Are we on the brink of an inflection point in the console/PC market?

As PC prices drop and Console prices rise there comes a point where they cross, an inflection point. Where the price of a similar or higher spec. PC could be lower than a games console.

This is not even looking at the price performance of mobile devices and the rise of the $10-$100 computers.

Now there can be amazing benefits from building a system from the ground up to be a games console, compared to a generic PC. For instance you could have a combined CPU/GPU system with HBM 2+ memory running way faster than a PC with its PCI bus and DRAM subsystems.

However how long before PC's start adopting similar strategies, especially mobile computing devices.

Are we looking at the end of an era for the dedicated games console?

Or could the new performance demands from AR and VR come to the rescue or be their death knell?

 

Nope I think Consoles are always going to be there in some capacity.
Either as they are now, or with Steam OS. People want dedicated pre made systems and I can't see that going away any time soon. I don't believe they'll cross, perhaps they'll meet but I can't see consoles going beyond that.

Also I don't think VR is this new hit thing that everyone's excited about. I believe it's completely limited to some specific types of games that'll run out sooner or later. Space is too much of an issue to do anything exciting with it, unless all that's is required is for the player to be seated.

AR I am excited for but again I can't see it being gaming related, I think AR is going to be about Day to Day life rather than actual gaming at least related to Console and PC gaming.

 

Are you aware of CastAR?

More technical overview here

Think of what this will do to the board game market!

 

Do you know what the major problem with that graph is? Back in the 80s most gamers weren't buying PCs. They were buying Commodore 64s and other 8-bit gaming systems. Prices for those weren't anywhere near the top of that graph.

A far better graph would be one that resembles a triangle wave for the home computer line since the prices for home computers became absurd during the mid-90s when affordable competition to the PC and Mac completely disappeared.

 

Another main reason that the graph is total rubbish is that it fails to take into account the loss leading aspect of console manufacture, which makes it entirely irrelevant.

 

How do you figure? If console manufacturers are taking a loss already, then PCs getting cheaper than consoles will actually cut further into their profits (as they're forced to take bigger losses on the consoles and hope to make it up on game sales) if they want to continue. It's not going to be a happy time for the console makers.

 

Not gonna happen.

Right now one GPU for PC can cost more than the whole console, and let's not forget that OS like windows ain't free.

Also, it is not about specs. Consoles enjoy different architecture, and developing for them would have that amazing advantage where you don't have to deal with antivirus software, broken drivers and all that other PC-specific nonsense, plus you already know what hardware is available.

PC could use some dedicated walled-in gaming framework, but aside from that it'll be pretty much always at a disadvantage compared to consoles, regardless of hardware power.

I would advise to stop worrying and enjoy your life.

 

We'd have a much emptier General Discussion if that happened.

 

Ugh, one of the stupidest arguments that I hear far too often.

PC people have been saying "Consoles are Dead!" and "There won't be a next console generation!" since the days of SNES. And they've been wrong every time. They can wish it as hard as they want, but it's just not true.

Do you think Nintendo sold over 100 million Wiis by accident? That 40 million PS4s just accidently fell into people's shopping carts, and they just shrugged and bought them anyway?

These rumors are just spread by a very vocal minority of Dorito and Mountain Dew fueled MLG douchebags who are willing to drop $5k of their rich parents' money on RGB laden atrocities with PC parts in them that cost 10 times more than a PS4 and draw 5 times the amount of power just to play the same games you can play on PS4 with marginally better graphics and higher framerates.

Meanwhile, for people who have friends, they can just sit on the couch and play games together, in the same room! Or watch movies or TV shows on pretty much any streaming service in existance. And all this for the price of a GTX 1070, which by itself is a big useless brick.

This is all also posited on the faulty idea that you have to pick one or the other. They aren't mutually exclusive, you don't have to pick one over the other, and often times people have both, because they are different paradigms of play. Some people play games to be social in person, like Mario Party or Mario Kart or Tekken or Street Fighter. Playing on PC is a different experience entirely.

So on the eve of two new PS4 models being announced, the idea that consoles are going away is just hilarious to me.

 

It seems like you haven't been following developments lately, because you can put together a rather nice PC that's better than a PS4 for not much more money now. Sure, a lot of PC gamers decide to go further and spend a lot more (up to 3x as much!), but they very rarely reach the 10x level that you're claiming.

Plus, you can do a lot more with a PC, so that's pretty tempting as well.

If you start to consider that people probably have a PC *and* a console, then spending a little more for an upgraded PC that does it all starts to make even more sense.

Why do people buy so many consoles? Some do indeed go without a PC and are saving money, but many do it for the exclusives or convienence of living room gaming... Something that Steam's new Link product are making inroads into.

Don't even get me started on game prices and sales on PC vs consoles... If you're a frugal PC gamer, it's not hard to spend less per year over the life of the machine for a PC than a console, thanks to sales.

 

There are so many things wrong with that five minute chart that I don't even know where to begin attacking it but... but the one that says "smartphone" and explains the many reasons why wins

Smartphones are already killing consoles and PC:s will survive in one way or another due to our need for powerful development platforms, hardcore tasks and servers etc

Let the raging begin!

 

My brothers girlfriend doesnt have a computer she just uses her tablet. Look at the xbox and PS4 they are already going with iphone yearly upgrade plan

 

I know someone who had a computer, bought a tablet, and then proceeded to throw their computer away (they placed it in a recycling shed at the dumpster but same thing) because they decided the tablet was more than enough for them.

 

If anything I'd argue that we are going back to the time where only nerds have computers the golden era of gamers where it wasnt mainstream, and we wouldnt have as many indies.

 

Which would pretty much make them exactly what a PS4 or Xbox One is. They're just single-board x64 computers with their own OS.

 

This! And on that note I suspect that form factor is going to be more important moving forward than underlying technology, since (as noted) the underlying tech is very nearly 100% converged in any case.

The key difference of a PC is that you use it for lots of stuff, generally as some kind of "workstation". The key difference of a console is that it gets plugged into a TV in the lounge room and is about entertainment. Tablets are portable things that can do... whatever. Under the hood they are all very close to being able to run the same software, what matters more is how players want to use it and how developers want it used.

 

I don't have a problem with that.

What I meant is that it could be nice to have a software framework made for games specifically that would allow a game application to bypass most of overhead introduced by OS. For example, exclude game's open file operation from antivirus scan. Basically a faster sandbox or "walled garden", for games only. Something running within "the box" would not be able to affect environment outside of it, but get access to simpler/faster api.

Thinking about it, it'll be probably a "software console" of sorts.

 

Saying computers will replace consoles is like saying space heaters replace blankets. These are not mutually exclusive concepts where you MUST choose one, and only use one at a time. If I'm playing a game on my PS3, I have my laptop open next to me doing other stuff while I play during loading screens or down moments in gameplay. Maybe other people use a tablet instead, or even just their phone.

The point is, some people like playing with controllers, some people like playing with keyboard and mouse, some people like playing on touchscreens, some people like playing on table tops, hell, some people still play on arcade sticks at the arcade. One doesn't have to choose one and only play one forever, and people need to stop acting like this is the case.

 

This sounds exactly like what Ubuntu is trying to do with Snappy Packages for their programs.

I think Android kinda does that too technically.

 

I would say that the key reason to own a PC today is that you are doing intensive work or extreme gaming that require that extra horse power. A cheaper laptop or tablet can otherwise handle your workload and is portable as well. They are also portable and you can get a tablet with features that a PC doesn't have You can purchase a pre-built PC but you have to build it yourself to take advantage of its price benefit and many aren't interested to dive into that hardware jungle.

The console was the perfect solution for users that wanted advanced games but didn't want all that complicated PC stuff. Some also feel like they are working when they sit in front of a PC but they can relax in the living room. The problem is that smartphones and tablets are catching up to consoles in terms of performance...

Smartphones and tablets are also very capable work systems. There are many situations where I would get rid of the PC:s if I got to update how a company did stuff. My GF would definitely benefit from a MS Surface Pro as an economist, most of her tools are even cloud based already with web fronts...

As a designer; I can run between meetings, document, do concept stuff, programming and so on... on a 2-in-1 today. I even catch myself doing documentation stuff on my smartphone these days. They are just so practical :3 And I can run HeartStone when I need to relax for a moment

Looking forward to seeing what happens now that games make more use of Vulkan and smart-devices get more powerful. I wonder if it even makes more sense for me to switch soon and only leave a docking station on my desk in the future with an external GPU for rendering?

I got a controller hooked to my PC. I have a keyboard and mouse for my tablet. I wonder when I have a touch interface on my PC and laptop but probably soon but my tablet have it I can also hook up a gamepad to my tablet and link it to the TV for some big picture gaming.

We don't have to choose but many of the devices that we use today are starting to blend and the smallest devices are getting ridiculously powerful, really fast.

 

Consoles used to be loss leading, very loss leading. This practice has all but disappeared now with all console manufactures either breaking even or making a profit on console sales, that would affect the graph as shown. We can't be sure how much of the graphs curve is mitigated by that information, making the graph entirely useless.

Not to mention the fact that PC builds vary in specification and price so much, and the graph doesn't specify what it means in terms of 'PC Price'. The top end PC prices are vast (you could make a PC for 10's of thousands if you wanted). Consoles all cost a relatively similar amount. We also aren't told what kind of average is taken for these figures, or where the source data is from. I don't think I need to mention much more for people to realise that discussing such a ridiculous graph is completely pointless.

Edit: additionally, the console prices are incorrect when thinking about regions other than the US. Even when adjusting for tax and inflation (which it doesn't state if it is doing in the first place).

 

Did you just compare average PC prices and game console prices? Really?

You are aware that the whole roster of cheap ass PCs are filled with machines that cannot even keep up with a PS3 or XBOX 360 when it comes to gaming?

Yes, you can build a PC that can keep up with modern consoles for almost as cheap. But you will never, ever get it just as cheap until the consoles are becoming obsolete (which is around now for PS4 and XBox One, as the consoles were not really blazingly fast at launch, and this years 150$ Graphics cards can actually compete quite well with them).
And then we are only talking about BUILDING a rig. Pre assembled rigs usually are way more expensive than DIY (with some very few exceptions).


So no, you are wrong. At least in the sense that never, ever will gaming PCs become cheaper to buy than game consoles. That would mess up the console concept quite a lot. And you will never see ANY gaming PC being sold in enough big numbers to challenge consoles expected to sell in the 10's of millions over their lifetime on price.
If you order parts for 100k units produced in a quarter, you will get much better prices per unit than when ordering the parts for the maybe 1000 or so units Alienware sells of their overpriced gaming rigs. Which is one reason why they are pricey.


But: What we are already seeing is that console makers no longer are ready to suck up ANY cost as loss leaders. The current crop of Consoles were quite cheap to produce AFAIK. Still loss leaders, most probably. Compared to the last generation (custom Power PC CPUs for both, and the PS3 brought a quite expensive at the time blue ray player with it), both the PS4 and the XBox one were most probably cheap to produce. That was most probably the main reason to go with AMDs APU concept this time (which does bring quite some saving on the energy usage compared to separate CPU and GPU solutions, but mostly AMD was ready to make the semi-custom APUs at a very competitive price, at least that was the word on the street).
The whole move to x86, besides that being what AMD had to offer as a semi-custom solution, mainly makes sense to enable further cost cutting. When you choose x86, you already have plenty of hardware that is compatible, and a ton of competition when choosing vendors to provide the parts. Instead of having to design every part yourself, you can approach a vendor that has something close to what you need already, and ask them to modify it slightly to make it fit into your new console.
I might be going out on a limb here, but maybe that is why the XBox One is so stupidly large? Maybe they went with off the shelf parts at the time, and built the casing to fit the parts, not the other way around?

So yeah, if we are talking about PCs and Consoles getting closer to each other, this really is happening. I think every big console maker has had his own big failure by now, which has shown them that they better not take too much risk with fully custom, extremly loss leader hardware like the PS3, and rather go for a smaller scale risk like the PS4.

I would expect more and more interest in low price gaming PCs on the other hand, with Valve getting involved in that market, and Couch PC gaming now being more viable than ever, demand for fully assembled gaming PCs under 500$ will only rise in the future. Alienware has shown that it is possible with their Alpha. At least once that machine was sold as Steam machine and the additional cost of the Windows license was shed.

Will gaming PC Prices ever go as low as console prices? No, I don't think so. On the other hand, they don't need to. Because still the console makers want to recoup all loss leading they have done, as well as way higher overhead in designing a system that would be closed (compared to a PC), should be good for some years (again because of no tinkering possible), and needs a custom OS and UI. Thus higher game prices because of the licensing cost the console makers are collecting from their devs and publishers.

That might be nitpicking, but... a Surface Pro is a PC. A pretty powerful one at that, given MS used the midtier mobile intel chips, not the cheap and cheerful atom chips of the Surface non-pro.
Which are still leagues and bounds faster than current phone and mobile tablet chips, by the way.

So while it is true that the ARM devices are catching up to the current crop of MAINSTREAM x86 devices, this is only true because of the lacking competition in the mainstream x86 market, and the lacking need for faster PCs for end users at the moment.

If Zen from AMD proves to be a winner, expect Intel to pick up their pace fast again. non-mobile PC Hardware will once again leave the mobile parts in the dust.

Of course, we need to take into consideration that most of the innovation in the x86 space of the last years was in the mobile space. You cannot expect a 4 watts x86 SoC to run circles around a 4 watts arm SoC. The thing is, the x86 SoC is still faster today.
I guess ARM devices might close the gap to the low power x86 devices at some point.


But still, arm devices will not replace x86 in the near future. No chance. The whole design of the arm chips is around the idea of low power usage, not high performance. The fact that PCs (and maybe at some point Macs, if Apple finally comes to their senses) with windows on them are starting to replace tablets as some start finding the arm devices just to lacking in power and usability as work devices just shows that the "mobile revolution" that some people said would happen will most probably not happen, as PCs adapt.

I would say we rather see x86 phones and tablets pick up more paces as Windows, and maybe at some point MacOS adapts to become usable as both desk/laptop AND touch OS.
BECAUSE people are starting to expect their mobile devices to be more than just toys, and x86 is where their productivity apps are.

 

This is why I find this whole console war stupid. Its pretty just a glorified pissing contest between various console fanboys. Even people from MS have said console wars are pretty ridiculous. When I was younger I was primarily a Nintendo person. The first console I had was a Nintendo Gamecube which I played the heck out of. Then when my Gamecube broke we got a PS2 which I ended up enjoying. Then I got a Wii getting back into Nintendo again. A few years ago I started reading PC World at that time a friend of mine showed me his PC and Team Fortress 2 which intrigued me. Now when I was younger the majority of PC games I played tended to be edutainment games which a couple of exceptions such as the Sims and Sim City. When I was reading an issue of PC World I came across an article stating how to build your own PC. Thats how I got the idea to build a PC for myself so I could play games like TF2 which is how I discovered Steam. And that's how I became a PC gamer. These days I am primarily a Nintendo and PC person. Nintendo because I do love my Smash Bros, Mario, and Zelda and PC for pretty much everything else.

 

Nvidia did say that mobile GPU power is about 6 to 8 years behind PC GPU's.

Do you think the gap will close further and therefore a point when the next mobile device has equivalent or greater power than current gen consoles (assuming consoles keep a around the 6 year upgrade cycle)?

Will consoles start upgrading faster, or just become upgradable like PC's.

It also sounds like AR, VR and Automatic Car Driving Systems are going to be major drivers for future CPU/GPU performance.

Recently AMD speculated that for full AR presence (being there and not being able to tell your in AR) would take about 1 Petaflop in processing power. (by the way this is also where some scientists think we will hit the processing power needed to have Human level AI).

 

No... unless mobile devices either get big and spacious like console, so they can cram in the same hardware and have the same thermal headroom. Or consoles go extinct and thus are kind of frozen in their current settings.

Mobile hardware is not "magical". Given the stupidly thin and small casings, the small size and thermal headroom, it cannot physically compete with a console, or a gaming PC for that matter, as long these devices use same price tier hardware made in the same year.

Now, what COULD happen is that at some point game streaming gets fast enough so that it becomes mainstream. At that point bigger and better hardware will no longer be required for better graphics, as this is handled by the server. Instead, mobile devices will lag behind the then quite small consoles because of mobile network speed restrictions and physical controls.


AR, VR, and Selfdriving cars are currently the "fads of the year"... they are used to sell hardware and software, before anything else.
I get that at least VR seems to be very exciting, limited as it is currently. AR might be interesting, though I have my doubts if it will ever go beyond novelty concepts like Pokemon go.

Selfdriving cars... ugh. Yes, I trust machines way more than humans. Question is if I can trust their programmers?
I guess even if the technology is there (and given the amount of accidents still happening, its not), it will take decades for the human society to get anywhere NEAR accepting giving machines full control of a device that can kill a human.

Will these fads (that might turn out to be longlasting trends, or not) drive development in the shortterm? Maybe. But only because the general public is currently quite excited about these new technologies. They might tire of them before they start to come into their own.
For example, by when will we see a VR title that can REALLY sell the Occulus rift to more than just early adopters? By when will we get a device which amends the shortcomings of the V1 device, AND bring down the price of ownership to a level that the mainstream can afford?
Will that mainstream by then still be interested in VR?

But I am going off on tangents now....

 

You're right, consoles aren't going away, but the rage coming from the other direction is just as boisterous and just as wrong. Since the N64 came out, and with every successive console release, consolites have been claiming PC gaming is going to die.

The notion that PC gaming and console gaming are incapable of existing in the same universe is flawed.

For every one of those douchebags, there is an equal or greater soda-sucking COD douchebag screaming at an 8-year-old from the comfort of his mother's basement.

 

I wholeheartedly agree.

 

Sony just announced the PlayStation 4 Pro for $400. It's coming out November 10th.

http://kotaku.com/playstation-4-pro-announced-1786337093

We'll have to wait and see. I'm expecting something along the lines of Intel's Tick-Tock approach where substantial changes are made to the hardware (processor and graphics architecture, memory type, etc) during the Tick cycle followed by minor improvements (clock speeds, graphics core increases, etc) during the Tock cycle. With four years between these.

 

Anyone else offended by the OP's misuse of the term inflection point?

I don't give two hoots about the price of consoles versus the price of PCs. But if you are going to give me a graph with a title 'inflection point' make sure there is an actual inflection point on the graph.

At best this graph shows a possible future intersection point.

 

No. I stopped expecting any real accuracy or knowledge from the OP a while ago.

 

In many countries average Pc and consoles are the same price since decades ago.

 

I doubt we will see console hardware become user upgradable, since one of the major draws for console users is the ability to hook it up and expect it to just work. Most console owners don't want to consider the option to manually upgrade hardware components, and they definitely would not want a market where it was not clear that their favorite games would work on a custom console configuration. Similarly, most console developers don't want to deal with a bunch of different possible hardware configurations.

What consoles will do in the future is make it easier to replace the existing console with a newer/faster console and keep all of the user's existing legacy games. Microsoft Project Scorpio will be an example of this. When consoles can retain all of the user's legacy games automatically, a lot of console owners will happily buy a new console more often.

 

I'm just waiting for reverse compatibility on PS4. I think 3 of the last 5 games I've played recently were PS1 games, 2 of which on their original disks, the PS4 being unable to play PS1 game is massively disappointing to me.

I'd be willing to pay a premium for a version of the PS4 Pro that could play every game in the Playstation catalog, from PS1 to PS4. That would be such a huge selling point to so many people. How great would it sound to be able to say "Nearly 5000 titles available on Playstation Store." or whatever it is, I know the total number of PS1, PS2, PS3 and now PS4 games combined is a mind boggling number. PS2 alone had nearly 2000 games.

I only bothered with PS3 because the 60GB reverse compatible model existed, so I could play PS1, PS2, and PS3 disks on one system.

 

I've bought say maybe 5 music CDs in the past 10 years but much more music than that. I think it's safe to say consoles as they are made now are on their way out and cutting edge console gamers can hear jokes about the technology in their antiquated gaming systems. Not that that the extra plastic used to make them is especially expensive but fewer assembly lines means fewer employees and bigger profits and the bigger graphics IR&D is going into low-energy mobile devices not gaming consoles anymore.

 

How long ago did they say that exactly? Mobile GPU's in laptops have pretty much caught up to their desktop counterparts. They aren't exactly "big" either, major issue is they are RIDICULOUSLY expensive.. Like we're talking between the (advertised $700.00 "cough yeah, right") and the actual around $1000.00 price tag.. Well with the price of phones nowadays, what's an extra $1000.00 right?

If the rumours are to be believed, the next gen of consoles GPU's will be able to take on the old gen Titan. With that said it's not mobile GPU power that's the issue, it's everything else that comes with it. Apparently the 1080M (founders edition) has had some pretty bad cooling issues.

Imagine sticking that into a mobile phone, it would run out of battery in ten minutes. But that's fine, because it would of set on fire long before it.

 

He's referring to mobile chipsets for phones and tablets.

 

Actually they much surpass in computer power per dollars spent and the gap between desktops & consoles and mobile devices have decreased from 6 - 8 years to 2 -3 years and getting less all the time because that's where the majority of buyers are.

It is expensive to buy something like the Titan 1080 Pascal or whatever they call it only to find out there are no renderers or game engines that support that GPU tech's special ability to overpromise and underperform immediately anyway and when they do in a year or two, well mobile has caught up again.

 

High end PCs are not around $500. It's not that PCs are getting cheaper, but 'slower' PCs are more than enough for what most people need.

The rule is still more or less you get what you pay for. A $500 PC wont compete with next generation of consoles.

 

Yeah, that's sometimes the cost of a high end GFX card only.

 

And you can still buy vinyls and brand new turntables to play them on. What's your point?

Some people like older technology because it gives them a certain experience they enjoy.

I still play my old Nintendo and Sega carts, even if I could play most of those games in free online emulators, the experience just isn't the same.

 

Well, obviously.. Hence why I said multiple times "Mobile phone" in my response . Point was, there's "mobile" GPU's already out there to rival the top end tier of graphics. They can fit in the palm of your hand, again it's not the GPU's that are the issue, it's cost and things like heat dissipation.

But that's of course changing, like the well known demo of BF4 a while back on a Nvidia Shield phone. Epic running some of their demo's on mobiles and as @goat says the gap is closing. At one point laptop GPU's / console GPU's were nowhere near as powerful, hence the comparison.. They either are now or about to be!.

Still not sure how I'd feel about using a phone / tablet in the future as a full gaming rig, well if you could stick a controller and display port cable it'd probably be fine. I bet that's where we'll eventually end up..

 

I'll confess that I stopped reading when I saw "laptop".

 

True, but you don't generally need a high end graphics card to match what we see on consoles. People who feel the need for high end graphics cards are generally those who like to "max" their game settings, which just isn't a thing on a console - the developers design and tune for the target hardware, and what you get is what you get.

 

True, but that has always been the case. I mean my main issue is with that graph.

I don't know about before `95 but at least after that the prices have more or less remained the same. A "high end" computer would cost ~1000$ and you could build a decent machine for ~500-600$ (which would be very roughly equivalent to a console at the time). It's the same now.

I mean I know I was playing Tomb Raider 1 on a PC in 96. My computer didn't cost 1500$ (which it should according to that graph), it cost like a third of that. Tomb Raider was also a PS1 game. It ran a bit better on my computer.

So I don't know what that graph shows us. How did they pick those prices? What kind of machines cost that? How powerful were they at the time?

 

Just stumbled over this in an old copy of PC Magazine. That right-most quote is just hilarious.



My parents purchased used computers up until ~1995 when they paid entirely too much ($3,200) for a Gateway 2000 that had a Pentium 200, 64MB memory, an S3 Virge VX 8MB, and a 3.2GB HDD. I don't recall the specs for the monitor it came with. Just that it was heavy and it had these two somewhat visible wires across the screen.

 

Oh, I absolutely agree the graph is useless. I was just saying that the oft-made observation that "just a video card can cost more than that" is also not very useful - video cards at that price range are poor comparisons because they're so much more powerful, and at the other end of the scale plenty of games run just fine without need for any kind of dedicated GPU.

 

We are in agreement. And I agree that my statement is useless -> I guess I was trying to make an equally useless counterpoint to the graph, trying to highlight the uselessness of it all!

 

No, they haven't. True, energy consumption has been a major topic for the GPU manufacturers in the last few years, as has size, to the point where the biggest GPUs put into laptops are actually quite similar to the midrange and performance desktop parts.

But:
- you will never ever see an enthusiast GPU in a laptop. These GPUs are built to use 250 watts and more. They are big, and running hot. They are build to run as fast as possible, not as efficient as possible. No Titan X (P) or GTX 1080 Ti, no Vega 11 based GPU in your laptops. The laptop class GPUs might catch up in a year or two when that class of performance moves down to the more energy efficient midrange and performance cards. Not before then though.
- The GPUs used in laptops are still not 100% on par with their desktop parts. True, the mobile GTX 1070 has some more shader cores (not many, around 5% if memory serves me right)... but don't expect it to run anywhere near the stock boost of 1.7 GHz the GTX 1070 can happily run under 100% of the time, or the OCed boost of over 2 GHz that again, the card can run at 100% of the time because the chip actually does not get that hot.
I am not sure, but AFAIK the clocks have been considerably cut. I guess there is no way to cool such a card in a laptop, nor do you want over 150 watts of TDP.

So basically, the laptop GPUs are no longer the laughing stock of their desktop counterparts, and severly neglected by the GPU makers.
However they are still ranking below their non-mobile counterparts in power, save in some special cases where a desktop part has been modified to fit a laptop (MXM verison of last gens GTX 980 that came out at the end of the gen), or a laptop has been built around a desktop GPU. In both cases, expect the already short battery time of gaming laptops, and the massive and loud cooling systems needed to be even more amplified.

Because the old gen titan is pretty much old news by now. By 2016 standarts, its below performance level performance, seeing how the GTX 1070 beats the old titan most of the time (unless massively overlocked, and then this is not the performance we are talking about).
PS4 Pro (or Neo, as it was called before) Performs below an AMD RX 470*. That is a 200$ midrange card. More than enough for 1080p/60Hz, not enough for 4k (thus the PS4 Pro relying on upscaling for 4k). Not anywhere near the old Titan.

* PS4 Pro has the shader count of an RX480, but sheds at least 25% of clockspeed. Meanwhile, RX470 runs at the same clocks as a RX480, just sheds about 14% of shader cores.... which seems to be about the difference between the two cards. So its safe to assume PS4 Pro will be slower than an AMD RX470.

XBox scorpio is rumoured to be around 6 TFlops... now, given that is still an AMD APU, I would expect it to perform in the region of the RX 480, maybe slightly above. Remember, in the current APIs the AMD chips are nowhere near bringing their TFlops count on the road thanks to underpowered front- and backends, so unless the XBOX Scorpio is built with a massively increased front/backend, mimicking the stronger non-core resources of the Nvidia cards, OR XBOX one games taking advantage of the async compute advantage of the AMD GPUs under DX12/Vulkan, still not exactly titan beating.


If we are talking about new consoles in 3-4 years... yeah, the last gen titan will be even older news by then. But again, I expect the most expensive gaming PCs to beat the consoles by providing 3x-4x the GPU power. Which is kinda expected given even the GPUs alone cost 2x-3x what a console costs.

Which exactly why we can expect big gaming PCs to always run circles around consoles and gaming laptops, which in turn will run circles around mobile devices.

As long as we still need compute power in the physical device (as opposed to moving that to the cloud), there is a physical hard cap on how fast a machine can get.
Bigger will always be better because of heat, thetered will always be better because of battery size and mobile network speed limitations.

 

There are laptops that have the desktop 980, so... Don't know what you're talking about.

 

That is a performance chip, not an enthusiast chip.

165 Watt TDP vs 250 Watt TDP. ~2000 shaders vs ~3000 in the Titan/GTX 980 Ti.

That is what I am talking about. Don't get me started how late in the gen the mobile GTX 980 came out, or how laptops with that card were big and loud, not to mention with rather short battery life. More of a desktop replacement than a laptop.