With the console war ravaging the gaming world and people fighting over which console is best, EA have decided to think about how long it will be, until we see yet again a new generation of consoles. While doing that Xbox VP comments on the life cycle of the Xbox 360, yet Nvidia makes us think about the third huge gaming option we have today – the High-End PCs.
Starting with Xbox Vice President Phil Harrison, we get to think about were the eight years of the Xbox 360 enough and if the life of the console was more than enough. While both Ubisoft and EA stated their own opinions, that we should’ve noticed a new console a few years ago, Harrison stands his ground by saying that eight years were the right time. Speaking for the MCV, Harrison says that the Xbox 360 continues to grow and that the design innovations that made the Xbox One what it is, weren’t reaching the performance level Microsoft wanted, or the price range they were seeking, until now. He stated that if the console was released three years ago, it would probably be twice as expensive and wouldn’t have the same performance as it did.
Still, EA executive, while talking about how they want to be the best company in America to MCV, expressed opinions about the life cycles of the new next-gen consoles. They said that, as the technology is developing faster and faster with each day, the developers within Microsoft and Sony should be preparing a new device for the growing gaming market no later than 2018-2019. In EA it is believe that the appetite for new technology and the boundaries that the PS4 and the Xbox One put will just shorten the life of the consoles to no more than 5-6 years. Will that be the case? We will have to wait and see; however, since the release of the announcements about the new consoles, questions about the yet next generation of consoles begun to spread throughout the web, making gamers explore their imagination and think about what they might expect in just a few years of time.
While EA and Microsoft are ‘fighting’ over the life-cycles of the consoles and what is right or not, nVidia tries to put the High-End PCs on the console ruled fighting ground in the gaming world. As we all know, PCs have far more power than the current consoles on the market, and while a few years back for the price of the console you were getting hardware, which would cost you way more if you were trying to build a PC with the same statistics, today that is not the case. For the price of a new Xbox One or PlayStation 4 you are able to build a PC with the same specs. And for a few hundred more you will get a limitless high-end machine, far more powerful than any of the next-gen consoles on the market.
And while years ago, PC gaming was not so well structured and gaming developers were having trouble fitting a game for all the possible specs a PC build may have had, today that is not the case. As we saw, back in E3, and as they shared recently to MCV, nVidia is trying to make PC gaming as simple as possible and exploit in a nice manner all the extra functionality a computer brings. Matt Wright, sales manager at nVidia added that Steam has more user than xBox Live and that unplayable on the consoles in their whole fashion titles, such as Minecraft or World of Tanks bring a whole new aspect in the argument. PCs functionality doesn’t stop there, as you are able to render High-Def videos and even more. Moreover, if you compare the performance of a game, such as Battlefield 4 for the new next-gen consoles with one for the high-end PCs, you will see that the game plays far better on the personal computer than it does on the console.
Here comes the question about money and life-span, though. While a console is around 600$, a nicely built high-end PC costs somewhere around 1500$. Moreover the lifespan of a PC, if you want to have the newest game available at your disposal at their highest of settings, is short. A PC, in this case, will last and satisfy you for no more than 2-3 years, while a console, which is cheaper would last you for longer, yet about 5-6 years, as EA think the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 would last; however, it is still unknown.
How will the gaming world change in the upcoming years, we will have to wait and see. Who knows, maybe if you buy a high-end PC now, it may last you longer than a console. Technologies might be developing fast, but they have reached a point where the word ‘innovation’ doesn’t really have the same meaning as it did before, and where a few more gigs of RAM don’t really matter as they did. Will the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 survive more that 5-6 years? This is a question, yet unanswered. What do you think? Do you stand behing the Xbox One, the PS 4 or the high-end PCs? How you think will the gaming world change in the upcoming years? Let us know in the comments below!