Gee, who packed all this fudge into the poast? lol

I don't think it will come as soon as they hope, but Id bet it will become more common over the next 10 yrs. I mean, there is already a Steamlink app on some TVs, and Steam Inhome streaming works pretty well for many games (at about 30Mbit/s when the stats are correct), thats not too far off from many internet connections (latency ignored for a moment).

Personally I don't mind it as long as there is still the option to actually buy stuff (pretty much like it is now with Prime/Netflix etc. vs Blurays). In the end it might depend on the games too - why pay 60 for Call of Duty 35 when it will be outdated in a year anyway?

Would I use it? Most likely not, but I need a fast computer anyway, thats not the majority of users though... it will catch on once its running decent enough I guess.

Can't see how streaming is going to be practical for mass market any time soon at all. PCIe 3.0 is going to be deprecated in the next year or so, and that's nearly 16GB/s, HDMI can do 4k@60hz with ~14GB/s which is a fair bit higher than the average internet connection. Yeah, that's a bit of an unfair/ specious comparison- you can 4k stream from netflix without a massively fast connection after all- but it does illustrate the disparity between direct physical connections and an internet one.

Unsurprising that MS would be the console maker making noise about it though, they'd love to leverage windows and the xbox1 is the worst selling current gen console. For ubisoft and the other publishers though a future where they sell direct and cut out licensing and vendor fees is the ideal one, whether that be with or without consoles. That's why Origin and Uplay etc aren't going anywhere.

In the end there's very little logical reason for having 'consoles' (exc Nintendo, which tends to be more dissimilar to PCs) as such, except them making MSony money, so if they stop doing that then there won't be consoles. In theory you could make a generic console box quite easily since at its heart both PS and xbox are a PC with AMD bulldozer based CPU & GCN based graphic as a soldered APU/ custom board.

I'd like to request an alternate source, I question Variety's validity.

Ah, here we are. Much better.

As my opinion goes, Ubisoft is shooting for the clouds and is likely to crash land.

I'm fairly convinced the only reason that didn't work is because Sony made clear they weren't going to do that. If both had gone that way it would've just gone through.

And even still digital sales have become more and more important to consoles. They're clearly going that way as well. On top of that XBOX is already offering crossplay to Windows for their games and a ton of stuff that used to be console excluve is now releasing on PC as well.

It's also quite a difference to have a botnetwork use a free account with free keys or have a botnetwork all with their own payment options to buy the game

Yeah, prebuilts are often not good value, especially anything custom from high tier brand names like Alienware. Pretty much have to go mITX and build yourself to get reasonable price/ performance.

Ironically the closest thing to a console level cpu/ gpu combo for sale at the moment is probably the KabylakeG Intel/ Vega offering. But if AMD could do a Ryzen based 'APU' similar to the chip in the xbox1x- a Ryzen 1500X/ RX580 tier combo- it would potentially be revolutionary and make console type builds mainstream.

I don't know what you can say, but I can say that he might even be right.

Looking into the future is a bit of an uncertain business, so take everything with a grain of salt, but technology surely will continue to develop. Cloud based computing is a big hype currently. It offers many advantages to the developer, not at least total control about the product among them.

As a customer it may not be the vision you are looking forward too. But then most customers probably don't give a damn at all. They might even be happy about it.

My personal prediction is that it will take a bit longer than he anticipates.

I really wish people would stop saying dumb things like that, i mean the mid 90's was the golden age of PC gaming!!! (obviously opinion). I also remember people shitting on PC gaming cos allegedly consoles were going to take over. Recently, I've also had people tell me that mobile gaming was going to replace PC gaming. Hasen't happened yet...............

I remember in the early 2000's, my dad told me that desktop PCs we're going to be obsolete because laptops were getting just as powerful, cheaper and in a more compact package. Sure, laptops got more powerful but when laptops caught up to PCs, PCs got more powerful too and today, they are still the top choice for gaming and heavy duty work.

Even before that, people were saying PCs were going to replace mainframes for the same reasons and oh look, mainframes are still in use today.

So 2 years ago when I was listening to a university teacher telling the class how mobile phones were going to replace laptops, I just wanted to blurt out people have been saying similar crap for years and to this day have been wrong. But for obvious reasons, I said nothing.

It would be nice if people dug a little deeper into the subject so they would stop saying to same stupid crap that's already proven to be wrong.

To talk about future, ubisoft should sort their stuff and start making good games again. Like really - right now they just doing sequels of prequels of old franchises, which tend to be less about gameplay and more about graphics with each new part.

But, to be realistic - sadly, they could be right. Just not about consoles, but gaming overall (especially pc).
Since rich companies tend to count "lost income", based on people who pirated their games (then played for a bit, uninstalled and wrote negative review on metacritic), and the only way to stop piracy is to dont give people game files - thats logical move.
It has its drawbacks - primary, confortable connection speed. Sure, they can make games with ping in mind. But, when it comes to something like that - its also about huge amount of traffic on high speed. Which isnt available for the most of countries - for example, the place, Im currently working in, can provide only unstable 4mbps adsl. But, since most of such countries arent rich - pretty sure, they just dont consider them.

Another workaround to that is getting those NUC motherboards with that Vega gpu. That one gaming NUC had it. It was an ultra thin Vega gpu paired with a Kabylake, I think. Pretty wild but it cost twice as much as a console. It was a Devil's Canyon NUC or something.

Anyway, making those utlra thin GPUs available for the DIY people would be sweet. It could also change up the game enough. A low profile 1050 ti could kick a console's ass, though.

I recently found out how deluded the upper ranks of these places are, after a conversation with an EA director.

Who vehemently believes under certain circumstances using physical media on one Xbox can boot someone off a second xbox with a different physical disc.

A company that tells you that 30 FPS is a more cinematic experience is going to dictate the future of console gaming... Right.... They can certainly keep on dreaming. And if it happens in some bizarro dimension, I'm a PC gamer so I don't really care. Those are here to stay even though many people may tell you otherwise.

Have you tried games like Ode, Grow Home / Grow Up, Child of Light and Atomega?

Hades Canyon == kabylakeG, it's just different namings. 4c8t kabylake cpu and (up to) 24 Vega cores with 4GB HBM2. Certainly not a cheap option though. Pretty sure there's at least one model with fewer Vega cores which is cheaper, as it's the first commercial use of 2GB HBM2 stacks.

(Devil's Canyon was Intel's Haswell refresh, 4790k etc.)