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Good morning everyone and welcome to Androidizen Live episode 3.
On this week's episode we're going to be taking a look at Android as your games console again.
There was a really big announcement coming out of the latest Google
breakfast
Effectively Android 4.3 the latest version of Android that is
starting to hit the Nexus devices and will be coming to HTC One
and the Galaxy S4 imminently by the looks of it has got something really big here
for
gamers and game developers for that matter. So,
let's first take a look at some of the things that Google
announced. So this is coming from the Google
breakfast forum the other day. I captured the stream.
Now effectively they've added quite a lot
of new developer features. So in part this is to kind of energize Android
where you kind of look at how games have come on within the Android operating
system..
Things have kind of been leaps and bounds now over the last year or so
graphics quality has got better, the game variety has got better.
Unfortunately what really hasn't got all that
hasn't improved all that much is Google's ability to tie all these games
together
and so now we have a new application and it's available now
up on the Play Store and it allows you basically to see all of the various games
that Google have available on the store
the achievements your friends and what they're playing, their high scores etcetera,
And it's a really good way to discover games basically.
I've been using the app for a couple of days and it's considerably better than
the previous
integration we had just within the Play Store. This kind of
shows that Google are taking gaming seriously in a way that Apple kind of
not really got involved with in quite the way
we kind of would have hoped. I think Apple are a little bit far behind on
realizing that games are exactly what people spend their time doing on their
devices when they're not working or talking to their friends.
Some of the other really big things coming out of
this Google announcement was the introduction of Open GL
ES 3.0. Now you might remember on last week's show
I was waxing lyrical about how Google and the Android operating system and gaming
kind of go hand in hand and over the next three to five years
we're going to see the traditional games consoles flounder in the market.
That's just a simple fact. One of the reasons I was saying that
is because when Apple announced Open GL ES 3
that kind of put the ball back into Google's court
to catch up, effectively. Now the great thing with the latest version of Open GL
version 3 and this is the ES by the way, as opposed to the pure
open GL that you might be familiar with on desktop systems. ES is all about
embedded systems
so smart devices. your mobile phone, your tablet,
your Ouya games console for instance.
Anywhere where you don't have a discrete graphics card that you can pull out and replace
with another one effectively.
Now the main things they've done with Open GL ES 3
is kind of a rewrite of large chunks of the system. For instance the rendering pipeline has
been massively overhauled.
Now this on its own is going to allow for better queries,
transformational feedback, enhanced rendering and support for four or more rendering
targets. Now,
what this does is it kinds of spreads a lot of the load out and makes Open GL
more efficient on these devices. One of the main problems that we kind of have with a
lot of developers' games
at the moment is they don't optimise particularly well for the various devices
coming out there.
In part because Open GL 2 doesn't make it all that easy to optimise
and you don't have as much headroom as it were once you get the game
up on to a device. Now, one of the other, probably the biggest thing that they've
done really
is the texture compression system that they now have so the texture
engine has been completely rewritten from what I can tell and
now allows for developers to create a single set of textures
and have them work across a massive range of devices so the idea is to
provide a high resolution texture that is incredibly well
compressed and have that run on anything. Brilliant!
That's exactly what we need. At the moment developers have to do effectively targeting
you have to say, well you
use this texture for this device use this texture for this device
you know, if they get it wrong well unfortunately there's a good chance that
the game is going to crawl a little bit.
We've seen that with games like Asphalt 7 as you're going to see in a moment
you know games like Asphalt 7, it's a graphically great looking game but
the textures look like smears most of the time. purely because they're having to
target the lowest-common-denominator.
Now as you'll see with Asphalt 8 in a second this is going to be launching on
August 9th I think. You can see, look at the road
look at the lighting, look at the speed. This is running on the Nexus 7
2013 and the graphics quality
is comparable if not better
than games like Burnout by Criterion studios when they first
came out on
the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation for instance.
These graphics are as good, in places they may even be better
because the frame rate certainly appears to be more solid.
What we don't know is how well this will translate over to non-Nexus devices we
can only hope that
devices like the HTC One, the S4 the
Note 3 for instance where we're using Qualcomm Snapdragon
S600 processorss will be comparable. Let's hope
that it's not going to all come down to the
S400 pro I think it is which is running in the Nexus 7 2013.
So Google are showing off three games
that have come out recently or just about to be released and kind of trumpeting how great
the graphics look and
I would absolutely agree with that. These are some of the most beautiful looking games
we've ever seen and with again like Riptide GP 2 for instance,
from what I can tell isn't using Open GL ES 3 for now.
It does show quite how far games developers have been able to push
the current technology as it were. The frame rate is absolutely stunning as I said
in my
review last week and it just works
beautifully. And in a really really fluid manner.
And no pun intended, it being a game on water
but as you can see from the graphics things have come on leaps and bounds
even just over the last six months for Android and still using
Open GL ES 2 so we aren't that far away from really
throwing out the games consoles and just saying to ourselves I'll just stick my games console
in my pocket thanks.
When you look at things like the Ouya console, costing what?
£99, $99 and all right it's running older Tegra 3
technology. For my mind it's probably a little bit behind now
on if you're looking kind of at the cutting-edge but even so it's a games console costing
less than
£100, that is phenomenal and you kind of have to look at the
next-generation console coming out and kind of say to yourselef, well, do we
really need to drop £400 on an
X,box PlayStation or whatever else might come out from Nintendo
or do we need to evolve and do we need to evolve to say that these devices
should be sitting in our hands and in our pockets not sat in front of the
television set wired up to 300 different media outlets and,
you know, doing real time switching and all of that and it's kind of like well that's
great for the living room
but it's not quite right for an Android user who's a bit more on the go and
to me it just feels like
within five years we simply are going to look at the games consoles and go
but my phone can do that and probably at a higher-resolution the way things are going
with 4k panels coming down the line and the 2k panel certainly
imminently hitting early 2014.
There doesn't really appear to be much reason
to have a 1080p TV in your living room when your games console
is in your hand and produces better graphics and
is portable. You know with dropping £500 on a mobile phone do I a really
wnat to drop £400 on a games console?
Personally I'm starting to consider whether there';s much
value in it. You just kind of think to yourself
there's so much variety here, the games are cheaper as well.
I mean why drop $60 dollars, £50, £40
whatever it will come out at here, on a AAA title when
we can actually have titles that have AAA gameplay
old school AAA gameplay, you know, the kind of stuff that you used to tell all your
friends about because it was
absolutely unique for the time. Games like
this one which just off the top of my head has completely escaped me right now
what the title is. I'll just look it up in a moment
but the gameplay is phenomenal, yet it is incredibly simple
as games go. It doesn't have
groundbreaking graphics but what it does have is old school gameplay
beautifully well done and I think it's free.
So you kind of think to yourself, why would I drop £400
on a games console, £40 on a
AAA game when I can have just as much fun playing this.
Much more involved, much more engaging
all around just better. So here's another
title that I found really really interesting. It's called Snakes
and it's basically a if you remember the old Nokia game
it's kind of like that but reinvented and again
it had something new that we've not really had for a while
well, not new, had for a while, you know what I mean but
have games that kind of tap into the
simpler way of gaming but still deliver brilliant graphics, great audio
Well that's everything we expect from AAA titles isn't it? Fun!
Lots and lots of fun and for my mind that's what really matters now.
How fun these games actually are and by the way,
if you're currently watching on the live stream do drop us a comment onto this thread ask
your questions. I've got quite a few games here to show you today,
happy to answer any questions you might have and pleased to provide feedback as well.
Another title that I spent far too much time playing this
week is Robot Unicorn Attack 2 and again
if you compare the graphics between the original Robot Unicorn Attack
and new one it's like apples to
or should I say it's like a rotten apple to a beautiful apple and the most beautiful
thing you've ever tasted.
Robot Unicorn Attack 2 is just glorious. I mean
the gameplay is fantastic, it's fun,
just has everything in spades and it's free
so again why am I dropping money on a really expensive
full-price AAA title that is probably just a shooter
with a couple of new game mechanics. Game developing in the AAA side of things has
got lazy
because all they're doing is chasing, you know, what will sell
all we want is franchises as Ubisoft would put it
and then you have titles like this that, you know, yes it's coming out for a
fairly well-known independent group at Robot Chicken
but it's beautiful and it's so simple
gameplay yet so much fun that you have hours of fun with it.
From my mind, like I say, Android
over the next three to five years there is going to only be one choice.
You're not going to be picking up your games console you're going to be picking up your smart
device that lives with you all the time
goes with you everywhere and provides all of that experience right in your
hand. Now I know a friend of mine as just picked up a PS Vita
and he's probably watching the stream right now he's actually up early for a
change
and I played a little bit the Vita and
as you kind of look at these portable devices
you think to yourself the Vita is a phenomenal piece of kit
but it doesn't really do anything more
than a smart device does and I'm
yes I've got my 5in screen on the Vita as it were, I've got the dual analogue controllers
I've got the
weird touch screen front and back but quite a bit of that is just kind of a gimmick
and when you look at the games that are AAA as it were
they're not that much more of an improvement over what we can have
on Android if developers will build these titles
and they'll only build these titles once the graphics quality comes up
once they can a guarantee a certain level of targeted speed across all of
these devices
and obviously they can make a return. For my mind
a £40 game that is only going to sell to 10,000 people
might make you a reasonable amount of money. However a
game costing a £1 that sells to millions of people or a free to play title
where you're
effective rate per user you're earning is a dollar
per month straightaway a game developer is going to make a
lot more money and that's why we're seeing a lot of free to play titles these days
and why the likes of Sony and Microsoft are in so much trouble because
there's only so many really big games companies with their multi-million budgets
to go around. There's an awful lot more small developers on these mobile platforms
right now
who are eating into the market share of these big consoles and
we are kind of in this situation now that is very reminiscent in
some respects to the eighties where we have a huge number
of small developers churning out lots and lots of games.
The question will become how many of those game developers can go on to become
AAA title developers on the mobile platform and what is the risk that the marketplace
will kind of collapse in on itself
as it did in the eighties. As many of you will know there's a large number of
games cartridges for ET
which are buried somewhere in the desert. I think someone's actually tried to find those
by the way.
But the the idea really is that, you know, as a marketplace expands more people
enter it
the quality does tend to get driven down to the most common denominator. It's something
that
certainly the Android and mobile communities kind of have to avoid
or else we end up in the same situation in the eighties where basically gaming
dies for about a decade and
when we look at what's happening with these kind of
high-price consoles we look at the technology that's going into them which is
basically just off the shelf PC parts
with a few custom parts done onto the silicon we kind of already know
where the next generation of games is going to go. We can look at that on our PCs if we
have fast enough computers and good graphics cards
so the kind of things that we see on the next gen consoles
is not all that mind-blowing however what we see happening with the mobile space
is constant innovation and a constant kind of
one-upmanship not only the graphics quality gameplay and so on
everything is kind of evolving much faster there certainly much faster than
is within the next gen consoles which are
just a bit bland and boring. The only thing we've really got going on that's really nice there
is the ability to stream our games. I can kind of do that now on the
PC if I feel like it, and and some of the DRM restrictions that kind of make me think
games consoles, DRM it annoys
me immensely because it's taking away our consumer choice in a lot of cases
especially with Microsoft and region locking. Hopefully Sony will stay true to
their word and
won't do region locking. It would be good if they don't. Actually let's go back now to
Asphalt 8
So this is some of the footage that I clipped directly off. They've only provided about
30 seconds unfortunately
but some of the interesting things with the open GLES that we can kind of see here
I've already touched on the textures on the road surfaces and the environment which
look fantastic,
but in a moment you should see the car boost and you see these lights
these light sources that are coming out of the back of the car and that is a key part of what open GL ES 3
will allow for is these light flares
very reminiscent of the JJ Abraham effect, lens flares everywhere as it were
but also better physics as well because the renderer is taking a lot
more of the work and doing it more efficiently
that it was under GL ES 2 you will find
that the frame rate should be better, the physics can be better because they're
able to use
more of the system power for doing extra stuff and not having to
just get textures onto the screen and keep the frame rate up as best they can
so overall we should see a massive improvement. I mean the frame rate here is just
fantastic and
you compare it to Asphalt 7 even on the best devices
currently out there, like the Galaxy S4 and it just feels like it's running a
dog you know 15 to 20 frames a second if you're lucky
but maybe a lot of that comes down to Gameloft
who we know doesn't really care about optimising
unless there's a PR opportunity involved where you're going
to get
broadcast to 70,000 people watching live stream
from Google but everything that we kind of see coming out of
games development now everything we kind of see about the potential of Android
with open GLS 3 and other things that will come down the line as well
it just makes me think that there is no need for a games console
after the next five year period. Essentially we'll be hard-pressed I think
at the next leap as it for next gen consoles you know in 10 years time or
seven years time when they start kind of looking into and talking about that.
I don't think it's going to be a set top box. I think it's going to be a
surface tablet. I think it's going to be a Sony Bravia or Sony Playstation tablet.
That is unless Sony get smart and they get the Genki platform that they
acquired and simply say we'll stream PlayStation games to any device
for a monthly fee. At that point I think I'll be throwing money at the screen
and screaming shut up and take my money. We know with OnLive
as again, some of you who are watching the stream if you know me personally you'll know
I spend a lot of time
talking up OnLive, sorry
sorry and sorry again. It had the promise but unfortunately the execution was
atrocious.
OnLive was a great experiment, it showed what was possible
in the future but unfortunately the bandwidth constraints
the very poor compression they were using on the video stream that you were actually
getting just made experience well
not great and it didn't really work very well on mobile devices either.
Trying to translate console controls
you know full size control of the analogue sticks and emulating that on a touch screen
where you really need some sort of physical feedback with most shooters
it was just a fail really and eventually the company got into some
difficulties and
had to be rescued. OnLive still exist, it's still out there,
we don't really talk about it anymore do we? We don't hear about it anymore
it's just become a curiosity, where
Sony acquired the Genki platform which I believe it got off
the guy who created Shiny Entertainment
whose name is Dave something or other but has just escaped me now.
He really understands what was going to be required to get
OnLive working, sorry Genki and live streaming of gaming
working and for my mind that's probably where
in ten years time that's actually where we'll end up. A lot of these devices will
become thin clients
so that is to say they receive information over the Internet
but the actual internals as it were is purely just used to display information
onto a screen.
The processing power everything is residing within the cloud and is
streamed down to us on our broadband connections. At that point
we can kind of kiss goodbye to console gaming in the sense that buying
expensive overpriced box with all this
you know, hardware in there and silicon and instead it will be a case of well
what size screen do I want, how light is it going to be and what resolution is it
going to be.
The rest of it, the power as it were is very much going to come down from the cloud in 10
years time.
But in the the medium term where Android and mobile gaming in general is going
it's really going to be an exciting time of improved graphics
constantly. This next leap with Open Jelly S3 is
going to be a big one and I think it's going to blow a lot of people away.
What we seeing now is what developers can do with this technology after just a
few months,
you know. At most maybe they've had six to seven months to
kind of develop these techniques with aOpen GLES3 and as you know within
the console industry
the quality of the games that we see on launch day for a new
console
it's like night and day compared to the quality of games that we see at
the end of the
generation. You can see that most clearly in games like
say for instance as a comparable Heavy Rain or uncharted
versus the last of us and you see not only the quality of the graphics going up
but the animation the motion-capture the atmospherics
the sound, everything improving as they start to wring more and more power
out of what they've been given. It's a bit more difficult with the Android and mobile
spaces because what we don't have
is a commonality between all of our hardware.
Unfortunately it is a very fragmented system unless you're in Apple's territory
but then bearing in mind in Apple's territory you get two years out of your Apple device
then you might as well just sling it in the bin
because Apple will basically say well after three yearswe're not going to provide you a software
update so you won't be getting
the latest versions of things like Open GL etcetera.
And they start slowing their hardware down quite a bit as they release updates
each year. But you know in the Android marketplace
for starters things are a bit cheaper . We can have a games console for £99 that kicks a fair
amount of ***. What we can't have unfortunately
is a well optimised experience on the latest hardware because there's just too
many different variables out there. It's
kind of our Achilles heel within Android and it's something that I just wish
Google would find a way to solve it or at very least
find some way to start a standardization process around
3 or 4 socks which is our systems on a chip
it's what our processors, our GPUs, our memory systems,and everything like that
and find some way to work with the main manufacturers and standardise the
thing each year.
Do something to try and make sure that developers can have some dependability
on what they're targeting and when. Now, fair enough, it's not going to work for all third tier manufacturers
they'll always do their own thing anyway
but the likes of Samsung, HTC, Sony,
LG, these are big players in the market and it should be
reasonably easy to at very least get them to do some kind of standardisation or
publish their specs well in advance and their source codes for their chips so that
people can big end developers can
get a little bit more into the internals of these things and work out how
to get the power out.
Or where that bottleneck happens to be coming from so they can code round it.
A lot of the problems we have at the moment with games on Android is
you know a bottleneck for instance on the Exynos chip purely because the developer doesn't know
how to get around that problem because
Samsung haven't released source for instance. All of this makes a big difference to how well gaming
is going to develop on Android over the next few years and
for my mind it's going to develop beautifully. So we're coming to the end of the
show.
In next week's show we'll probably look at some hardware I think.
I've got this great Galaxy Note 8.0 here
you'll see my review I posted yesterday, I really enjoyed it apart from a few firmware
issues. We're going to be trying to bring in some additional people to talk
alongside myself because my throat gets a little bit dry trying to keep up a constant
pace
and thinking off the top of my head about what I'm going to be saying to you at the same time
talking over a bit of video footage so it would be nice to get some extra voices.
If you're the kind of person who likes to appear on YouTube or just wants to
have an opinion and voice it to the world, get in touch. You can
add us on Skype. Add Androidizen or contact us through our Google+ page
and you know we can Skype you in, add you in to the video feed as it were
and turn this into a really interesting show with a range of different views.
So please do get in touch and hope you enjoyed Androidizen live
Episode 3.