Playstation 4, Xbox One and the Computational Funnel

This quarter saw the release of the Xbox One and Playstation 4 gaming consoles. To those of us that have been around a while it all seems so familiar. Newer, faster, better, brasher and the moniker 'next-gen' bandied about with glee by marketing departments.

Like others who've seen this cycle many times before, I find myself wondering if this will be the last of its kind. Since 2005 when the Xbox 360 was launched we've seen a seismic event occur with the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 and perhaps more importantly, the introduction of the App Store in 2008. Google has since followed suit and the mobile app has become the zeitgeist.

I remember seeing that announcement with the introduction of the more affordable – read, affordable – iPhone 3G and instantly realising what it meant. Suddenly, we'd see indie developers get a shot at reaching large audiences without the need for a publisher. I was thinking back to the one-man efforts of yesteryear like Frontier: Elite and SimCity. I was extremely excited. For once, I was right!

So we have a launch of a new wave of consoles set against the backdrop of a rapidly emerging mobile computing market. That alone is enough to make things interesting, but I think there's a bigger, more holistic context in which to put this. To illustrate, I'm going to liken it to a funnel.

I just read on the The Loop a throwaway remark made by Jim Dalrymple that this generational leap in performance for the gaming consoles wasn't as dramatic as previous ones. I disagree with that, but I see what he means. I'd slightly rephrase his sentiments as 'this leap isn't as impactful as previous leaps.' I'd also add the word 'yet.'

The computational power of this crop of consoles is many, many times greater than that of the 2005/6 consoles they replace. It has to be said, it's astonishing what is achieved with these machines given they are eight years old! Who still runs a PC or Mac that old, yet alone gets to run the latest gaming titles in full HD? The power leap is as enormous as ever, but it isn't producing the same 'wow, we couldn't do that before' effect.

Why is this? I think it's because we are emerging from a computing power funnel. How deep into the funnel we are is a big question. We might be sat pondering the same thing after another wave of consoles in another eight years, or we might be able to see that we have emerged. Let me explain.

View fullsize

The Computational Funnel

So does this mean that the possibilities are endless? I don't think so. What it means is that we are approaching a point where computing power will be so great that it is no longer the bottleneck on what can be done with computers. At the same time, for all our impressive technology, it seems that time is teaching us that our computer technology is actually quite nascent in the grand scheme of things.

This leads me to two questions for the gaming industry and the hardware makers.

Hollywood Production Values

Over the last decade we've seen the advent of the game with Hollywood-level production values. Grand Theft Auto, Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed, Forza Motorsport et cetera are huge production efforts whose credits roll longer than most summer blockbusters.

More CPU/GPU speed and RAM theoretically allow more to be done by the user's computer or console but that doesn't mean that the full potential of that hardware is easily reached by the developers of its software. I think this is the effect we are seeing now.

Textures can get more beautiful, that's just a matter of rendering 3D models and artwork at a higher resolution. More instances of each element can be put on screen at once. What can't be stepped up with just a slider in a dialogue box is AI intelligence, fun factor, story. Those things need hard work done by talented humans.

That creates an interesting question to ponder; what can be produced procedurally by a computer unaided by a human? You might choose to model a car for a Forza title, for example. You might decide to stop trying to make a car's handling feel right and simply program every detail of the engine, chassis and bodywork of a car into highly accurate modelling software and let that software tell you what the handling for such a car would be like. The car gets more realistic – and more fun through being more visceral to drive – without the human developer needing to do more and more work for the gains. Once that master software is written, the human just needs to do the measuring of the real-world car components…once. As computers get more powerful, that computer model can be re-rendered using previously-taken measurements but at with a higher degree of accuracy. Don't repeat yourself.

What requires more work from a human being in order to improve? What limits the scope of a game by the manageable size of the team needed to produce it? This is the first question for gaming.

Product Cyles

The second question for gaming revolves around the distribution method of the hardware.

As we approach the mouth of our funnel, hardware power is becoming easier to package and mobile devices are showing us this in a dramatic way.

The 64-bit Apple A7 SOAC is approaching the power of a 2008 MacBook Pro. Think about that for a moment. The Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 were from 2005 and 6 and look what they can do. What will the A8 be capable of? The A9? It is not just faesible, but probable, that we will have a hand-held device in millions of pockets around the world that will be capable of running Xbox 360/PS4 titles within eighteen months.

Now factor in two existing facts. The Apple TV box that retails at £99 has an Apple A5 SOAC in it. It is also capable of facilitating AirPlay from any recent iOS device. What happens if Apple update that box in the summer with a year-old-at-the-time A7 chip? Suddenly, you're a controller away from a console with the power of a 2008 MacBook Pro. Second fact: Apple added controller support with iOS7. That console would have native support for third party controllers. Next year, it could have an A8, the year after an A9 and so on. Could Microsoft or Sony match that rate of power increase?

Apple could find itself a major player in the gaming hardware world within a year with almost no effort. If that isn't a concern for Microsoft and Sony then they are in for a big shock.

What About Non-Gaming Software?

Where I think we'll see the plateau is in non-gaming software. How much added value can endlessly more powerful hardware bring to a news reporting app or a word processor? We can add quicker streaming to an ESPN app but at some point it gets as fast as we could want. Non-gaming software is designed to fulfil a purpose and once that purpose is fulfilled it becomes a matter of doing it with more finesses, more intuitiveness. Those things are not endlessly aided by computational power. Designers need to put the hard graft in to make those things better. They also need taste and an understanding of their non-technophile fellow human beings.

…but I digress.

Imagine Apple Existed

I want you to suspend your disbelief. Suspend your cynicism and just go with this for a minute.

Imagine there was a company that made computers but they didn't kowtow to anyone. Imagine they made their machines with serious, unabashed pride in what they do. Imagine they talked about design and engineering. Imagine they had the courage to charge an honest premium for their products so that they weren't hamstrung by wafer-thin margins. Imagine they made their computers from single slabs of aluminium to near-military grade tolerances.

Imagine they turned down licensing a third party operating system and developed their own. Imagine they cared about what it was like to use their computers more than they cared about market share. Imagine they were willing to suspend development of major new shiny, easily-marketable features for a whole development cycle and just focus on under-the-hood improvements.

Imagine this company decided they could do better than Walmart, Best Buy, PC World or the rest and they set up a chain of specialised, bijou stores. Imagine they didn't have their computers run screen savers promoting the virtues of their machines and just left them unlocked for the customer to play with.  Imagine the people that worked there actually knew about the products and didn't work on commission. Imagine genuine experts in creative fields were hired to show hobbyists and professionals alike what their hardware and software could offer.

Imagine that company felt they could make a computer that could fit in your pocket too. Imagine they weren't afraid of carriers. Imagine they put the user first and built from that point backwards. Imagine their phones weren't displayed as non-functioning plastic facsimiles that told you nothing about what you were buying.

Imagine this was a company that bought its manufacturing partners new equipment just so they could machine holes in aluminium small enough to be invisible until light was shone through them just to make a great-looking power indicator. Imagine they used glass and aluminium not because it was cheap but because it was desirable to the customer.

Imagine this company's senior corporate leadership was made up of the same people that designed the products. Imagine they were willing to cannibalise their own product lines because they knew they could create something new that offered a superior experience. Imagine they had the courage to ignore vehement criticism by an ignorant, click-baiting press and call time on a dithering plugin developer. Imagine they had the confidence to force that same developer to re-write their flagship program from the ground up using a modern API framework because it was the only way to kick them into the new millennium.

Imagine that aside from all the technical prowess, this company cared about people. Imagine it mattered to this company how people experienced their products. Imagine they sought to make computing accessible in every meaning of the word. Imagine they spent time agonising over how to make sophisticated machines simple to use. Imagine they said 'no' to a feature because it was powderpuff not progress. Imagine real time was spent making complex devices usable by the blind, deaf and motor-impaired. Imagine this company's CEO took pride showing the assembled press how autistic children were learning using his company's products because that was the type of company this was.

If this company existed, there would be those that refused to believe it. Years of learning to see through the marketing nonsense of other major multinational companies would predispose them to thinking this must be PR rhetoric.  These people would mock this company because they couldn't overcome their cynicism and believe it was as simple as it seemed. They'd call this company's customers sheep for being so gullible as to buy into this myth of a better experience. It would be easy to join them.

Even the most discerning of readers have to swim against a tide of bias to get any information. Large South Korean companies spend billions of dollars manipulating and cajoling the very people the public trust to bring them journalism in their media and good advice in their stores. Sadly, even many that would consider themselves 'tech-savvy' are naive of this influence.

Imagine someone was like you. Imagine they hated BS; they hated scare-mongering; they hated impenetrable jargon; they hated creaking plastic machines and cheap-feeling hardware; they hated tolerance of buggy software. Imagine that person set up a company and they happened to be a business genius.

Imagine Apple existed.

 …but I digress.