Console Lovers Lash Back!

Evidently my Adrenaline Vault interview ignited some strong feelings among those with a love for console gaming and a hate for me and an Ion Storm marketing campaign 10 years past. Get over it already, people - move on. I certainly have.

The hate manifested itself in lame headlines like "John Romero says some more dumb crap. Hardly news, I know." and "John Romero: PC gaming is about to make console its bitch." on Digg.com. I'm surprised that so many of these duplicate stories were Dugg and people continue to regurgitate their interpretation of my Avault interview. If these guys hate me so much why would they even waste time writing about me - thanks for putting me in public eye again, guys! I LOVE IT! Rip on me or not, you're putting my name back out there again and you're so nice to do such a favor for an old man.

But seriously, I'm not the only one that's predicting the end of the console. ATI definitely knew the writing was on the wall regarding video adapters when they sold to AMD. Why? Because the multi-core systems of the future will utilize the on-board-cores to handle video; no need for a separate adapter. It's already happened to audio in a limited fashion with on-board audio chips (great quality vs. onboard video) and will continue to transform when multi-core hits. Instead of buying the Creative X-Fi Gamer audio adapter you'll probably be buying the software instead or else it'll become a built-in driver courtesy of Microsoft's latest OS. What does this mean for console? It means PCs that are cheaper because they're based on a solid foundation of several inexpensive CPU cores and the hardware will begin to rely on software to control them for many different functions which include audio and video. When hardware design reaches this stage the expensive custom chip development of consoles becomes a risky ROI.

Who else is predicting the end of console? Well, here's an article just 5 days old I just became aware of while reading Digg links to my interview. Now, I agree with the prediction for the Playstation and XBOX console timelines (maybe one more generation) but not Nintendo. Why? Because if you want to play Mario, Zelda, Starfox, Wario, Donkey Kong, etc. you'll only be able to do it on a Nintendo system be it handheld or console.

Nintendo's power is in their IP and they own a universe of their making in which most of us are gladly a resident. In terms of handheld systems, no one has been able to achieve their success in almost 20 years. So I'll leave Nintendo out of the doom & gloom of console because they separate themselves from the technology path that Microsoft's gaming division and Sony have been following.

Nintendo knows that game design is more important than the hardware you run it on and that you need just enough visual flash to interest the buyer but don't focus on the flash - focus on the fun.