Real performance - under real practical situations (ie- Take into consideration battery expectancy under driven conditions..)..

Any of the standard PC like benchmarks adapted to be used to generate any metrics.?? Are they relevant?

Ive been considering the idea of using smartphones and tablets as addon useability for MMORPGs.

Face it, you do alot of mundane stuff that ISNT glitzy 3D (bank/inventory/crafting/auction-house/etc...) and alot of people would possibly have some time 'on the go' to do such stuff and leave more 'main computer' gaming time for the heavy effects/rendering adventuring part of the game.

Mini-games (that tie into the MMORPGs game World) is another area that could fit this secondary access model and they become more interesting/entertaining with 3D animation.

Its just how many of these things yet have any real capability (need a decent median target hardware to get enough players able to use something a bit more than a 20 year old style). Graphics still largely done by CPU ? GPU still less capable than the default intel MB graphics processor ?? Little dedicated graphics memory ? etc...

Target say 5 years off. Is it likely for the abilities (again median HW target - dont want to target expensive 'gaming' handhelds) ) to get much better (or will the physical limitations just curtail much further abilities ?)

MMORPGs still have alot of potential if they can get past the 15 year old fossilized model the risk asdverse companies employ. Use of smartphone/tablets would likely be part of their future.

I'd describe the mobile hardware as comparable to computers from about eight to ten years ago. It's a rough ballpark and a very imperfect analogy, but basically the things we were doing in graphics circa 2005 work great on the mobile chips now. That's around the timeframe of the Xbox 360 release and puts games like Half Life 2 within reach, so it's not a trivial amount of processing power by any means. I think it's reasonable to assume a similar trajectory of evolution, with the caveat that mobile is already running fully unified shader GPUs and so they're actually doing a little better than PC hardware in that sense.

Right, the general rule thus far is that the mobile architectures are pretty thoroughly modern, but that their rendering throughput is limited in a way that's comparable to ~8 year old hardware. Basically, that due to the smaller power envelope and necessarily smaller physical size, they have fewer transistors to spend, but that they spend them in generally the same way that modern desktop and notebook GPUs do.

This also impacts their compute abilities, in that some architectures (Tegra 3, 4), sacrifice the internal precision necessary for them to be generally useful for offloading non-graphics calculations. Some are beginning to offer the necessary precision, and to be certified for things like OpenCL, but they are relatively few today.

I'd describe the mobile hardware as comparable to computers from about eight to ten years ago. It's a rough ballpark and a very imperfect analogy, but basically the things we were doing in graphics circa 2005 work great on the mobile chips now. That's around the timeframe of the Xbox 360 release and puts games like Half Life 2 within reach, so it's not a trivial amount of processing power by any means. I think it's reasonable to assume a similar trajectory of evolution, with the caveat that mobile is already running fully unified shader GPUs and so they're actually doing a little better than PC hardware in that sense.

That would be for latest and greatest tablets (which capabilities might be available to 'average' smartphones half a decade on)

Also thats Half Life 2 'running', but lower-end settings (Return to Wolfenstein at high/decent frame rate might be more expected example?? - which is actually alot gamewise)

And with the high utilization (all cores/GPUs going ) burn rate, will batteries last long enough (though the 'on the go' use-case Im thinking of would be 15-60 minutes) . The target would be ordinary devices without significant extra inconveniences require to enable casual use.

Nazi Zombie mode CoD .... hmmm

I realize that mini-games usually are limited as secondary (when companies have enough trouble developing/sustaining the primary game) but this fits in with (future) new generation games with a massive player created asset component (thats why I push it out 5-10+ years) where there will be alot most 'stuff' to peruse and peoples gaming time will probably be broken up even more than today (hence a need for more/integrated 'mobile' use).

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I was justt considering some more and we might need 5-10 years to get some of the ergonomic issues (display and input) -- a seperate issue....

I dont know about you but Im getting older and holding one of those tiny things infront of my face to see sufficently (and for a duration) a decent FPS game AND work game controls a bit more complex than fingerpainting on the screen --- they will have up with some clever stuff to push that kind of useability forward.

As far as the device capabilities, I agree with the above posters. It would be kind of like a sleek new Maserati stuck with an older V4 engine. You get the new shaders and graphics API etc... but just don't have the speed(CPU or GPU) that you get with PCs. Even the newest Samsung GS4's CPU still doesn't match up to a PC. It has a quad-core snapdragon running at 1.9 Ghz. And that 1.9 Ghz isn't like a slow i3, rather more like the Intel Atom, or maybe Quad-Core Pentium 4(that never happened), simply due to needing to be power efficient.

As far as the "average" device running such a game(or even the mini-games) I doubt it. But depending on your target, I think you'd be fine. Most casual games run on anything, and "HD AAA" games need the newest hardware. Casual gamers would have just whatever, and the gamers targeted by the AAA hardcore games or more likely to have that higher-end hardware. This would apply to tablets, etc... too, although the growth curve(both users and device capabilities) is lower, so while hardcore "normal" games are certainly viable already, MMO type games may not be just yet due to lack of target audience, even the newer devices are certainly capable of rendering such things.

There are already MMOs on mobile devices and there are already some games on these devicess that outperform the graphics quality that is on some of the games released on the current generation of consoles or PCs.

The only problem is that these games do not sell very well because people do not have the time to sit playing them on a mobile device. Mobile gamers prefer short 2 minute bursts of gaming.

The successfull mobile MMOs i've seen are pretty much only using indirect interaction between players (Which makes it doubtful if they really can be considered MMOs), the OP however was talking about using a mobile/tablet app as an addon to a desktop MMO,

WoW allready does this (allowing players to buy things from the auctionhouse, chat with their friends/guildmates, etc using their phones) and could probably do their pet battle thingy on mobiles aswell (it sounds as if it works in a way that could play out fairly well with high latency 3G connections and short 1-2 minute play sessions)

Yes, this isnt a full MMORPG but secondary utilization component for when the players HAVE to be away from their gaming machines, but still can fit in some(many?) minutes here and there during their days to offload more mundane game operations (interesting the WOW has auction house access - of course of anyone they had the money to develop/add that feature). The time offset also plays into some game mechanisms where things 'grow' with time and players periodic attention could be utilized.

The mini-games would mostly be chunk Download and Play, because of the connection difficulties which really arent going away (plus maybe the minute cost for a subset of the users.)

2D 2.5D interaction could be run on very low end systems (platform compatibility issues of course) Resolution used for 'pretty' versus pixel search or high accuracy aiming.

3D for the more powerful ones (and for midrange in the future timeframe of several years) and it sounds like quite alot of decent performance will be there for that eventually.

One of the design features is Players having a personal NPC Team to do more tedious things which the player coordinates -- not micromanage (and somewhat better AI to make them do things needing to be done if player opts out ) So checking regularly the progress and redirecting tasks would be part of the use (benefits in the FPS-end PC/console priimary game).

The Player Created Content aspect would allow for many more Mini-games to exist (and even more scenario creation for existing ones) Again the activities feeding back results of the play effort into the primary game. Various media creations within the game (like choreographed flashback 'experiences' ) would be another item delivered by tablet/smartphones (minimal interface interaction and lump/bufferstream downloads)

Another issue --- the data allowance some of these device connection service deals have (competition will largely ( ? )) fix that driven by the normal media people watch thru these things)

The MMORPG Im forseeing is not the FPS on a bigger map most MMORPGs are these days, and wont be a big hit with attention deficit 14 year olds, but have a much higher detail and interactive world (the Player Creation part adds alot to people starved of ways to employ their imagination).

The tools/modularity/player dev involvement themselves could make niche genere MMORPGs more likely by bringing down the costs (Seriously, companies HAVE to break out of this spiral into dumbness/pablum weve seen happen).

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