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"The PC Looks Like It's Dying" (Fortune)


Psmith
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Yep, it's dying for a number of reasons - the primary one being the success of the tablet computer.

Fortune Article

You can also see the result of this die-off when going to any electronics store (Best Buy): A few years ago you could find several laptops that had powerful graphics processors built-in, of the nVidia variety. Now, I can't find a PC like this anywhere. You can buy a powerful laptop, at BestBuy, from Apple, however.

Laptop sales dominate total PC sales, also.

So, if anyone is keeping the idea and reality of a powerful laptop alive, it is Apple. Apple, however, is selling far more tablets than laptops and Apple is dominating the tablet market.

We better watch Apple's progress and tune in to the fact that tablets will begin to dominate the software manufacturing marketplace as a result of profitability in the tablet sector.

Greg Smith

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I have looked at the new MacBook Pro. It is very powerful and very expensive. And, at its current price point, not many will sell - especially compared to the number of iPads that will sell.

Developers of software see these numbers - or soon will - and will not be motivated to produce software that is made to take advantage of the MacBook Pro's powerful hardware. They will look at the broader range of available PC's, and their more modest power - as well as their weak sales numbers vs. the strong sales numbers for iPads and the growing number of sales for competing Android tablets . . . and develop software for the larger market. If they want to stay in business.

Apple is gradually weaning its customers away from desktop and laptop computer purchases. Software developers know this.

If Apple's sales figures show they have made the right choice - everybody in the hardware manufacturing business will follow their lead. That is, in fact, what we are seeing now.

Those who don't plan for the future will be lost in the past. They will become the fodder for nostalgia.

A by-product of this reality is what you see happening in the gaming industry. Big title sales are suffering badly. Big studios are witnessing diminishing profits. Console manufacturers sales are dwindling. Steam has just announced their intention to start selling software of every kind - not just games, (due to lack of success).

I'm sure we will witness losses and business failures among the largest "Commercial CG" software manufacturers in the near future.

The game is changing - people better pay attention.

Greg Smith

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I'm not even remotely convinced. All of the media that is created and generated for the tablet consumers are made with their desktop/laptop counterparts. If the argument that the casual PC user will migrate to tablets I suppose I could agree with that, but I'd venture to say that smart phones are a bigger threat as you almost have to have a phone in today's society. I suspect there will be a lot of sharing back and forth between the technologies but I don't see desktop computing going the way of the dinosaurs for a long time.

Do you have some evidence to back up the claims that the gaming industry is "suffering badly"? AAA titles likely aren't more profitable than the casual market but that's because the casual market is 100x the size of the "core" gaming market but that certainly doesn't mean there isn't (a lot of) profit to be made. The Steam remarks are a little baffling to me, definitely going to need to see some kind of evidence backing up that claim. Branching out your service doesn't inherently mean you're failing with your current field.

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"No light at the end of the tunnel for EA Games"

"Are AAA Hardcore Games Doomed?"

"Blizzard Announces Layoffs of 600 Employees Worldwide"

You can do the rest of the research, yourself. Large game making companies are cutting back, period. Losses are the reason. If there is a lot of profit to be made making AAA games - you better hire on as a consultant for those AAA studios who are cutting way back.

Yes, the casual games market is much larger than the AAA game market and it is growing, daily. Developers have seen the profits and are leaning to those areas where profits lie.

Steam is diversifying because their original offerings were not profitable enough for them.

Nobody has claimed that the PC market will disappear entirely - only that the market is shrinking to the point that manufacturers are focusing their energy on markets that are proving to be more profitable - the tablet, the phone.

Of course, the shrinking game and entertainment CG companies will still need PC's - but they will need fewer PC's. And, if the trend to send production work to the East continues, powerful PC hardware sales will shrink even more - studios in the East use the hardware which is available cheaply, and simply hire more hands, rather than spend money on powerful hardware, to meet growing production demand.

As a kicker to the already declining commercial CG software market - few production houses, in the East, pay for any software, whatsoever.

High dollars for high end CG software is a trend that has been declining since the mid-90's. Companies like AutoDesk can afford to raise prices now, because that market is shrinking and driving competitors out of business. And, AutoDesk does not deviate from its dominant marketing plan by doing this - which is to aim their entire product line at the world-wide, high end technical product manufacturing industry, (entertainment based CG software being a tiny part of that plan).

Because of AutoDesk's very deep roots, they stand to remain the monopoly that they are - as they actively swallow up those companies weaker and less savvy than themselves. They are poised to become the only sensible supplier of CG software to "The Industry".

Others must turn their sights elsewhere and go where the profits go.

Greg Smith

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From your very first article you linked:

"They can’t blame the industry, big global publishers like the aforementioned Activision, and also Ubisoft have done very well indeed. Even Sega have managed to get themselves back into profit."

And your second article had this:

"A recent report from DFC Intelligence predicted that the games business would grow over the next five years, from $67 billion to $82 billion, but that “the steadiest” area of that growth will come from PC and mobile, with emerging economies chipping in their fair share."

Hpw can the PC be one of the steadiest areas of growth while simultaneously be dieing off?

I don't think your articles are an indictment on the PC market or AAA games, but rather poorly run companies that miss the mark with their customers (how long have gamers complained of their hatred of EA?).

I don't know how you're projecting that Steam is "not profitable enough", they're a privately owned company, and the only articles I find state that they had a "stellar 2011" and that the company is valued around 3 billion. Gabe Newell even stated that he doesn't believe that touch devices (tablets) are viable long term, believing it would only be stable for 10 years.

I don't doubt that the tablet and phone markets will grow more in the coming years, but I don't believe for a second that they'll kill the PC.

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I don't doubt that the tablet and phone markets will grow more in the coming years, but I don't believe for a second that they'll kill the PC.

Oh no they won't, like Newell said, tactile devices will soon disappear with the emergence of lenses/glasses + move detection. Anyway the Pc will always (in one form or another with the help of the cloud) be a very stable profitable platform. Why ? Because even with the never ending technological evolution creators will need more and more capable machines to do more complex things. In this area the pc (as in desktop pc) has an advantage: no mobility: it means the largest power available.

No doubt the casual crowd will move on, but thing requiring large calculation will always be done on those devices, unless the cloud takes over, in that case only the Human Interface devices will matter, not tablet or phone or whatever..

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"What's Ailing the Video Game Industry"

Declining Profits

Lots of good statistics and comments here.

Getting back into the realm of profit is entirely relative. It does not indicate growth, necessarily. A company can cut its staff by 1/2 and regain some form of profitability, but, in terms of growth, it can still be in negative territory. They are simply being caught in the act of keeping their heads above water.

The tablet computer, as it exists at this moment in time, is not the tablet computer that is coming (innovated by Apple).

Apple has recently filed a patent for a stylus technology which surpasses anything yet produced. I imagine a tablet that is a cross between a MacBook Air and a Cintiq (with many more "macro" buttons"). Interfaces will become simpler and developed specifically for this Apple platform (and the rip-offs that follow).

The traditional typewriter keyboard will be abandoned for speech input and the area occupied by the current keyboard (MacBook Air) will be a composite of a stylus input area and configurable macro "buttons". Neither textual input nor stylus input will happen on the main viewing screen, but on a secondary "screen", hinged to the main screen (like the tiny DS portable gaming device). The current "finger input" will only be an option, but will happen on the secondary screen, since people don't want to obscure the content of their input with their hands.

Those who wish to "text" chat will find frequently used textual phrases and abbreviations in a series of buttons which they can pre-program by voice input. The average user's laziness will be directly parallel to the pre-programmed options that will be at their disposal.

Both upper and lower hinged screens will be borderless and gradually approach the thickness of a relatively thin sheet of unbreakable glass (Corning).

This new technology will not be introduced until the current laptop and tablet technology has been fully drained of profit - which is already happening.

I'm not giving up my MacBook Air any time soon - but the near future of technology is becoming apparent.

Greg Smith

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Well this all looks super techy and all, but after spending many years trying all the gadget that apparently looks cool and probably enhancing productivity with a "somewhat" unlimited budget (tnx to my company), I found none to surpass a good tablet and a keyboard.

The idea to control a computer with voice, well, I imagine that well in a studio LOL.

And honestly the keyboard is imo completely impossible to replace, it offers real feedback and so many combinations and options with so little effort... All you're describing sounds ok for casual users, those using a computer to surf the web listen to music check their mail and watch movie. But for content creation it's completely offtopic.

Then again I tried tons of replacement for keyboards, most of them offering unconfortable use (the peregrine gloves for instance), or simply convoluted workflow due to the lesser amount of buttons.

Simply imagine a programmer with what you describe ;)

You can't simply replace the digital equivalent of stone tablet and carving tools after so long. There's a reason humans chose to use modern tools ressembling that much those old tools... they're adapted to our morphology.

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Programmers, too, will have an alternative to traditional keyboard input. The current generation of "deep" and talented programmers is dying out, and the next batch will be accustomed to the technology which their phones have initiated them into.

Current programmers type and retype the same code, over and over. All of these typed routines can and will be replaced with visual macro "buttons" and intelligent speech recognition for active variables and parameters. Programming software will intelligently anticipate what the programmer is trying to enter.

Because the use of our hands is one of the primary things that makes us human, tactile input is here to stay.

But, as the world around us becomes more and more complex - visual complexity must take a back seat to sanity. Interfaces will, of necessity, become more and more simple - since the bulk of the population will be spending more and more time with computing devices. New forms of health insurance and legal prosecution will mandate this.

All of this kind of future for technology is utterly dependent on society staying relatively "together". If collapse occurs, all of this projection is moot.

Greg Smith

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So you believe highlevel visual programming is the future ? I'm not sure I want to follow you here. If you truly believe that that means you're on the casual side and you'll get very serious issues.

I don't want to be completely dependant on the largest corporations. In fact I work actively against that, so I CAN'T follow you here.

I'll stay away from this topic, I'm sure I would get quickly angry at your opinions on that matter.

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Small technological concerns can only exist as a by-product of large corporations and their financial growth.

The large corporations initiate and develop technologically creative environments which become suitable for the small fry to proliferate.

If it were not for the existence and profitability and success of Microsoft, none of the PC's on which we do our work would exist - nor would the software that empowers the hardware exist.

If Apple computer had not financially succeeded, we would not be using any kind of graphical user interface.

You can like the facts or hate them - it doesn't change what is fact.

You can't make computer hardware or its corresponding computer software without monetary assets on a very large scale. Not at the beginning. Not at the end - only in the interim period between the start and the end - afforded by the large corporations - can small technological development prosper.

In down to earth terms: Andrew's success and his ability to develop software which succeeds financially while he lives and works in Ukraine is directly due to the environment that resulted from an initial success in the West. Both political success and financial success.

If it were not for that initial success, Ukraine would still be isolated from sales to the West and under the occupation of the Soviet Socialist Republics, who did no financial dealings with the West.

They don't buy software in Ukraine, (generally speaking), nor in Russia, to this very day.

Greg Smith

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CPU Power

GPU Power

Storage

RAM

Power/Battery Supply

INPUT Method

------

Computer Box, tablet, console... i dont care.

cross plataform apps using cuda or openCL is the key

* Nvidia VGX like example

-----------------------

If any1 like to read

Nvidia's GPUs in the cloud will shake up virtualization, gaming industries

http://betanews.com/...ing-industries/

http://www.nvidia.co...oud-gaming.html

Nvidia's product could herald the start of Gaming-as-a-Service, and completely disrupt the current video game industry in a way that likely was not envisioned a few short years ago.

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Michalis:

Yes, I've seen it - even on the Big Screen. It impressed everybody. Both the transparent aluminum and the speech input Scotty was attempting with that Mac Plus.

Molecular reconstruction, my eye! On a Mac Plus. Whoaa.

Yet, it does exist, now:

Transparent Aluminum

Siri Voice Recognition

Things change and technology gets temporarily better.

Greg Smith

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