PS4 and XBox 720 -- Mega Power for an even LONGER life cycle!

[french toast]

I firmly believe that we will get enough power for 3-4 years max, after that we will go to the cloud.

 

[blakjedi]

They should just make them modular. The box itself doesn't really need to change only the internals (cpu,gpu,ram). Just plugging in a faster GPU or more memory during a generational change would be a lot easier than buying a whole new box to get used to.

In the leaked Durango PowerPoint...ms alluded to this...

 

[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.

 

[french toast]

Defo it is the cloud, with Microsoft unifying all systems, the expense of actually making a system combined with the ever widening internet growth means that's the way to go.

Do not forget Microsoft has been spending a hell of a lot of money on cloud computing, it would enable consumers to get free upgrades and free game storage, and instant game play without downloads or going to the shop.

There is always negatives to everything you can't help that, but for Microsoft that makes sense as it is cost effective and you get instant install base for your 'new system' as everyone will just reuse the box or phone or whatever.

For publishers it makes sense as they will likely get more game sales and no second hand sales.

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

You can have a semi decent experience playing online worth you mobile phone as it is...add another 4 year's on and xbox live will be xbox full stop..on every device.

 

[Jedi2016]

the ken kutaragi 10 year ps3 plan was a bad idea

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.

The PS2 had around a ten-year life cycle, if I recall, and was also advertised as such before its launch. Long after the PS3 was released, you could still purchase a brand-new PS2 in stores, and there were still brand-new games being released for it (many of them downports from PS3, but they were there). Heck, I think it was only around the time of the PS3 launch that they finally stopped producing the PS1.

But, the media forgot all about that and decided that Kutaragi was saying that it would be until 2016 before the next Playstation was launching. The really incredible part is that Sony themselves seem to have interpreted it this way.

What I was referring to earlier regarding WD and SW1313 is that at least two developers decided to take a different route at E3.. instead of pushing the boundaries of what our current consoles can do, they showed us things that the current consoles can't do, and that there is room for improvement.. PS360 is not the peak of graphical prowess, any more than the PS2, GC, and Xbox were.

It is becoming a very different landscape, and I think David Jaffe had a point when he said that the next gen could well be the last generation of "traditional" consoles. I'm primarily a PC gamer these days, so I don't think cloud gaming is worth a damn to me personally, but I can see where it could easily be the way forward for "console" gaming in another five or ten years. At that point, the idea of fixed hardware platform goes away, as will the limitations that hardware places on developers.

 

[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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.