Laptops have overtaken desktops
In another display of the ways in which the world of PC gaming is shifting, laptop shipments exceeded that of desktops for the first time ever in the third quarter of ’08.
A big part of the reason? Netbooks, which are
- skimpy on graphics hardware, and can’t run big AAA games
- often don’t even have an optical drive from which to install big games
- super-portable, thanks to small screens that have resolutions as low as 1/4 the resolution of a desktop monitor
- fundamentally designed to be connected
The shift here is notable, because it all speaks to convenience rather than immersion. Small bites, not big ones. In fact, the Acer Aspire One netbook was the #3 seller in consumer electronics, behind a 52 inch TV and the 8GB iPod.
I was struck by the fact that there’s a whole song on the Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog DVD commentary musical “Commentary!” (uh… just go get it, it’s too hard to explain) that is about a game. Not Far Cry 2. Not Left 4 Dead. No, it was about Ninja Rope. Usually if our industry gets big shoutouts from other media, it’s for a AAA game… But they played Ninja Rope on an iPhone — a transitional device halfway between a phone and a netbook itself.
Meanwhile… Amazon doesn’t even mention the PS3 and the 360 sales this holiday season, focusing instead on how the Wii dominated the charts; going into Xmas, there were as many Wiis in households as 360s and PS3s combined. Again — lower res, simpler controls, simpler games (which has some folks really mad!).
I wonder what a true AAA game designed for a netbook would look like?
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Total netbook sales for this year (2008) are predicted to be 17 million. Last year (2007) was 1 million.
Next year’s netbooks will (a) be dual-core, and (b) have less-wimpy 3D accelerators. Touch-screens may become more common.
The trick to writing a PC game is that it must run on a wide range of machines, from netbooks (or 7-year-old desktops) to Intel’s latest quad-core with dual monitors. Not only must the games run on such a larger variety of hardware, they must use use them, scaling up/down eye candy depending on the computer!
Netbooks also represent a shift in demographics, from the 1990’s, “A desktop in every middle class 1st-world home” to “A portable computer (netbook/notebook) for every family member in the 1st world, and a computer for every middle class 3rd-world home”.
Merry Xmas!
So that Nintendo guy what’s his name again (I think of him as the Raph of consoles) he once said it was a mistake for the Wii not to support higher res.
I heard this Blackberry commercial about what more could we want? Games and TILT. Same factor as what the 360 and PS3 r about.
Xbox 360 is the biggest and best dividend the world has ever known. You’d be a foolish troll to think otherwise.
For me OK for the first two, but I’m afraid for the third. Portabillity and usability are good things for any game, but the claim for an excesive simplification can kill or destroy the meaning of entire genres. Graphic adventures and flight simulators were kings one day, now both genres are near to extinction. Strategic games, sims and deep RPGs can be the next. I doubt that the trend kill FPS or the more simpler “hardcore” games, but some genres based in the richness in options and some deep gameplay are doomed to oblivion if that trend becomes a rule.
I read over the holiday that Netbooks are the only category of PC that actually experienced growth this year. There are some tepid concerns from MSFT, Intel, AMD, and Dell that netbook sales might be canabalizing their desktop/laptop sales. I think right now, they are getting sales that would not have gotten, but who knows what will happen in the future.
-Michael
Muckbeast – Game Design and Virtual Worlds
http://www.muckbeast.com
My son just got a brutal notebook last week. Dual core, nice Nvidia card, tons of ram… for like $1100. It’s a screaming game machine.
I’ve been playing my PC games exclusively on my various Dell Inspirons for 7 years now.
*shrug*
Not a lot of news there.
Notebooks aren’t big news. Netbooks are… Imagine trying to play WoW on a netbook:
– The 3D accelerator isn’t fast enough. (Next year’s netbooks should be fast enough for WoW.) Age of Conan certainly won’t work for 3-4 years.
– Even if the 3D accelerator were fast enough, (ideally) netbooks are unplugged. Re-rendering the screen 30 times a second to create smooth animations uses a lot of power. How would WoW have to change to accomodate this?
– The keyboard/touchpad are way too small. Some netbooks have touchscreens. WoW’s UI assumes a full-sized keyboard and a mouse. How does WoW’s gameplay change because of this?
– The screen is only 10″, down to 7″ on some netbooks. Small text is too difficult to read. Small figures are too difficult to see. How does WoW’s gameplay change because of this?
– There is no CD/DVD. The game needs to be downloaded over the internet, perhaps using the built-in 3G wireless, which probably has a limited download budget. How does this change gameplay?
– Netbooks are cheap. People inherently assume that software will cost less on less-expensive hardware. Plus, netbooks herald mass-PC adoption in China and India, and the death of internet Cafes in China/Korea; Chinese and Indians won’t pay $50 for a game. How does this affect gameplay?
– Netbook games can be played in places not normally associated with games: In school, on the bus/train/plane, in bed, in a poor village in Africa. How is gameplay affected?
It really is because most people aren’t educated about the things they can do with their computers, they do not use them to their fullest extent. In my transition from highschool to college I saw kids buying massive 17in. screen laptops with the best processors and video cards, their battery might last 30 minutes, and they only use it to check their email, write papers, and AIM chat. They could do so much more with these computers, but they just don’t know how or that these other functions even exist.
People are now realizing that they really only want a computer to do these simple tasks and are starting to get these more portable net-books. I was considering buying one as a third computer but it’s ridiculous that you pay more for something with a smaller screen and less specs. I can get a laptop with almost double the specs for $700, compared to some of these net-books that are around $1000.
Barring the Sony and HP netbooks, most of the netbooks are USD $300-400.
There are deals now where you sign up for 3G wireless and get a netbook for $100.
The Australian government is looking at buying small notbooks (or perhaps netbooks) for all high-school students.
It won’t be too long before netbooks are included in cereal boxes. 🙂
What would a true AAA title game designed for a netbook laptop look like?
Something like Dragon Quest IX, I think.
I don’t think there’s that much difference between a Nintendo DS and a Netbook. It should be able to handle 2D and 2.5D games really well. You can plug a USB gamepad into a netbook and it should be able to run anything older than 2000. I bet they’d run Diablo 2!
Now you’ve got me curious. What’s the most modern game that plays well on an average Netbook? Somebody who owns one should test it out!
I love netbooks. I bought the 701 from the beginning.
From a game point of view, there’s two things interesting: multitouch trackpad and ssd.
Multitouch trackpad is on 90% of those machines I think it’s better than touchscreen because you see what you’re doing (sometimes on the iphone well you cannot) and yet it’s a new input for game developers. As a user I totally love the multitouch thing. It’s intuitive.
ssds are not overrated as I can read sometimes because on those machines you can resume your session real fast like you cannot with hdds.
These little machines are very console-like and they are gonna get better and better.
So a AAA should be crafted with focus on quickness of execution, 2D/audio very well done so that it doesn’t feel internet flash game (World of Goo works flawlessly on those machines for example) and around a MMO internet cloud idea I guess 🙂
Half-serious/half-snark answer to the question closing your post:
WoW
The PC Gaming Alliance would do well to take a page from Steam and provide populations and statistics on different machines at different specs that are in use. It would be interesting to see the real impact of netbooks, notebooks, and the much longer shelf life of PCs on the market for games of different quality. Unfortunately, the leaders of the PC Gaming Alliance are platform builders more than game companies, so their focus is on pushing boxes, not PC gaming (really)… they are probably not going to be the best (or most objective) advocates for PC gaming.
While the Wii may enforce lower resolution graphics, there is no reason that it should force shallower games (graphics != game play depth). I think the biggest driver for poor Wii games is that pretty much every major third party developer thought that the Wii would fail and so they didn’t invest in titles early. Most such publishers have continued in the belief that the Wii is a “fad” until this year… we are probably a couple of years from a lot of awesome Wii games given that most games take several years to develop. This is pretty much the same with the DS (also mocked by virtually everyone at launch… remember?). Of all the platforms active today, the DS has the most impressive range of interesting games.
Adventure games are having a huge renaissance as Flash games and show promise on the DS with a good number of popular titles (and, potentially, on the iPhone).
All valid data, but you do sound a bit like you are interpreting it with the ‘raph filter’ on.
– The notebook/desktop shift has been happening for some time, and everyone saw the transition point coming. It’s neither here nor there with respect to PC gaming, as anyone interested in games can buy the laptop with the graphics to fit. Or more realistically, if there’s a market, the graphics requirements of titles will scale to fit it. (e.g. The Sims)
– The netbook category really has surprised a lot of people, but many are still trying to understand the trend here. Are these second PCs? Disposable PCs?
In short, I guess I’d say that the notebook trend will definitely have an effect on games, but you shouldn’t conclude that gaming is what’s leading these trends.
BTW, you could just as easily point at Mac MSS growth and cite that as growth of a non-gaming audience, right?
Did I say I thought gaming was leading these trends? I thought I ended by asking what games would look like when they follow the trends in netbooks.
I watched my nephews going absolutely crazy this Christmas playing the Nintendo DS. The graphics looked like Donkey Kong circa 1980(?) to me, but it was handheld, and the real donkey kong was the size of a refrigerator. So I guess that’s progress.
Does that mean I want to drop my next gen MMORPG on a PC for Donkey Kong on a Nintendo DS? Hell no! Would I have killed for a Nintendo DS in 1980? Yes I would have!
I would expect that in 20 years the graphics on the Nintendo DS and solar powered “Netbooks” will catch up to PCs too. That doesn’t really change my gaming decisions now though.
Concerning the ‘angry’ comment you linked about the Wii:
I understand. Every hardcore gamer who bought a Wii quickly realized that the controls weren’t what they were purported to be. It was essentially accelerometer-based gesture recognition — a button press that takes more energy, is slower, and has worse feedback. Then, follow that with the incredibly lack-luster titles that really don’t take advantage of the Wii’s ‘new human interface’ and what you have is essentially a gimmick machine that sells simply because of the ‘oooh’ factor it gets from people who, lets face it, are just beginning to game. ‘Dust collector’ is an often bandied term here and I know that’s exactly what mine has become. As that commenter said, the novelty wears off.
Same goes for the DS, which, yes, I realize is wildly successful, and I myself owned one simply because I recognized its unique potential. That said, there’s so much more they could be doing with both of these platforms. If there is anger here, its out of dissapointment.
Also, why does everyone keep boo-hooing about hardcore games? They’re not dead. They’re not dying. They’re simply waiting for everyone else to catch up. At our age, the kids of today will be playing games that would blow the mind of any modern hardcore gamer — and I’m not talking about graphics. That, and they’ll be playing them together.
@Ingrod
How can you say that the flight sim and the graphical adventure are near to extinction? If anything, they’re enjoying a second golden-age! Even if they are more obscure. Have you played Penumbra? The Nancy Drew Series? The new Sam & Max games? Ever heard of the Adventure Company? How about Missing and it’s sequel? And lets not forget there is a magazine called ‘PC Pilot’.
I was going to say… WoW on new release day, where no one can move. 😉
It’s hard to answer this question without defining what you mean by AAA games. For people like me who feel AAA games require beautiful graphics, some level of interactivity or multiplayer, and an engaging and complex story, the answer is: they can’t, at the current performance of netbooks. Your $300 netbook can surf the web and play quick flash games, and is great for checking email or doing word processing, but it simply isn’t designed for games with moderate or higher graphic requirements or large downloads. For netbook users, AAA games might be a well designed casual web games that you check in on once per day.
When I first got involved online, back in the day, there was a lot of talk about the world dividing into computer “haves” and “have nots.” With netbooks, I see a different division- computer “dos” and “do nots.” The current generation of netbooks exist for those people who want a computer that does the bare minimum, while taking up the least space, for the lowest price. While I congratulate those manufacturers who are successfully marketing to that niche, that niche has a very different perspective of what makes a good game than I do. The developer who produces the first game to capture the imaginations of that market is likely to find Wii-like success… and who knows, maybe I’ll like it too.
Maybe.
Sabrina:
Interactivity, multiplayer, and great stories require high-performance systems?
It’s almost like there were no games before Unreal 3. *sigh*
I don’t think the demand for high performance systems is waning simply because netbooks are on the rise. There’s a whole other side of the industry that requires some of the newer equipment to pump out HDTV and when the MPAA finally realizes that DRM free movies are the way to go, you’ll see a resurgence in high powered workstations over netbooks. All of these netbooks are incapable of playing quality HD content because that is not what they were designed for.
There are certain games that can’t and won’t be played on netbooks and just because netbooks outsold desktops doesn’t mean that these games are a dying breed. That’s like saying developers won’t develop 360/PS3 games just because the Wii sells so much which is clearly not the case.
Actually, I saw at least one major exec say that the market for high-end PC hardware WAS waning…
Playing ripped HDTV resized for the netbook’s screen is something the netbook is perfectly capable of. Do you mean, driving a full large HDTV screen? That’s not that high res either…
Why must the “hardcore vs. casual” view of gaming almost always conclude that casuals will become hardcore once they ‘mature’ a bit? I play games like mad and have all my life, but I still approach them from a very ‘casual’ perspective. We don’t need to ‘catch up’ to you, we need the game companies to recognize we are simply different, not inferior.
Derek Licciardi:
…and something designed for a purpose always fulfills that purpose?
Finitude. More resources allocated to one thing means less resources allocated something else. Wii is an attractive platform for both developers and consumers. People go where the money is, so you’ll see more and more developers, who would have traditionally developed for 360/PS3, developing for Wii over the long term. That is, until the next big thing dominates the market.
[…] what about immersiveness? Raph Koster makes some very interesting obeservations: Netbooks, which […]
Morgan said:
You forgot the beautiful graphics. To me, a game can’t be considered top notch without beautiful graphics, beyond what a netbook can deliver. Age of Conan came up short in those other categories, but I was blown away by the graphics. Seeing the light refract through hundreds of water droplets simultaneously was incredible. For me to consider a game “AAA” it would need to meet or exceed that level of graphics. Not everyone would consider that necessary to a top notch game, but I do.
I started gaming on MUSHes, which were top notch back in the days before graphics cards. But I certainly wouldn’t consider MUSHes AAA today.
Sabrina:
“AAA” also means big budgets, big teams, and… eventual bankruptcy.
Personally, as a consumer, I don’t really care for “AAA” games. The latest Unreal Tournament doesn’t even load on my desktop. Probably the same with the latest Far Cry. Mass Effect didn’t work either. I’m playing Ultima Online now on my laptop. I’ll probably install Quake 2 and Master of Orion 2 a bit later.
To me, and I think for many small studios, the more important question is not “what makes a next-gen game?” but rather “do video games need to be AAA?”
Beauty does not require technology. Loco Roco, Braid and Patapon are beautiful games that don’t push polys or refract light.
I would consider the rise of console gaming a factor also.
My hope is for games that are not as complex graphically, but are more complex in terms of core game systems.
This may require some ingenuity on the part of interface designers to deliver on a low-rez screen, but I don’t think it’s an insurmountable obstacle.
The lack of a CD/DVD argues for thin-client apps that can be easily downloaded. For game designers, there’s going to be a challenge in piping in a lot of data that’s traditionally stored on the hard drive. But if you find a way around that challenge, you could have an environment as rich, mutable and amenable to user-created content as Second Life, without the lag and load times that make SL next to unusable as a gaming platform.
The trend presents definite challenges to those of us who like our games complex, but it also presents opportunities. It will be interesting to see how developers respond.
Morgan said:
Now this is a fun question! My personal answer would be no. I played Civ II for years afterwards (although it was a AAA game in the beginning). I’m still playing Civ IV. And Neopets. (no laughing!) I’m having my best MMO experience since the first few months in WoW at Atlantica Online. None of these games meet all my qualifications for AAA games, but they’re all solid, enjoyable games. Personally, if a game delivers a solid entertainment value, it doesn’t need to be AAA. A solid game can make a profit… and as Morgan pointed out, it may be less likely to crash and burn. I’d love to see more solid A games, instead of a desert between the AAA blockbusters and games that just fall flat.
I think mmo’s are partly responsible for PS3 tanking and Wii selling so well. I don’t feel the need for final fantasies now that WoW is out there. I just want cheap, low attention span entertainment from my consoles. Without WoW, I would have never been vulnerable to novelty in the console market, because im a very cautious buyer. But mmo’s changed everything. Consoles and computers have finally diverged definitively to me, and now I know what each is for
I still want immersion from my PC though. But to me that doesn’t mean having impressive graphics. That’s a novelty. It’s a great selling point, but any stimulus you’re exposed to repeatedly loses its effect. Gameplay stays interesting because of variation.
But there will always be a market for people who need higher performance, and there will always be a market for snobs who want expensive things that they have no need for.
I hope all metaplace games will play well on these netbooks. Something to consider… Hm.
@Morgan – The problem here is that the data does not support this assertion. The Wii has sold more units yet only its first party games appear on the Top 10 list from month to month, one of them being the controller+game, Wii Play. Third party developers do not sell well on the Wii for some reason. Perhaps this is a reflection of all the PS2 ports and general shovelware that has found a home on the Wii or something deeper; who knows.
What it does support is my assertion that the rise of the lesser capable laptop and the casual game increase this seems to imply likely will not kill the hardcore market. I’m not convinced that all the profit has been sucked out of the hardcore market any more than I am convinced that the blockbuster movie has no place in theaters. Though, the failures of some triple A games/movies bring more than a few people out of the woodwork to proclaim the apocalypse. In my mind, the market is fragmenting because it’s getting bigger and when all the dust settles we’ll have two markets. It’s not unlike the business/residential split for OS software. Both need OSes. They just need different features.
Derek Licciardi:
I don’t disagree. In general, people follow the money. The evolution of markets, as well as products, shifts between divergence and convergence. There’s never total convergence or total divergence. Nature tries to find a balance.
And, yes, the market is fragmenting as the market is expanding. Just as two points on an inflating balloon move farther apart. But it’s not just the market, it’s the entire business. I’m actually working with a number of smart people to help folks think their way through these rapid changes. Still at the earliest stages though.
The main gaming development that the netbooks are screaming for is browser-based games. There is comparatively to desktop and traditional laptops a bigger proportion of them running Linux, and with no DVD drive and small disk space they are clearly not designed to run desktop apps. A lot of these netbooks growth is also due in Europe to their bundling with 3G Internet subscriptions – enabling instant mobile internet, without the need to find wi-fi hotspots.
We wrote a post recently about it : http://www.icopartners.com/blog/archives/9
Hey Raph,
Has anyone tested Metaplace on these $399 Atom Netbooks Dell is selling?
Yep. Our art director uses one around the office. The screen dimensions are the biggest challenge — makes it hard to use the tools. But we are working on streamlining the tools to fit better in smaller vertical resolutions.
[…] what about immersiveness? Raph Koster makes some very interesting obeservations: Netbooks, which […]