[liolio]

Imo 5 years so about two new generations of lithography is the best time half life for the product from a costumer pov.
After that even something powerful start to be disconnected from technology advancements.
5 YEARS is still plenty of time so you don't feel caught into an endless cycle of upgrade or feel ripped.
Definitely I disagree with this idea of "mega system in dreadful form factor that should last for ten years". Neither Ms or SOny planned for deferred rendering to become predominant in 3d engine, luckily the system could cope with it, what if a game changer happens during your well planned "ten years plan?
Think indeed stack memory wide IO, etc. If they can't make it into the systems and become available 1 or 2 years after your product launch? Your product is to look obsolete and you may never recover your massive investment.
NVidia and AMD would jump in instantly in thye PC world, then you have Apple with its way shorter product life (Apple tv is updated often), and you don't know what supporters of Android could decide to do.

10 years life cycle and massive investmenst are calling for black swan imo.

[dragonelite]

Originally Posted by tongue_of_colicab

Ah cloud gaming... can't wait for that one to die a fast death.

It's bad value for consumers. Montly subsription and no way to resell your games? Not to mention you don't actually own anything. Buy a console and games and you can still use it 10 years from now. Not to mention that eg a onlinve box costs you 100 and another 10 a month for the subsciption and you might as well buy a console.

And than we are not even talking about the fact you need a good connection (which a lot of people dont have, or the extra costs if you need to upgrade), that what I read from it most of the time games don't really look better than the current console games (and that is 7 year old hardware!) and why for the love of god would anybody want to look at shitty compressed images on his/her big screen tv?? Lets go back in time and look at shitty vhs quality imagaes instead of super crisp images.

Can't believe people are falling into that trap.

Ooh this soo much. If console gaming goes cloud im out.
I even had troubles with Steam at the start not really owning physical copies at the start but then the sales make it all worth and it is valve. Cloud gaming goes couple of steps beyond that where you dont even own the hardware or the software but only a box that can decrypt en decode a stream of data with probably shitty IQ.

[french toast]

Originally Posted by dragonelite

Ooh this soo much. If console gaming goes cloud im out.
I even had troubles with Steam at the start not really owning physical copies at the start but then the sales make it all worth and it is valve. Cloud gaming goes couple of steps beyond that where you dont even own the hardware or the software but only a box that can decrypt en decode a stream of data with probably shitty IQ.

Just as people had trouble switching from records to tapes and cd's...if every available option is cloud..then it will be successfull.

[Jedi2016]

The OnLive system won't work for consoles. Yes, you'll have to buy the box, but it'll be a lot cheaper than a full-on console will cost. I don't think they'll be able to handle a monthly subscription, though, not for just being able to play the games. The service will have to be free, they'll just have to recoup the costs through the purchase of the hardware and the games, and other online services like multiplayer (like Xbox Live does now).

Digital distribution itself isn't an issue, we're already there. I'm normally a proponent of physical products as well, but I find it's less and less of an issue with games.. the DVD is only used to install, and just sits on my shelf afterwards, forever. How is that different from Steam?

As for IQ, I don't think there's much to worry about there. From actual hands-on reviews I've seen of OnLive, it really isn't the issue that people were expecting it to be. Besides, we're a little jaded here, on this forum of all places. The average gamer doesn't notice or care.

The problem will be the scope. Current cloud services are tiny compared to what would happen with an entire line of consoles. Millions of concurrent users, all playing different games. The infrastructure to handle that throughput would be enormous. It's possible, just not yet.

[DoctorFouad]

Originally Posted by Jedi2016

No, it was merely misunderstood.

The problem is how people interpreted that statement. A ten-year life cycle simply means that it will continue to be manufactured and supported, and games will continue to be made for it, for ten years.

What it does not mean, and has never meant, was that it would be ten years before the next Playstation came out.
.

I dont agree at all, the 10 year life cycle kutaragi plan meant clearly before any next gen hardware would be introduced. It was an objective, a goal, it means if ps3 would last 8 years ot would be great, 9 years even better, and 10 years it would be perfect for the plan.

I dont get it how people misunderstood the 10 year life cycle as another ps2 era, of course ps3 was meant to last longer than ps2....

[french toast]

4g will be widespread in 5-6 years with likely speeds of 50-100mbps or higher for millions of people.

Don't forget you have not just got the cost of designing and bill of materials of a new generation of console, but your install base re starts at zero...with online scenario it could gently switch over to a steam like setup allowing for infrastructure to get better with instant install base of millions.

I'm not sure about it needing to be free? But the industry is already moving to a free model..advertising (+shady data collection)
I envisage a spotify like scenario where it's free for a trial period with ads, or free with limited usage with adds with a full upgrade to monthly subscription on offer.

It makes sense for everyone...the marks against it are infrastructure which will be better...and the traditionals who don't like digital....we have seen what happens to the wants of traditionals when new technology enters

[joker454]

Originally Posted by Grall

Not sure what good exactly that will do anyone. A phone and a gaming-rig PC are many (well, ok then, many many many many) orders of magnitude apart in performance. They also differ completely in memory and storage capacity, input methods and so on. You can't actually develop any serious games that fit all of these diverse platforms - a hypothetical windows 8 console falling somewher in the middle of the spectrum, with yet another different set of hardware capabilities and input methods, with controllers and kinect being added to the existing mix.

So unless all you do are zynga and popcap type games, this won't actually help.

Microsoft going with the same Win8 core on phone to me is an indication that they will almost certainly do it on the next console as well. Having that unified platform effectively eliminates the concept of "console cycle" completely. A publisher is never in the console launch position anymore which is the worst place to be financially. It's effectively roulette, you have to spend a fortune in time and money to learn a whole new machine and create new product, and launch your product on a platform with few people on it and hope enough people buy it so you don't go broke and can make second and third products where you eventually may make money, it's terrible. As a final kick in the nuts you can't leverage that work on other platforms without spending more time and more money to re-write it all. That risk will be significantly reduced now because you can more easily target more devices and larger audiences all the time and not just at the end of a console cycle when enough people have finally bought the box. It will also let you leverage your dev teams better. For example you don't need to hire "phone coders" anymore. If there is some downtime between console projects then you can shift some coders on phone projects since it's all the same dev platform anyways hence all your console coders are now also phone coders, tablet coders, etc. Or if your attempt at breaking into the console market failed, rather than go bankrupt you can shift focus to phones or tablets and convert your games to work there. I think you're understimating the benefit of having phones be the same code path as all the other devices. To me that will accelerate phone app development since it will be easier and cheaper for devs to leverage codebases to phones.

[Gubbi]

That's how I see it too. It gives games a much longer tail end in sales.

You launch on console and PC. Two to three later the same game will be running on tablets/portables, and one to two years later than that it will be running on phones.

Cheers

[JB9861]

Originally Posted by french toast

Internet will be rapidly improving with download/upload speeds gaining massive ground, alongside better latency and easier coverage thanks the 4g.

.

4G is useless in America for the cloud because of data caps, throttling, coverage, and price.

[TurnDragoZeroV2G]

Originally Posted by tongue_of_colicab

Ah cloud gaming... can't wait for that one to die a fast death.

It's bad value for consumers. Montly subsription and no way to resell your games? Not to mention you don't actually own anything. Buy a console and games and you can still use it 10 years from now. Not to mention that eg a onlinve box costs you 100 and another 10 a month for the subsciption and you might as well buy a console.

And than we are not even talking about the fact you need a good connection (which a lot of people dont have, or the extra costs if you need to upgrade), that what I read from it most of the time games don't really look better than the current console games (and that is 7 year old hardware!) and why for the love of god would anybody want to look at shitty compressed images on his/her big screen tv?? Lets go back in time and look at shitty vhs quality imagaes instead of super crisp images.

Can't believe people are falling into that trap.

Agreed. There's another point that bothers me more than IQ, though. I tried Gaikai just a week ago (with the Bulletstorm demo). I deliberately chose a bad case, because while I love non-shooters, there's definitely no way I want to give up the shooters either. The IQ really bothered me, of course, but I know many won't care. It's the lag that was atrocious. I deliberately bought a TV that would cut input lag because I can't stand it in games, and.... I found this demo unplayable. My internet service isn't incredible by any means (12Mbps down, 1Mbps up, ~50ms ping on closest speedtest servers), yet that's the best I've ever had, in terms of latency. I'll never switch my main gaming to this kind of method, and I hope it never catches on with the core markets.

As far as the power of the next gen consoles themselves, I will be very disappointed if they go the under-powered route on a 7-9 year lifecycle. Incremental updates every few years might be acceptable, but not a repeat of this gen with weaker hardware from start to finish). I'd eventually buy the next boxes if that's what happened, but I'm not shelling out that money so soon for a media box that also happens to play games. I'd gladly pay a premium for these features on top of a strong gaming console, but not a media center with tacked on gaming abilities. But of course that separates me from the majority, where the latter is probably a far easier product to justify buying.

[joker454]

Originally Posted by Gubbi

That's how I see it too. It gives games a much longer tail end in sales.

You launch on console and PC. Two to three later the same game will be running on tablets/portables, and one to two years later than that it will be running on phones.

What I'm also wondering is would some publishers go simultaneous console and tablet release for some games. The Win8 Pro tablets all have hdmi out and support the 360 controller out of the box, so one can just plop their tablet on the tv rack, plug in the hdmi cable and play games on the couch via their 360 wireless controller, all standard. What I'm wondering is if given the choice of spending $400 to buy a new console to play a new game with better graphics, or skipping that option and playing the same game with lesser graphics on their existing tablets, which way would people go? Those tablets will have ivy bridge level of graphics, so more or less current gen level of graphics. That may be good enough for some. The good news there is that whatever the user chooses means much larger audience for the publishers since ok maybe there wil only be a million or so next gen consoles at launch in 2013, but there may be 10 million Win 8 Pro tablet users so they have an instant audience. My gut is telling me will will definitely see some games release simultaneously with console and tablet support...at least that's what I would do That way if the console version tanks, maybe tablets game sales could save the company. It's a nice way to reduce the risk.

[Schaden]

Originally Posted by babcat

3) GPU technology is progressing rapidly. If poor graphics technology is put into the PS4 and the next XBox it will become outdated extremely quickly. When I say poor, I mean anything less than the best single GPU that Nvidia or ATI has to offer today.


- Power usage. I think the systems will both consume around 300 to 350 watts each, and probably will not come in small cases. I think they may be slightly larger than the PS3 and the XBox 360, and will have complex cooling solutions.

I think the best single GPUs out today use your entire theoretical next gen console's power budget. In other words, it's not happening. The rumor I keep hearing is 1.8TF for PS4 and 1-1.5 TF for X720. That's long ways off from today's best single GPUs.

[babcat]

A custom 680GTX at 20NM might only consume 200 watts and the other 150 watts could be divided up between two cell processors and everything else.

[BRiT]

Originally Posted by babcat

A custom 680GTX at 20NM might only consume 200 watts and the other 150 watts could be divided up between two cell processors and everything else.

Are you honestly expecting nextgen console(s) to consume 350 Watts?

[Ninjaprime]

Originally Posted by babcat

A custom 680GTX at 20NM might only consume 200 watts and the other 150 watts could be divided up between two cell processors and everything else.

So you really think they're going to make a console thats twice as loud/hot as 360 was? Not a chance IMO.

[tongue_of_colicab]

Originally Posted by french toast

4g will be widespread in 5-6 years with likely speeds of 50-100mbps or higher for millions of people.

Don't forget you have not just got the cost of designing and bill of materials of a new generation of console, but your install base re starts at zero...with online scenario it could gently switch over to a steam like setup allowing for infrastructure to get better with instant install base of millions.

I'm not sure about it needing to be free? But the industry is already moving to a free model..advertising (+shady data collection)
I envisage a spotify like scenario where it's free for a trial period with ads, or free with limited usage with adds with a full upgrade to monthly subscription on offer.

It makes sense for everyone...the marks against it are infrastructure which will be better...and the traditionals who don't like digital....we have seen what happens to the wants of traditionals when new technology enters

4g is going to be ass for gaming. I live in Japan atm and I have a LTE pocket wifi device thats rated at 75mbps, so pretty much what you are talking about. Now never mind that you don't actually get 75mbps, you'll get 5 if you are lucky in the evening hours, also never mind data caps in most parts of the world, what do you think lag is going to do? Cloud gaming already sucks as far as lag goes on a land line, with a mobile connection it's pretty much not done. Sure, there will be people who don't care but anyone playing games on a regulair basis won't exactly like the lag to say the least.

It doesn't make sense for everyone. It only makes sense for companies because it's easier for them and earns them more money. It doesn't have any benefit at all for gamers.

It's not cheaper. You don't own anything anymore so you are totally dependant on MS/sony/etc, you can't resell or trade your games, no matter what, you get much more lag than now. And lag sucks, no matter what you are getting worse IQ and by the looks of it you are not going to get better gfx either because constantly updating hardware costs a lot of money.

Please do tell me, where do I benefit?

[Sonic]

Originally Posted by JB9861

4G is useless in America for the cloud because of data caps, throttling, coverage, and price.

Yeah in the case of the US, where MS has its main focus, in a cloud based gaming world I see ISP's now getting a piece of the gaming pie. And that is absolutely horrendous. Either way those companies will get paid, especially the likes of companies like Comcast who will gouge either the consumer of MS for a pass on their networks.

Also have to wonder if it is indeed cheaper for the hardware maker to go the cloud route. As others have mentioned the costs of constantly upgrading and the power bill could become outrageous. Oh and then you'll have to pay out the ass for customer support because there's always going to be some kind of issues, It might be cheaper in the short term, but in the long term it could turn out to be an ever expanding investment that could balloon up in size. With traditional hardware it is a massive up front investment to the console manufacturer with the allure of reaping large profits later on. The upcoming generation will tell us if traditional console gaming is dying and if other solutions will take over or coexist or dwindle.

[Grall]

Originally Posted by Ninjaprime

So you really think they're going to make a console thats twice as loud/hot as 360 was?

Twice as loud, no, because the 360's cooling solution was simply terribly designed. The PS3 dissipated considerably more heat at a much lower noise level. Twice as hot? No, because that would be too expensive. Also, power efficiency is starting to become a big deal, a device constantly belching 350W during gameplay would be a cause for concern for many people. That's quite a space heater, and if you got AC going you'll blow another chunk of power to cool off that heat.

[Sigfried1977]

Originally Posted by tongue_of_colicab

Not matter what hardware you put in, 5 years later pc hardware will be much faster and capable of much better gfx.

And no-one will give a shit, so I don' think it's that unreasonable really.

[french toast]

Originally Posted by tongue_of_colicab

4g is going to be ass for gaming. I live in Japan atm and I have a LTE pocket wifi device thats rated at 75mbps, so pretty much what you are talking about. Now never mind that you don't actually get 75mbps, you'll get 5 if you are lucky in the evening hours, also never mind data caps in most parts of the world, what do you think lag is going to do? Cloud gaming already sucks as far as lag goes on a land line, with a mobile connection it's pretty much not done. Sure, there will be people who don't care but anyone playing games on a regulair basis won't exactly like the lag to say the least.

It doesn't make sense for everyone. It only makes sense for companies because it's easier for them and earns them more money. It doesn't have any benefit at all for gamers.

It's not cheaper. You don't own anything anymore so you are totally dependant on MS/sony/etc, you can't resell or trade your games, no matter what, you get much more lag than now. And lag sucks, no matter what you are getting worse IQ and by the looks of it you are not going to get better gfx either because constantly updating hardware costs a lot of money.

Please do tell me, where do I benefit?

Well that sounds amazing, however the technology is out there now, it just needs refining and enlarging which will happen in 5 years with a combination of cable and 4g.

It benefits you because you will not have the bulk of games and stuff laying around, you will have one service that goes on every device, no buying 1 game or app for every device..no everything will run seamlessly from a phone to a tv.

You will get instant upgrades to your games, other will be like digital tv subscription service where everything is one button away with no faffing about, no boxes to spend money on, no sky high electricity bills, don't forget most people. Fork out for box live gold account anyway, along with digital tv, spotify and likely many others, xbox live 1080 or what ever other it becomes will merge all services into one..more efficient and cost effective for everyone..physical disks will become like records.

You won't need a second hand market because there will be no physical games.

[Arwin]

While I don't doubt it could happen and it will happen to a certain extent eventually, it is simply inefficient. Gaming is not like TV, where one single content stream satisfies many customers. Everything online/in the cloud/through a webpage, all these things we've been through before, and it is simply not the best solution for everything yet.

I've been through this discussion many times before, but for the moment I still think that consoles that more intelligently stream their data from the web, so that you can basically start playing before the game is even downloaded, will be the most efficient solution for quite a while yet. I am simply not buying that the infrastructure will be cheaper and more stable if everything is server-side. Consoles can stand in individual homes without all too significant cooling and backup solutions as a huge distributed network that should be much cheaper than having everything central.

Of course eventually power will become trivial, and when bandwidth becomes trivial as well (everyone is on fiber optics) then I can definitely foresee a future where you stream everything all the time. It's a pretty risky proposition though, also for the consumer if at some point none of your data lives locally and is completely out of your control. I would choose some kind of caching/mirroring option every time, and if set-up well, that should be as efficient as anything.

[Shifty Geezer]

Thread closed as a mishmash of topics already discussed in other threads, while the OP hasn't bothered to contribute anything more to the discussion.

[babcat]

I was just going to post in my thread a few minutes ago, but it seems one of the moderators closed it. I will not comment in detail on how I think that is heavy handed, because I'm afraid I will get banned. However, I would like to post here a few of the comments I was going to make on my thread.

First, I think the PS3 will utilize about 350 watts of power. I do not think that is an excessive amount of power for a console going for a more hardcore audience in addition to casual gamers. It would be crazy for the WiiU, but not for the PS4 or XBox 720. 350 watts is not really a lot, and is not a whole lot more than what the PS3 consumed. Utilizing top notch cooling technology and a slightly larger case I think it is perfectly doable. Making the PS4 and XBox 720 larger than previous systems and much larger than the WiiU could also give physiological appeal. People may think (and be correct) that the bigger system means it is more powerful. Also, with a larger system more noise damping tech could be utilized.

Secondly, I think this coming generation is different than all generations before. The reason is that a high powered PS4 or XBox 720 will make games pretty darn close to photorealistic. Even if there are technological breakthroughs in the ten year life cycle, I don't think they will be worth making a new console. Once you get to almost photorealistic even a ten fold increase in processing power is not really going to allow for a huge increase in graphics. I can imagine a situation where the PS4 or XBox 720 are making such good games five years from now at a fairly reasonable price (lets say $399 or so) that top notch GPU sales are hurt. Why pay $599 for a new top notch GPU when you can pay $399 for an entire system that can produce fantastic games that look almost as good as what the graphics card could produce?

The near photorealistic graphics of the PS4 and XBox 720 are going to be enough to keep customers hooked for at least ten years, regardless what new GPU technology or memory technology comes out. Once you get to the quality of Crysis with all the best mods, with the highest textures, improved lighting, and with additional improvements from new rendering methods there will be NO LOGIC in wanting a short five year lifespan for your console. A console with that level of performance could last ten years. Simply put, a PS5 launched only five years into it's lifespan could not produce games that looked significantly better than PS4 to the average person.

Third, the only thing that Sony has to hold onto now is the hardcore audience. The tablet age is here, and casual gamers have countless android and iOS games to play. There will be more and more of these games as time goes on. With the launch of the ROUGE PowerVR technology iOS and android games are going to look pretty darn good. The low end of the market is taken, and the WiiU will be trying to take the high end of the low end market.

What will make the PS4 successful and also the XBox 720 is if they go after the high end, and do what it takes to make their system capable of producing near photo-realistic games. Right now we are reaching a point where more and more power makes less and less of a difference when it comes to getting close to photorealism. The curve has NOT flattened out yet, but that time is coming.

The key is for Microsoft and Sony to try and place their systems AS CLOSE TO THE FLAT POINT of that curve as possible this generation, and plan for a LONG lifespan. I don't think that will be very hard to do. To be blunt, I just think it will take....

1) Decent CPU -- Nothing too awful powerful is needed here. I would say fifty watts max or less.

2) Top End Current GPU -- For the PS4 I would say a modified 680 GTX at 20NM to reduce power consumption, with a few modifications and improvements. I don't think this would consume more than 200 watts.

3) Plenty of RAM -- At a minimum four gigabytes are needed. Anything less is not worth launching. Eight gigabytes would be what would allow the system to stay future proofed for 10 years.

[Shifty Geezer]

Babcat's post moved. This thread remains closed until someone can convince me (PM if you want) that it has relevance, considering we already have thread for next-gen tech, a thread for next-gen business choices, a thread for alternative distribution looking at download speeds, and a thread on game streaming services. Repeating/dividing those topics with this thread makes zero sense to me.