4 ms·

Why are gaming consoles still a thing with consumers? Why wouldn't they just buy a Chromecast and project phone/tablet games onto TV?

scrame 10y ago
Most phone/tablet games are crap. Nintendo is a games company first, and most of their titles are exclusive to their consoles.
- intrasight 10y ago
  >titles are exclusive to their consoles. well that answers my question then.
veidr 10y ago
I'm not much of a gamer, but I am a consumer who buys these consoles (and will be buying the Switch). Here are my main reasons: - consoles have games that are, for many people, much more attractive at the top-end (big-name big-budget games Mario Bros|Kart|Whatever, Splatoon, Grand Theft Auto, Destiny, Halo, etc etc... games I or my kids have heard of and are the canonical game version and not watered-down phone spinoffs) - consoles have real controllers, that all the first-tier games are designed for (compare Mario Bros. for the latest Nintendo console (many hours of fun for multiple members family vs 10 minute novelty game consisting of pressing one button) - there aren't many games for phones that actually work well for multiple simultaneous players on the big tv - 99.9% of phone games are pure garbage, while on consoles it's probably only 75% or so
seabrookmx 10y ago
Not sure if trolling.. or if you're just ignorant to such a massive industry. Playstation 4, which is the best selling console of this generation, has shipped 57million units, and Sony also makes publishing profits off many of the popular games exclusive to their system. They also have a paid online service. We're talking billions of dollars for Sony alone. As for why dedicated gaming machines still capture so much of the market as opposed to the "casual/mobile" gaming market: -Latency would be too high via a Chromecast causing input lag in fast paced games such as shooters (though lower latency, gaming specific streaming services do exist from Sony, Steam, and NVidia) -Graphical fidelity wouldn't be comparable. Consoles already are the butt end of many "serious gamer" jokes because they don't have the computational horsepower to provide equivalent outputs to high end PCs (Google the "gaming PC masterrace" memes) -Touchscreens only serve as good inputs for some types of games (strategy and puzzle games come to mind). Racing games, fighting games, RPG's and platformers are usually tailored to controllers. As I mentioned before, consoles are even mainstream considered to the gaming PC market, which has a ton of dedicated hardware and revenue still despite the desktop as a whole being on the decline (atleast with your average consumer).
- intrasight 10y ago
  I shouldn't have generalized to "consoles" - really was more interested in why a consumer would choose the Switch (which looks more like a tablet) vs playing games on a general-purpose tablet (with option of Chromecast to play on TV) Also, you can get bluetooth game controllers for Android. Switch uses Nvidia Tegra X1 which is a regular tablet CPU/GPU so the switch doesn't have something special under the hood.
  - radnor 10y ago
    People buy Nintendo sytems to play Nintendo games. You're not going to play the latest Zelda or Mario game on a random Android tablet.
lmm 10y ago
"Couch multiplayer" is still fun and still relatively poorly supported on PC-like platforms. The "just turn it on and play" usability is important too, especially for a device that you only use occasionally. I used to keep a couple of controllers for my PC and suggest multiplayer to people, but it felt like every time I did it something new had broken or needed updating.

scrame 10y ago

Most phone/tablet games are crap. Nintendo is a games company first, and most of their titles are exclusive to their consoles.

intrasight 10y ago
>titles are exclusive to their consoles. well that answers my question then.

veidr 10y ago

I'm not much of a gamer, but I am a consumer who buys these consoles (and will be buying the Switch). Here are my main reasons: - consoles have games that are, for many people, much more attractive at the top-end (big-name big-budget games Mario Bros|Kart|Whatever, Splatoon, Grand Theft Auto, Destiny, Halo, etc etc... games I or my kids have heard of and are the canonical game version and not watered-down phone spinoffs) - consoles have real controllers, that all the first-tier games are designed for (compare Mario Bros. for the latest Nintendo console (many hours of fun for multiple members family vs 10 minute novelty game consisting of pressing one button) - there aren't many games for phones that actually work well for multiple simultaneous players on the big tv - 99.9% of phone games are pure garbage, while on consoles it's probably only 75% or so

seabrookmx 10y ago

Not sure if trolling.. or if you're just ignorant to such a massive industry. Playstation 4, which is the best selling console of this generation, has shipped 57million units, and Sony also makes publishing profits off many of the popular games exclusive to their system. They also have a paid online service. We're talking billions of dollars for Sony alone. As for why dedicated gaming machines still capture so much of the market as opposed to the "casual/mobile" gaming market: -Latency would be too high via a Chromecast causing input lag in fast paced games such as shooters (though lower latency, gaming specific streaming services do exist from Sony, Steam, and NVidia) -Graphical fidelity wouldn't be comparable. Consoles already are the butt end of many "serious gamer" jokes because they don't have the computational horsepower to provide equivalent outputs to high end PCs (Google the "gaming PC masterrace" memes) -Touchscreens only serve as good inputs for some types of games (strategy and puzzle games come to mind). Racing games, fighting games, RPG's and platformers are usually tailored to controllers. As I mentioned before, consoles are even mainstream considered to the gaming PC market, which has a ton of dedicated hardware and revenue still despite the desktop as a whole being on the decline (atleast with your average consumer).

intrasight 10y ago
I shouldn't have generalized to "consoles" - really was more interested in why a consumer would choose the Switch (which looks more like a tablet) vs playing games on a general-purpose tablet (with option of Chromecast to play on TV) Also, you can get bluetooth game controllers for Android. Switch uses Nvidia Tegra X1 which is a regular tablet CPU/GPU so the switch doesn't have something special under the hood.
- radnor 10y ago
  People buy Nintendo sytems to play Nintendo games. You're not going to play the latest Zelda or Mario game on a random Android tablet.

lmm 10y ago

"Couch multiplayer" is still fun and still relatively poorly supported on PC-like platforms. The "just turn it on and play" usability is important too, especially for a device that you only use occasionally. I used to keep a couple of controllers for my PC and suggest multiplayer to people, but it felt like every time I did it something new had broken or needed updating.