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[freezamite]

So we are a few phone generations from consoles made in 2005?


Woo wooo!

I'm sure that you know that those consoles had totally the biggest chips a console ever had until then and maybe until-forever, and that they pushed the envelope over the limit (this is why there was massive reliability problems).

A tablet in 2008 with 2001 console power was much easier to achieve than tablets on 2014 at 2005 console levels.
They will need at least 2-3 more years of development to reach PS3-60 levels on tablets, and a full extra year at least to achieve it on phones.

 

[Wickerbasket]

I'm sure that you know that those consoles had totally the biggest chips a console ever had until then and maybe until-forever, and that they pushed the envelope over the limit (this is why there was massive reliability problems).

A tablet in 2008 with 2001 console power was much easier to achieve than tablets on 2014 at 2005 console levels.
They will need at least 2-3 more years of development to reach PS3-60 levels on tablets, and a full extra year at least to achieve it on phones.

I remember being excited to be able to play N64 quality portable games.

People seriously don't understand how amazing it is that they have so much computing power in their hands nowadays.

 

[kittens]

It doesn't matter if the games aren't good. Mobile games don't have a very good track record.

 

[lemonade]

well ea never said the battery wouldn't take a hit. of course you'll still have to plug your tablet in while you play. this isn't very surprising news. few months back ea demoed bf3 working on a tablet.

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/17...ablet-mobile-GPU-Kepler-running-Battlefield-3

 

[Snakeyes]

Why are so many posters quick to dismiss the fact that phones will overtake last-gen consoles in the upcoming year or two? It's bound to happen, and I wouldn't be surprised to see mobile devices pushing north of one teraflop in five years.

 

[baphomet]

Just proves this gen has gone on for 3 years too long.

 

[redmetal86]

In the year 2000!.............

I wonder what the battery life will be like on these tablets.

 

[charsace]

Tablet gaming will crash if they chase the PS3/360 level of production. You can't sell those games for $10 and making F2P at that level is way too risky for most tablet game publishers. I can see bigger game companies pushing out smaller companies that don't have the money and facilities to do those level of games and survive if they aren't a hit.

 

[Nilaul]

At the screen size of the phone, and new shaders; games will probably look better then Xbox 360 games.. but no one will pump so much money into a mobile game xD

 

[1st Course]

I'm sure that you know that those consoles had totally the biggest chips a console ever had until then and maybe until-forever, and that they pushed the envelope over the limit (this is why there was massive reliability problems).

A tablet in 2008 with 2001 console power was much easier to achieve than tablets on 2014 at 2005 console levels.
They will need at least 2-3 more years of development to reach PS3-60 levels on tablets, and a full extra year at least to achieve it on phones.

Yeah we are talking about 2-10W devices being compared to 150w boxes here, really impressive stuff actually when you think about it.

 

[Hoodbury]

Is hard drive space going to be an issue for this? What are phones and tablets these days packing, like 32 gigs?

 

[big_z]

Developers have been saying this for the past 3 years.

In terms of graphical effects mobile is starting to get close to current gen but for horse power it's still a long ways off.

 

[Spongebob]

Even when mobile devices reach PS360 level power there won't be any developers willing to make games with the budgets necessary to reach PS360 level visuals.

 

[Raistlin]

The bigger news here is the implications for Apple TV IMO

 

[Shiggy]

Those who say "bad controls" - stop whining. Go and try games like those in the Humble Indie Bundles or Broken Sword. Work surprisingly well and if it wasn't for the stellar Nintendo 1st party games, I would see no need for a separate handheld device.

Do I care whether there are 360 graphics? Not really, 2D games seem to work better with touch controls and they depend more on art style than on technical abilities of the platform.

 

[Maddux4163]

I remember being excited to be able to play N64 quality portable games.

People seriously don't understand how amazing it is that they have so much computing power in their hands nowadays.

I completely agree. I was amped up for the GBA thinking it could be a "super" SNES with 32bit graphics and what not. Then the DS/PSP came and we saw N64/PS1 quality. I was blown away by it.

Now on my cell phone I can easily push PS2 quality. It's amazing to me. I remember when my cell phone was finally capable of color graphics and a WAP web browser using GPRS. We're coming a long way in a very short time. Very short time.

 

[Quicksilver4648]

I will not play a single mobile game whose gameplay is more complex than Angry Birds until I can get some damn physical buttons! Touch screen d-pads and joysticks are garbage. Who cares if the game looks great if the game is unplayable due to terrible controls.

 

[wsippel]

Things get smaller and better. I fully expect tablets to reach the power levels of X360/PS3. Maybe not next gen tablets, but it will happen.

Eventually, sure. Not any time soon, though. Feature wise, they're up there - or will be very soon. Performance wise? Not by a long shot. Even Wii U runs circles around any tablet or smartphone, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future - which isn't all that surprising, considering it consumes, dunno, ~100 times as much power? And has to dissipate a lot more heat, obviously.

 

[goodfella]

So many people seem to get unduly defensive about the advancement of mobile technology. Like it's suddenly a bad thing that graphics are improving.

 

[ComputerMKII]

So... sub-720p and 30 fps?

 

[PlanetSmasher]

So many people seem to get unduly defensive about the advancement of mobile technology. Like it's suddenly a bad thing that graphics are improving.

It's a pointless thing unless the control method improves too. Touchscreen-only devices are simply not suitable for most kinds of games.

 

[StevieP]

Probably beaten to death in this thread already, but:
EA: Beating the laws of physics.

The next tablets and phones will be great, but maxing out at around 15 gigaflops per watt... no. It's not going to happen on the batteries we're running today.

 

[Darryl]

It's a pointless thing unless the control method improves too. Touchscreen-only devices are simply not suitable for most kinds of games.

but mobile phones are starting to get official controller support

 

[SuperSah]

Oh, boy.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

but mobile phones are starting to get official controller support

I am not going to plug a controller into my iPhone and put it down on a table so I can squint at its tiny screen. That's asinine.

Also, until controllers are standardized, they will never be supported by all games and the core game design on the platform will still be focused around touchscreens, thus not solving the problem, only offering a salve for it.

 

[SneakyStephan]

Oh did they suddenly manage to quadruple LPDDR ram bandwidth?
No?
Nevermind.

First post is great btw

 

[KKRT00]

So why is it that laptops still have such awful GPUs?

I had hoped this tablet technology would have transferred favourably for ultrabook laptops.

Have You seen Haswell? Every Haswell CPU with HD4600 or higher outperform current gen consoles.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StHexTCleLw

And EA saying the truth. Nvidia already showed Logan in action running Battlefield 3 on console settings, Haswell chips are aggressively reaching tablets and soon AMD will show their Jaguar based APU solutions for mobile.

What is great about those that all of them are DX11 based chips, so they will scale even next-gen assets down. Thats smart strategy from EA.

 

[VariantX]

but mobile phones are starting to get official controller support

So, a separate clunky add-on like the 3ds circle pad pro attachment? I find it pretty hard to believe that people who want to game on the go, want to carry around a controller or an attachment at all times as well.

 

[Lulubop]

Nvidia said this a few months ago, but they were salty.

 

[StevieP]

Have You seen Haswell? Every Haswell CPU with HD4600 or higher outperform current gen consoles.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StHexTCleLw

And EA saying the truth. Nvidia already showed Logan in action running Battlefield 3 on console settings, Haswell chips are aggressively reaching tablets and soon AMD will show their Jaguar based APU solutions for mobile.

What is great about those that all of them are DX11 based chips, so they will scale even next-gen assets down.

You're overstating... well everything there.

Tablets will never have a TDP of 80 watts or 100 watts, and phones won't even come close to approaching tablets.

 

[rrs]

Can it also come with some good gameplay and control ideas as well?

 

[Vic20]

They still need to find the budget for those games. Cell phone users won't pay $30.00 a game.

 

[KKRT00]

You're overstating... well everything there.

Tablets will never have a TDP of 80 watts or 100 watts, and phones won't even come close to approaching tablets.

What 80 watts? Basic Haswell chips with 4600 has 17W or 15W TDP.
You dont need 4 cores and 8 thread clocked at 3.3ghz for 720p 30fps current gen games, its overkill. 2.2ghz 2C/4T is enough for every current gen game.
i7-4650U - http://ark.intel.com/products/75114/

 

[Gannd]

call me when the games don't control like shit. I got Final Fantasy III for the iPhone, plays like shit.

 

[Darryl]

I am not going to plug a controller into my iPhone and put it down on a table so I can squint at its tiny screen. That's asinine.

Also, until controllers are standardized, they will never be supported by all games and the core game design on the platform will still be focused around touchscreens, thus not solving the problem, only offering a salve for it.

i don't think you realize how frequently Unity is being used by developers and how easy it is becoming to port games onto iOS and Android. with apples new control scheme, an extension will inevitably pop up to convert any game using more traditional controls into one that uses the touch screen as a fake joystick and asks you to use a third-party extension to use the full game. it's easy. it's free money. there's no reason people won't do this anymore and it is going to happen.

 

[CaptainTiptop]

They'll be exactly like PS360 games, except they'll control like absolute arse.

 

[StevieP]

What 80 watts? Basic Haswell chips with 4600 has 17W TDP.
You dont need 4 cores and 8 thread clocked at 3.3ghz for 720p 30fps current gen games, its overkill. 2.2ghz 2C/4T is enough for every current gen game.
http://ark.intel.com/products/75114/

No. The 2 core i3 version of Haswell with a 4600 is either 35 watts or 55 watts max TDP depending on which video card and clock speed i3 you have (i.e. 3.0, 3.3, 2.9, etc).

Playing a 720p game on a tablet with an extremely high resolution will also look uglier than current gen does on a 1080p TV, even if you managed to build a 40 watt tablet. Which would be rather bulky and hot.

Edit: ahh I see you posted a 1.7ghz version with an LPDDR controller. Yeah, a 2 core 1.7ghz CPU with LPDDR3 and an HD5000 clocked at its lowest isn't going to give you a Battlefield game with very high framerates. The laws of physics always debunk stuff like this. Wattage matters.

 

[Katori]

This thread just shows how out-of-touch GAF can be.

Mobile gaming is here to stay and no, not all mobile games control bad. Take a look at stuff like Bastion or "Cook, Serve, Delicious!" to see it done right. It's a new control interface that must be adapted to appropriately.

Ridiculous that EA still has ZERO support for the Wii U coming up, though.

 

[emag]

I am not going to plug a controller into my iPhone and put it down on a table so I can squint at its tiny screen. That's asinine.

Also, until controllers are standardized, they will never be supported by all games and the core game design on the platform will still be focused around touchscreens, thus not solving the problem, only offering a salve for it.

Standardized controllers for iOS devices [iPod/iPhone/iPad/AppleTV] (from Apple's 2013 Worldwide Developer Conference):

 

[Ragnarok]

this could have awesome implication for some types of games.


KOTOR was perfectly playable on the ipad since it didn't attempt to have a virtual stick. If RPGs were made with those control limitations in mind, it would be awesome to play them on the go or in bed!

 

[Donnie]

I'm sure by 2016 we'll probably see a phone with shader processing capabilities approaching the performance of XBox 360, if not the overall performance of the system as a whole. But I'd hardly call that next gen phones, more like next-next-next gen.

 

[M3d10n]

PowerVR 6 scales from 100 GFLOPS ~ 1 TFLOP architecturally, though I imagine the first line of chips will come in much, much closer to the bottom of that range.

That said, at 250 GFLOPS you are talking 360 power, so even if you're poly starved in comparison for wattage reasons, you can do a lot of raw calculation.

The actual bandwidth, however, is a completely different story and prevents many of the staple rendering techniques used in current gen consoles from being used, like cascading shadowmaps and deferred rendering. Only recently we got Intel integrated GPUs which can actually do both effects at non-slideshow framerates.

 

[SmokyDave]

I fucking love the relentless march of technology. With the Vita flopping, phones and tablets are my only hope for high-end portable gaming.

Our teams are having a lot of fun with that, reimagining an experience on a tablet using the same graphics and assets in some ways, but completely remixing the meal

That's the stuff I want to hear. Get these games out so I can buy them.

 

[Captainsweatpants]

So EA invests time and money to port their engines to phones but not to the Wii U?

Fuck you EA.

 

[SmokyDave]

So EA invests time and money to port their engines to phones but not to the Wii U?

Fuck you EA.

It's almost as if they're looking to make money or something.

 

[Bgamer90]

It's almost as if they're looking to make money or something.

I know; crazy.

 

[Toxa]

tablets and phone are not suited for gaming

 

[The Albatross]

I'm shocked every time I play real racing. The game looks incredible

 

[RetroStu]

So 8 years later and tablets still won't match the 360PS3?, and some people think tablets are going to take over gaming lol.

 

[The Albatross]

So EA invests time and money to port their engines to phones but not to the Wii U?

Fuck you EA.

Look at the install base of iOS and aNdroid. Now look at the install base if the wii u. What doesn't make sense about this?