Consoles are becoming PCs, says Alienware exec

June 28th, 2013, 00:49 Posted By: wraggster

Advances in games console technology are blurring the lines between the PS4, Xbox One and PS, a key executive at Alienware has claimed.
Frank Azor, the general manager at Alienware, said that "consoles are looking more and more like PCs every day".
In an interview with PCGamesN, Azor explained:
"If you look at what Sony and Microsoft are doing, they're taking PCs and putting them into the living room. It's an AMD CPU, it's an AMD graphics card, it's a standard desktop hard drive. It's unbelievable."
Both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One are built with a similar PC-centric X86 architecture, but on a service level they also adopt ideas that are more familiar to desktop gamers.
"You're installing games now instead of running them off the disc, because that's the right thing to do; you're downloading games digitally, which we've been doing on PC for years; they're integrating certain TV aspects and stuff, well, ten years ago we started experimenting with media centre."
Azor's driving point was that consoles, in adopting the traits of PC, are showcasing the merits of keyboard and mouse gaming.
"That tells you that the PC is the gaming platform of choice out there, there is nothing out there that's better. You look at what they're [consoles] trying to do and they're becoming more and more like PCs."
The other school of thought is that games consoles will weaken the PC market by competing with its technologies and services. But Azor believes that PC is uniquely positioned to host the most prosperous games.
"Look at the most widely played games out there, League of Legends, World of Tanks, I mean these are the most widely played games in terms of hours played in the industry. And up until this week those were exclusive PC titles."
Sony and Microsoft will both release their next generation consoles in western markets before the end of the year.
Xbox One will be available in 21 markets this November. The Xbox One price has been set at £425 / €499 / $499.
Following a consumer backlash, Microsoft recently abandoned a number of controversial Xbox One DRM policies.
In June, two notable European retailers began listing the PS4 release date as November 13, 2013. However, a Sony Computer Entertainment Europe spokesperson told us that the retailer listings were purely speculative.
Sony showed off the PS4 hardware for the first time during its E3 2013 conference, when it confirmed a Christmas PS4 release date in Europe and the US and a PS4 price of £349 / €399 / $399.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...lienware-exec/

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