Cheaper consoles take aim at gaming giants

Cheaper consoles take aim at gaming giants


Video here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23044701

Sony and Microsoft recently went head-to-head with their new consoles at the gaming expo, E3.

But smaller and cheaper gaming machines are also being released. These devices are hoping to take on the likes of Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo and entice the new breed of gamers who started playing titles on their smart devices.

Click's Richard Taylor reports.

Dream on Swanny....cheap consoles are never going to be a threat to either Sony or Microsoft.

Only Apple and Steam box pose any threat or a return from Sega.

Only person that is likely to buy something cheap is you as your always waiting for a price drop of most games you buy.....just hope they charge £50 for Battlefield 4.

Then lets see you wait for a price drop

Edited by time2die (Thu 27-Jun-13 18:30:33)

I was playing Battlefield 3 last night and there's just so much detail that it makes it really hard to see anybody if you're not ultra familiar with the map, which I'm not as I haven't played in a long while. The prospect of even greater levels of detail in this kind of game don't appeal to me. I have hardly even played the maps available to me (having the full map extension pack now) and there's hardly anybody playing so I'm not like to get my money's worth. EA want a minimum of £45 for the PC version from Origin and preferably £55 for all the digital deluxe suckers.

Nothing wrong with cheap games, Timey. Fair price for a decent game is all I ask. That takes into account development costs so the game creators are rewarded for their efforts, which they are in the main, I imagine. The beauty of cheaper games is less risk for more originality and an appeal to a wider audience. However, I'm not sure playing low resolution mobile market games on a 50" plasma telly is really where the demand's at, though nVidia's Shield looked quite cool (in comparison to the Ouya, which looked pants). The two things nVidia have going for them is 1) the controller as touchscreen isn't really optimal for most types of game and 2) the notion of streaming to the device itself (from a more powerful nVidia server farm thing over the net). Streaming games to dumb devices (without massive processing grunt) may well be the future of gaming one day, as they say.

Personally, at $350 I'd rather just buy a suitable controller for my android devices - I've got both available GTA games on them (3 and VC) but it's a devil to control them so I don't bother despite both games looking superb taking their age into account. 350 dollars is way too much. Just give me some buttons and a controller and let me attach my phone/tablet thank you very much.

The Ouya system is of no interest to me at all. I hate most of the game types demoed on it and don't see myself playing many mobile developed games for any extended session over 10 minutes - half an hour really. It's just a complete waste hooking one of these things up to a decent telly. Criminal.

The Valve Piston thing looks really cool and I get where Steam are going with it but again, they may be a bit dated in performance stakes unless they're gonna feature game streaming tech of some sort perhaps? Lovely engineering but they're going to be pretty limited as hardcore gaming devices once the new generation of consoles gets going and pushes the new graphical potential forward to where it should have been 4 years or more ago. Many PC owners are gonna need to upgrade now in order to keep up.

Timey I didn't say any of that I copied it from the bbc website as I thought it might be of interest.

I don't mind paying full price for a game that I'm going to play for hundreds of hours, (I paid full price for BF3 because I enjoyed BFBC2 so much. I also bought the premium pack as soon as that came out) but why pay full price for something that's only going to entertain me for 20 hours if I'm lucky?? Better to wait a few weeks and get it for a better price. I'm waiting for the last of us to drop in price which it will do very soon, no rush as I'm not playing games at the mo

I agree Spooky the level of detail on BF3 is good enough as it is, after all it's only a game

I know matey i just worded it wrong and took a swipe at you as we like a little bit of banter.

The irony is that everybody is moaning about the price of games yet back in the days of the snes and Nintendo 64 and to a degree the sega saturn people where paying double.

Do you remember the cost of Turok dinosaur hunter on release for the N64.it cost £59.99,i actually paid £80 for a Snes copy of Super Metroid .

So here we are 15 years later and game prices have dropped considerably yet we still having a moan about it, what was the playstation 3 cost on release £499 originally wasn't it,now we have something 10x the power £150 cheaper like one of the posters said.

Yeah, BF3 on the PC is hard with so much foliage around. I can't see a feckin thing but I'm sure being more used to the game would help. More leafs and stuff is NOT what I want to see though, to be fair, more destructible environments as they've shown would be nice!

I agree with you there mate. There's a decent article about the old consoles called:

Xbox One and PS4 Prices - How they compare to the classics

which is quite timely and easy to read (it's short!)

I remember buying the SNES and that console was fairly cheap to buy but the games were like £40 a pop and that was in 1992. My brother and I bought it from (of all places), Boots! I think they had a deal on or something and there were only 2 launch titles or something, one of them was F-zero and the other must've been superstar tennis or whatever it was called.

The reason we got it was solely down to a near perfect conversion of the classic arcade game Street Fighter 2, which we both loved. Actually, that game alone cost us an arm and a leg as we got it on import from the US and had to buy an adapter for the cartridge so it would work on our european pal SNES. Must've cost us quite a bit more than £60 or so just for that one game. We traded in our Megadrive and a ton of games for just a couple of games and a SNES.

Ah. Happy days! Of course my brother, being 3 years younger than me, got the better end of the deal as I'd just discovered the delights of pubs and left my gaming days behind for a long while till I got the original playstation but not until 1998. Not had a console since, just a PC since around 2002/3 some time after Max Payne came out.

So, yeah. I think myself lucky I'm not paying those kinds of prices anymore (£40 back in 1992 which must work out considerably more in today's value). And, as you say, we have far better graphics and better games overall really. But still, it's nice to have a moan innit? One of the joys of getting old.

I agree with you T2D, I remember buying many games on the N64 for £49.99 and £59.99. I think I paid £79.99 for Star Fox with the Rumble Pack and £79.99 for Perfect Dark with the expansion pack (the little red box you put in your N64 to give it that extra 8 bit of power or something ridiculous).

To be honest I don't care about games being £39.99 and I buy many games on release, 20 hours of entertainment for £2 an hour is a bargain in my eyes. A lot of games I get more than that out of too as my favourite kind of game is sandbox and usually these take about 40 hours, things like Assassins Creed, Red Dead, Prototype, Saboteur these are all games I have really enjoyed and spent a lot of time on so again £1 an hour is fine with me.

But then I have no family, am not married, don't have a mortgage just rent etc. so most my income goes on my car, games and gadgets.

.....most my income goes on my car, games and gadgets.

Hmmm.....Gadgets eh?