And don't miss Fabian Sanglard's review of the code. He was featured on HN recently for the reviews of the engine behind Another World/Out of this World and how it was ported to different platforms.
I don't think that's been the case for a long, long time. Almost every new game on modern consoles and PCs will see one (or many) updates in its lifetime. Game cartridges, things we used to think of as immutable, are merely storage devices for delivery of the original game code. Two recent games I purchased for the Nintendo Switch, on cartridge, both required a download before I could play them.
It does now. But will that be the case in the future? History seems to indicate that the interfaces and paradigms will continue to change. There will be an awkward period (now?) where you need to know both types of interfaces, but there may be a period where touch, voice, or other interfaces replace the now-archaic file cabinet metaphor that the desktop uses today. Look at Windows and all the metaphors that a child today has no context with which to relate: a manila folder, a file cabinet, a floppy disk, an address book, a wall calendar. It seems likely that this will change, and with it the need to understand today's (and that of the last 20-30 years) desktop computer.
FPGA still has some advantages over ASIC development:
- development speed of FPGA over the typical ASIC lifecycle is much shorter
- the ability to field-program and correct a design flaw can not only save expensive iterations, but also to add new hardware features essentially as a "firmware" upgrade (provided the FPGA in the system has extra capacity)
There will always be a place for ASIC, but FPGAs provide some capabilities that are not available (impossible?) for ASIC.
They've also lowered the price significantly since then. Entry-level units can be had for $199, much less than the $399/$499 launch prices of the PS4 and Xbox One, respectively.
http://fabiensanglard.net/second_reality/index.php