Technical Aspects of a Gaming Console

Can we talk about the technical dimensions of an actual console? What does a console actually do?

As a starting point, most people fall into the assumption that what a console does is grubs. That it takes the data on the game and renders it and it’s just processing. To some extent, that is the primary and necessary task, of a console. In recent years, that task is fairly generic. The task of actually playing back and rendering the game is not very different in its approach, between a PC, an Xbox and a PlayStation. The differences come outside of that environment, in small decisions around what user interface there’s going to be, what the I/O ports are. An I/O is an input/output; so how do you control your input/output?

If you think about Microsoft’s early activity with Connect and the huge success that Nintendo had with Wii, those were not really about the processor. What they were about were decisions on the input and output mechanism and what the relationship would be between the player and the game. I think there were two key elements to a console and now there are layers and layers extra. One is its ability to rapidly and effectively play back a game. That comes with a whole set of baggage, in itself, in that the console establishes a format to which the game developer must subscribe and write to. That’s the platform that the game developer must conform to, in order for it to work well. If it does that, then the console can do that reliably, quickly and effectively. After that, the decisions on the console are around how quickly and effectively it can do that, which affects the cost base of the console. Then also, how the consumer is going to access it.

I’ve talked a little bit about the input/output devices, whether you’re using a dance mat or a gun controller, or you’re using a VR headset. All of those things are not generic. A lot of these things have to tie into the console and work smoothly, without latency. If you’re going to try to get what we used to call the plug and play experience, to that console, that affects the whole value chain, including all of the things that connect to the console, physically or otherwise. It could be a headset; it could be a voice microphone. The point I’m making is, when we think about a console, it’s not just a piece of processing equipment. We’ll probably talk a bit about how you move consoles into the cloud. When you move a console into the cloud, you can’t move all of it into a cloud, because it’s not all about processing.

Do you think the console has an advantage over streaming, for the likes of AR, VR?

Absolutely. To some extent, I think consoles have to, and will, evolve. The consoles we see today will change and take advantage of streaming technologies and cloud technologies. In many cases, they already do. But I think the important thing is that, what a console does cannot easily be completely moved to the cloud. If you think about a dance mat or a VR headset, they often rely on things which are very physical and need to be closely located. In the case of VR, the problems that you see with latency are very much more acute, because when you turn your head, you’re immediately having to render a new world, so there are challenges.

They may be overcome in time but I think, for the foreseeable future, there are going to be limitations on what you can do with a purely cloud-based solution, for gaming. The console has never been just about processing.