The poultry industry sells 19 million chickens each day every day, each year every year, in the US alone.

It's good to be on top of the food chain, but on an emotional level when I think of how our species has applied industrial production techniques to other living creatures I can't help feeling a little sad. Now what's for dinner ?

I totally agree, but that part of my brain is unable to overcome the fact that they are delicious.

Yes, the PS4 is suffering because you need very large pockets to own one.

How in the world is that a valid comparison? Are you under the impression that the high end console market is as big as the high end cell phone market?

It's actually not about the hardware. It's about the games, movies, music and series.

Sony is not aiming just for the 'console' market.

They are in fact aiming for the console market. Hell, the PS4 doesn't even play MP3's and has no appreciable network media sharing features. If you compare the PS4 to the last iteration it is obvious that they have backpedaled from the media center mentality.

They haven't so much back-pedaled as prioritized gaming above media functionality for launch. All those missing features will come in future updates.

Yeah, I know they'll be patching some things in, but those features were not emphasized at all during the marketing blitz. It has been all about gaming.

They were trying to push Bluray as a media format when the PS3 was released, having the PS3 act as a media center meant more people would buy Bluray movies.

This time, HD-DVD is dead, and everything in your living room already plays streaming media, so it's not much of a selling point.

Iphone games cost how much? A dollar? 5 dollars? 10? Console games start around $60 and people willingly pay for DLC and services that are far more expensive than most iphone content.

The biggest entertainment launch in history, in terms of revenue, was GTA V, a console video game which brought in nearly a billion dollars in one weekend.

vs 187123 oranges per day

Yeah, I got the latest Orange, the games on it were the pits!

iPhone models have a lifespan of 1 year. Game console models have a life span of 6-7 years.

The typical cycle is 2 - 3 years.

Smartphones ARE game consoles.

Snark Mode On:

Right. Let me know how Battlefield 4, Team Fortress, Uncharted, Halo, Call of Duty, et al, are working out for you in a 4 inch screen with touch controls.

Wake me up when your iPhone has almost 2 TFLOPs of computing power and delivers games with 25Gb of graphical content.

Smartphones replace game boys and PS Vitas for casual gamers, they don't replace console and desktop PC gaming by a long shot.

But yeah, Candy Crush Saga and Angry Birds run great.

When was the last time 100,000 people tuned in on Twitch.tv for someone to play a mobile game?

Yeah, this isn't the first time I've seen this kind of comparison. I can only assume it is made by people who simply don't know anything about the gaming industry. These are the same people who think that the desktop is doomed.

General tech nerds seem to look at the raw profits of mobile games and assume that console and PC games must surely be dead, without actually looking into the details of the market.

It's not a zero sum game, and it's not an either/or. There's no meaningful segment of the gaming industry that's declining in absolute numbers (most are growing at varying rates), it's just that the industry has been exploding over the past 15+ years, and each segment is now a smaller slice of a much bigger pie.

Not quite 100000, but 1000 people are watching one guy play clash of clans right now on twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Clash%20of%20Clans

Currently 47000 for the final of a Starcraft 2 competition : http://www.twitch.tv/taketv (HomeStory Cup VIII)

Um, no, they're not. At least, they're not in terms of their target market. You cannot compare a smart phone to a PS4 or XBox. One is for people who play Candy Crush in their off minutes, the other is for people who play CoD for 12 hours straight. Sure, there is overlap, but this is like comparing a Toyota Tercel to a Ferrari because "they're both cars".

And the typical cycle is not 2-3 years. It has been 6-7 years for the last few generations. Not sure you even play console games...

Now we are into semantics.

They are a threat to traditional game consoles; yes.

They don't have the uniformity-over-time of game consoles, but they do have large distribution.

Written like a true mobile games ad trafficker!

In the same way a Playstation is a telephone.