always exist obviously. Most people don’t need to be at the peak of tech though (or even near it) and we already see lots of gaming households who just play switch, which is far below modern capabilities of games.
A phone doesn’t need to be competitive with modern PCs to become a strong option for gaming, the overall technology just needs to get far enough that most don’t notice the improvements you get from specialist equipment like gaming rigs.
It’s the gaming equivalent of earbuds vs a proper sound system. People will always exist that are enthusiasts and can hear the difference, but most of us are happy with a convenient pair of buds to listen to music and podcasts with.
I’m not trying to defend anyone bud I’m just making the points as I see them. How does my comment go against their argument though? PCs have been getting phased out for decades and that’ll continue.
Of course PCs will always be more powerful, but mobiles only need to be powerful ENOUGH (just like the very successful Switch console). I’m saying that eventually both mobiles and PCs will be powerful enough to play games at a quality most will accept, and only the hardcore will feel the need to get the absolute top tier experience, just like audiophiles do already.
Board games once outperformed the entire video games market too, things do change though.
Perfectly happy to admit the worlds best PC will always outstrip the worlds best phone, just like the world best earbuds will never outperform the world’s best speakers, but that’s not relevant to my point at all :) x
I’m not talking about the next 5 or 10 years either mate, I’m talking about 20 or 50 years, assuming society still exists.
And FYI, mobile gaming outstrips PC gaming by revenue already (PC and console combined in fact), you can expect to see it grow (whether for the right or wrong reasons) down the years as the tech allows for more actual “true gaming” options on phones that can be exploited by the corps.
I was making my point in the context of the thread mate. I.e. Will PCs dominate gaming in future? If your only point was that computers are more powerful than mobiles why not make that your response to my first comment? I thought this was a discussion about whether PCs will continue to be as relevant in gaming as they are today, and I don’t think they will.
I guess my point isnt that your original point is wrong, it’s more that it’s not particularly relevant in this instance. And the PoV of the user is far more important (as evidenced by all those switch only gamers).
LOL their entire point was that PCs were popular because “everyone has one”.
Who’s entire point was that…? Because I just read every parent comment to this and it’s not mentioned once, the only point I’m making is that I expect the majority of gaming to be done on mobile in the eventual future.
The world’s best phone will be “outstripped” by a basic desktop costing half the price. Always. Simple physics.
This may be true today, but as PCs become only specialist equipment those basic machines will get rarer and rarer. It also doesn’t matter if the smartphone is capable of playing AAA games at a comparable quality.
Slightly amused by the point you make about mobile/switch revenues… How is it that you can argue the PCs win vs switch because they earn more money, then in the next breath ignore the fact that mobile does that against all other gaming combined?
You’re very welcome, although not actually an insult, again I’m just making the point as I see it. This one being that you appear to be an actual child.
I consider failure to make a coherent point an actual failure, so thanks for that :) x
Everything is going to converge on mobile device gaming. Power of mobile devices goes up, internet becomes more stable…
Ah yes small screen and bad controls. Truly the future of gaming
Why would it need to stay that way though? Once a phone has similar processing power there’s no reason you couldn’t hook it up to any screen and Bluetooth a controller.
We’re a few decades from that if I had to guess (based on very little, I’m not an expert at all), but seems totally plausible to me.
I imagine chess players laughed in a similar way when pong came out.
The current mobile form will improve, the ubiquitous nature of it will dominate.
Form into what? High powered CPUs with giant monitors on a desk with great resolution and a myriad of tried and tested input controls?
We got that already, and it’s not a phone.
Yes that, but one that can be lifted up and taken with you in your pocket:) x
High powered computers, and desktop setups, are today’s current gold standard. But maybe not the futures.
We’re at the point where a phone could power a desktop computer, with a suitable dock.
Phone input methods certainly are adaptable, you could get switch style connectors for a phone, or some human-based motion tracking.
Projectors, foldable phones, display glasses, are ways to make the screen bigger for gaming.
Phones are in everybody’s pockets, they’re getting fast enough, most of them are fast enough, to run games from 5 to 10 years ago no problem. I routinely watch people play games on their phones for over an hour on the train. The gaming’s here already
I don’t think mobile gaming will ever be the pinnacle of current gaming, but it will be the ubiquitous platform that is targeted in the future.
No we aren’t, the hardware is light-years behind. Maybe that will happen eventually but that’s certainly a different thing than today’s mobile phones. Kind of weird to insist it’s just the same thing.
https://www.samsung.com/us/apps/dex/
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LrLDKYFyLMM
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36963200
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_M1
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A17
The hardware is on par. Especially when you look at the apple chips. The m1 is a direct successor to the iPhone chips. Yeah they make a couple different power trade-offs. But the same chip in the MacBooks is being used in the iPads.
I’m not saying it’s a daily driver for people today. But it’s so close
Dude there is not a reference in the world that will convince me a current phone can remotely touch my desktop. The apple m1 barely rivals it at all but that’s not what we are talking about. Laptop does not equal phone
You claimed it was lightyears behind to be fair, nobody said it’d be an equal to today’s gaming rigs but the gap has certainly closed a bit.
Current phones are more powerful than a switch already, which is releasing AAA games that people are buying so some people are perfectly happy playing a game with moderate gfx and performance. I can absolutely see AAA games being designed for phones in the future and docking in a similar way.
Saying you could plug in a phone in place of a desktop is like saying you don’t need a car because you can just walk. Technically, they fill the sale role, but its a night and day difference in capability and just due to laws of physics, that isn’t going to change.
Connection stability, performance, and controller support all have a had a lot of time to get better, why would we expect it to happen now but not before? Mobile gaming is popular with kids but it also sucks. I think kids are just playing what they have, when they have a choice they won’t necessarily stick with mobile.
How? I’ve emulated games on phones before and it’s ok at best for the types of games they can handle. You’re never going to get something like fallout or borderlands or Baldurs Gate running well on phones compared to consoles and PCs without a dock and external controller as well as enough processing power to be beyond overkill as a mobile device. Fuck metroidvanias suck on mobile and games like stardew are playable but much worse.
I think that the mobile share will for sure continue to grow before it plateaus, but I have a hard time believing that all markets will converge to mobile within any relevant time frame. Just by virtue of not being mobile, desktop builds will always have options for larger hardware with better performance and cooling compared to their mobile competitors
True. But right now even Apple iPhones are the same power or the same chip architecture as their desktop counterparts. So the convergence is already happened. The interface of desktops will always be better. My thesis is that desktops, uneven consoles are going to become niche for their markets.
Using Mac as an example of gaming when they compose a smaller percent than even Linux users, is ridiculous. You make some interesting points elsewhere, but you completely lost me with this one.
You might be right (I don’t know enough about Apple proprietary hardware to know otherwise), but that’s not the same for PC or console. There’s no reason that I can think of to assume that those platforms will stop development. For any generation, I can’t see PC hardware being less powerful or less efficient than its mobile counterpart, it just makes no sense to me. Therefore, there will always be a group of users with no mobile needs who want the best performance who will keep the platform alive.
It’s also worth noting that mobile’s market share growth hasn’t come mostly from people switching from console/PC to mobile, but from new gamers starting off on the mobile platform.
(FWIW I don’t think you deserve nearly the amount of downvotes you’re getting)
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It’s the same issue with vr. Everything is converging on the quest because it’s easier and cheaper
What? VR has been almost completely stagnant and frankly dying since Alyx. There’s no convergence when there is zero progress overall.
Depends on your POV. My phone is more powerful than the first computers I’ve had.
Thanks to Apple everyone has to take arm processors seriously, since M1 it’s not the “efficient, but shitty” processor, everyone needs to support it.
Phones are slowly getting there. Sure, we’re not seeing 4070 GPU equivalent in the near future. But most people’s computers are really shitty as well, including the low-end gaming computers.
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It really does…
Phones have already replaced PCs for lots of people. 20 years ago almost every household had a desktop but 95% of what was completed on it can now be achieved with a phone, to the extent that plenty of houses don’t even bother with a computer any more.
Eventually the technology gets to a point where it can fill that slot for gaming too, it’ll never replace all of it and specialist equipment will always exist obviously. Most people don’t need to be at the peak of tech though (or even near it) and we already see lots of gaming households who just play switch, which is far below modern capabilities of games.
A phone doesn’t need to be competitive with modern PCs to become a strong option for gaming, the overall technology just needs to get far enough that most don’t notice the improvements you get from specialist equipment like gaming rigs.
It’s the gaming equivalent of earbuds vs a proper sound system. People will always exist that are enthusiasts and can hear the difference, but most of us are happy with a convenient pair of buds to listen to music and podcasts with.
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I’m not trying to defend anyone bud I’m just making the points as I see them. How does my comment go against their argument though? PCs have been getting phased out for decades and that’ll continue.
Of course PCs will always be more powerful, but mobiles only need to be powerful ENOUGH (just like the very successful Switch console). I’m saying that eventually both mobiles and PCs will be powerful enough to play games at a quality most will accept, and only the hardcore will feel the need to get the absolute top tier experience, just like audiophiles do already.
Board games once outperformed the entire video games market too, things do change though.
Perfectly happy to admit the worlds best PC will always outstrip the worlds best phone, just like the world best earbuds will never outperform the world’s best speakers, but that’s not relevant to my point at all :) x
I’m not talking about the next 5 or 10 years either mate, I’m talking about 20 or 50 years, assuming society still exists.
And FYI, mobile gaming outstrips PC gaming by revenue already (PC and console combined in fact), you can expect to see it grow (whether for the right or wrong reasons) down the years as the tech allows for more actual “true gaming” options on phones that can be exploited by the corps.
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I was making my point in the context of the thread mate. I.e. Will PCs dominate gaming in future? If your only point was that computers are more powerful than mobiles why not make that your response to my first comment? I thought this was a discussion about whether PCs will continue to be as relevant in gaming as they are today, and I don’t think they will.
I guess my point isnt that your original point is wrong, it’s more that it’s not particularly relevant in this instance. And the PoV of the user is far more important (as evidenced by all those switch only gamers).
Who’s entire point was that…? Because I just read every parent comment to this and it’s not mentioned once, the only point I’m making is that I expect the majority of gaming to be done on mobile in the eventual future.
This may be true today, but as PCs become only specialist equipment those basic machines will get rarer and rarer. It also doesn’t matter if the smartphone is capable of playing AAA games at a comparable quality.
Slightly amused by the point you make about mobile/switch revenues… How is it that you can argue the PCs win vs switch because they earn more money, then in the next breath ignore the fact that mobile does that against all other gaming combined?
Yeah, it sure does.
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I mean, after your “comeback”, did you really expect more effort from me?
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That makes one of us, I guess.
I think the last time I heard anyone say this sincerely was in school.
Your lack of comprehension is making a little more sense. Thanks mate :) x
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You’re very welcome, although not actually an insult, again I’m just making the point as I see it. This one being that you appear to be an actual child.
I consider failure to make a coherent point an actual failure, so thanks for that :) x