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I have a weird perspective: I think gaming is one of the last mainstream uses of desktop PC’s, a quirk of the marketplace. I know PCs are versatile and have the max potential, but hear me out. I imagine most people use PCs only for gaming, or at the office, and we will evolve past them in our lifetimes. Game consoles were the mainstream way to play in the not so distant past, smartphones (and tablets) were so much on the rise that news and magazine journalists were saying we had entered the “Post-PC” age. However, Microsoft’s efforts to save their most successful platform and keep it in consumer’s homes (not just their offices), combined with the rise of Steam, have IMO created an inflated sense of “necessity” for the PC Platform. I work freelance, and most of the time I can do all my work remotely, from my phone or tablet, and productivity on the tablet is way better than it ever was before, with Apple’s iWork suite, Google Docs and related apps, and finally Microsoft joined the mobile space. I can even film and edit videos right on my mobile devices! I DO have a PC I built myself, thinking I was missing out on PC exclusives and the performance and price value of a custom PC (plus, you know, I thought the build would be fun). The build WAS fun, but years on I haven’t spent more on upgrades because I hardly ever turn it on. Living without using a PC is totally doable. I’d rather work on my tablet on the couch, porch, or coffee shop and the tablet or smartphone is more travel friendly than any laptop, between split screen on the tablet and my phone I have three workspaces that copy/paste between each other seamlessly and sync over the cloud, and I save money on my electric bill. Windows actively frustrates me, prompting updates and antivirus scans before I even get to my work or play, and by default it forces me to update when I shut down or restart, adding a productivity delay and a stress about security and stability. Gaming on consoles is literally plug and play, and I love it. When I want to unwind, have fun, and socialize with friends, game consoles let me get right to that. I know that a console investment will have well-optimized games come out all year for many years. I even got VR on a console I bought 4 years ago, with lots of games still coming! It’s also where I watch movies, streamed and physical copies, and it’s replaced my cable TV. I do think consoles and PCs aren’t the future. Not exactly, though the experience will be console-like. Consoles will become thin-clients, basic computers with good connections to peripherals and the internet but little processing power, farming out the processing and much of the storage to cloud services (like Shadow, PlayStation Now, etc). Shadow is already quite interesting, at the cost of building the latest and greatest computer every 3 years (spread out in monthly payments), you get a top-spec Windows Virtual machine that will run through any old cheap computer, or come with you on a phone or tablet. I probably wouldn’t even subscribe continuously, only when I needed to do a firmware update of some device that requires Windows to host it or if there’s some project that just won’t be productive on Mobile. If consoles and mobile devices haven’t killed the traditional PC, I think cloud computing and cloud services will.
rbarrett96
0
Jan 30, 2019
EvshrugYou're missing a couple of key points here. One I couldn't disagree more on tablets and mobile devices replacing PCs for one reason. It takes far too long to do simple tasks when you're not using a keyboard and mouse. Sure you could plug in a keyboard but that defeats the purpose of why you have a tablet in the first place, you might as well get a laptop. The idea is to be able to use it anywhere in situations where you can't use a PC but for work efficiency it's not even close. The other point is until we crack down on ISPs with these bullshit data caps, cloud based gaming can't become mainstream. 1 TB/mo is an absolute joke for cloud gaming. And if you're playing in 4K, God help you. Honestly, it's probably going to take government regulating ISPs like every other utility for that to change. ISPs aren't charging caps just trying to nickel and dime you, they're managing bandwidth so they don't have to upgrade infrastructure that should have been done years ago. Something that will be absolutely essential for media consumption to fully switch to a stream based system. We're still a ways away despite companies pushing for it.
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