Business ramifications of a 2014 MS/Sony next gen *spawn

[Barso]

Apologies for my short attention span.
That makes sense then why they brought kinect to the table and invested so much in it.
It would make sense to wring this generation dry but not for me.
This could push me back to PC gaming if the low framerates and screen tearing become more popular in games.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Absolutely. Bring out Wii2 then, 2 years ahead of MS and Sony's next console. That's two years of the "next gen" console experience to themselves. It might well be cramped in style, with COD and other core franchises being gimped to still run on PS360, but Nintendo's titles will shine. Their market could be all Wii's plus next-gen Kinect+Move if they go with a 3D camera, with the added advantage of Nintendo's take on family games that resonate so well. With two years of this, where would PS4/neXBox fit in? More of the same won't work so well. Okay, there's the core gamer who likes Halo and Sony's exclusives, and it's unlikely Nintendo will have a decent online service for a console, but generally I see a small niche available if Nintendo get a lot of time on their own.

I'm not sure there's a lot of incentive for Nintendo to release a console that is significantly more performant then the PS3/X360. I'm expecting at best a level slightly higher with a price hovering around 249-299 USD. That combined with Nintendo continuing their company philosophy of selling hardware at a profit just means it's far more likely to be a mild bump over PS3/X360. One area they may significantly bump up is perhaps system and graphics memory. Perhaps upping the total to 1-2 GB with a likely configuration of 512 MB video and perhaps 1 GB system memory.

Worst case scenario for them when PS next and Xbox next releases will be operating at a lower resolution but likely with similar enough quality textures and effects that most people won't notice the difference.

From the article Shifty cites:

There are no plans to reduce the die size of the PS3 beyond the current 45nm. It's possible that they are waiting for 22/20nm and will skip the 32/28nm generation. I'd read that reducing from 45nm to 32nm required a design change for the external pin connections and Sony is probably waiting for 22/20nm to make the change practical. With a Cell BE redesign, Shifty could be correct and a couple more SPE elements or dedicated media hardware codecs could be in the new design. Sony uses the Cell BE and RSX for 4K video editing, what design change could make the PS3 hardware better for that job also.

The far more likely reason is that Sony will be dropping Cell from consumer level devices after the PS3 has run it's course. I find it far more likely that they will go with a multicore ARM derivative

That will leverage their experience with NGP. And far more importantly ARM will continue to be actively developed over the next few years. By 2014, it's quite likely that multicore ARM will have far eclipsed the performance of Cell even with more SPUs although Cell's SPUs might still be somewhat more performance in certain very narrow and specialized tasks.

The other potential solutions would be an AMD Fusion chip or perhaps a custom Intel chip with beefed up integrated graphics. But considering the direction they went with NGP, I find ARM a potentially very interesting choice. Especially when you look at Nvidia doing significant integration with ARM cores.

Cell is basically dead with this announcement, IMO.

Then where is the issue, that is doable now and cheaply.

PS4 graphics have been speculated at; QF-HDTV (3840x2160p) for years.

No. And again, no. Not going to happen next console gen, and might not happen the console gen after that either.

But absolutely guaranteed that noone will be gaming at 3840x2160 or 3840x2400 (the two most common "4k" resolutions out of about 4 or 5 proposed "4k" resolutions).

Hell, there still isn't even an industry standard for 4k yet with panel makers each making their own version of what they think "4k" should be. This will have to be settled before anyone even thinks of standardizing on "4k" for a mass consumer (versus Niche early adopter) device.

You like 4k. We get it. But it isn't going to happen for next gen consoles.

Regards,
SB

 

[Nesh]

OK, I confused that with the original only having 1080i with component out and I guess 1080P came with the HDMI port hardware. That didn't require other changes to support 1080P?

The ability to output 1080p came with a system update for all models, with or without HDMI. AFAIK there wasnt any serious hardware update. Only the necessary to be able to output signal through HDMI. All 360's have the same rendering capabilities.

 

[AlNom]

The ability to output 1080p came with a system update for all models, with or without HDMI. AFAIK there wasnt any serious hardware update. Only the necessary to be able to output signal through HDMI. All 360's have the same rendering capabilities.

Right. It's up to the display device whether or not it'll output 1080p over analog. TV makers are generally thinking 1080p and digital though, so HDCP comes into consideration. 1080p over analog is kind of an oversight, but it's moot issue since it's not marketed (aside from PC connectivity I suppose ).

 

[joker454]

2014 is sounding more and more likely really. If it was 2012-2013 I'd have heard something by now, some scrap of info, hint or whatever. But talk of next gen couldn't be any more non existant. Between that and how slow console pricing is trundling down it's seeming like 2014 is very likely.

There probably aren't many business ramifications of releasing that late, assuming they both release around similar times. PC will never provide competition to consoles again, and as long as console owners keep buying games in the millions, then why bother making a new console? It's just more profitable for them to milk current gen. I can't imagine a new Wii offering any competition because I wouldn't expect a new Wii to be graphically that far beyond what 360/PS3 offer anyways. So they both effectively have all the time in the world. I'm guessing they will just wait it out untill people stop buying games in droves as they currently still are, and then both will release new machines around the same time.

 

[patsu]

I wouldn't worry too much about this particular article.

NGP could easily be Next Gen Platform. If they focus on creating the best environment for ARM platform, it may mean that future PS* may be ARM-based. It doesn't have to be a portable.

From Sony's perspective, they have TVs, Blu-ray players, pads/readers and cellphones to deal with. So this may be a general platform for them.

From PS3 perspective, I think they should think hard on software innovations, and system innovations (e.g., How can PS3 and "NGP" work together).

Btw, anyone has tips on the new CPU/GPU combo ? What makes PS3 games easily portable to PSP2 ? Is NEON very similar to the SPU during run-time ? What enhancement did Sony make ?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I'm not sure there's a lot of incentive for Nintendo to release a console that is significantly more performant then the PS3/X360. I'm expecting at best a level slightly higher with a price hovering around 249-299 USD. That combined with Nintendo continuing their company philosophy of selling hardware at a profit just means it's far more likely to be a mild bump over PS3/X360.

I agree. That's the beauty of this situation for Nintendo. They can be the only company offering new tech and it won't cost the earth. They can provide the same experiences as on PS360, but improved, stealing potential buyers of the new motion formats. The next round of consoles is Nintendo's to lose IMO (in terms of total sales and public mindshare). Sony and MS are going to beshifting towards software platforms and universal devices anyhow I think. There's even the possibility that in a couple of years, PS will cease to be a console and be instead an entertainment brand. PS will appear on phones and TVs and such as running PS brand games. And regards MS, DX was already a software brand they happened to hang a console off! Unfortunately for MS their gaming brand is tied to their OS, and they haven't managed to get their OS onto set-top boxes and mobiles and now onto the new smart CE devices, so they've limited their options. For MS's gaming brand to continue, they need to sell OSes as well as infrastructure, whereas Sony can just sell infrastructure on other people's OSes.

 

[corduroygt]

The far more likely reason is that Sony will be dropping Cell from consumer level devices after the PS3 has run it's course. I find it far more likely that they will go with a multicore ARM derivative

Well, ARM is going to run into problems when they to clock the CPU in the 3 GHz range and it's very possible that they might not be able to offer better performance per watt compared to Intel without overcoming some significant design hurdles. However, development is active in ARM, and that might just happen. With MS porting Windows8 to ARM, maybe they'll go with ARM for the next xbox too.

What I'd like is a quad core ARM with 8 SPU's and dynamically configurable cache so it can be shared between the SPU's or the ARM cores. SPU's are small compared to how much area is wasted for x86 decoding/ordering logic and they're infinitely more useful in the console space.

You like 4k. We get it. But it isn't going to happen for next gen consoles.

Next gen consoles will have 4k output, it's called upscaling

 

[patsu]

Just spotted this in a NEOGAF thread, I believe it's january UK software market share

The point is, do you really believe Sony is entrusting it's future to NGP with handheld software sales like that?

not only that, but iOS devices, even with 10 billion downloaded apps, have a to date revenue of $280 million. That is EA's revenue on the xbox 360 or PS3 for the last fiscal year.

It's possible, but I highly doubt NGP is going to sell as many as the iOS devices. If Sony thinks NGP is going to sustain their company, either they are smoking some amazing weed or they are seriously considering mass lay offs.

If you interpret NGP as Next Gen Platform, then the "center" of Sony's activities should be the ARM platform and Playstation Network. It would be across multiple devices (Blu-ray players, HDTV, game consoles, cellphones, or even PCs).

I still think the distributed system idea is a viable and interesting proposition. Would to see Sony build one. It doesn't really matter whether the systems are of the same CPU.

EDIT: Yeah, SPU + ARM may be interesting. Someone posts tech info on NEON please. Would like to see what it is.

 

[jeff_rigby]

Apologies for my short attention span.
That makes sense then why they brought kinect to the table and invested so much in it.
It would make sense to wring this generation dry but not for me.
This could push me back to PC gaming if the low framerates and screen tearing become more popular in games.

No problem, I actually started the thread with the link cited by Shfifty but I did post the entire article. The first poster made the same assumption that only Sony was mentioned in the article.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Next gen consoles will have 4k output, it's called upscaling

Heh. By 2014, IF (big IF) we're lucky 4k displays will be about where 1080i/p displays were back when the PS2 launched. Now out of PS2 and Xbox how many machines supported upscaling to 1080 i/p?

The Xbox could in theory display 1080i. It does however struggle with native 720p content. Native 720p mp4 (xvid/divx) had to reduce the bitrate when encoding for the Xbox otherwise it would drop frames.

As to upscaling, just how much of a selling point was 1080i on the Xbox and how many people ran it at 1080i before the X360 came out?

And the PS2 was limited to 1280x1024 for max res, IIRC.

So who knows, perhaps Sony and MS will go out of their way to make 4k a possible resolution for the less than 1% of people that will likely have a 4k display during the life of the console. This is, of course, assuming we have a "4k" standard by then.

But you certainly won't be playing any 4k native games.

Regards,
SB

 

[jeff_rigby]

I



The far more likely reason is that Sony will be dropping Cell from consumer level devices after the PS3 has run it's course. I find it far more likely that they will go with a multicore ARM derivative

That will leverage their experience with NGP. And far more importantly ARM will continue to be actively developed over the next few years. By 2014, it's quite likely that multicore ARM will have far eclipsed the performance of Cell even with more SPUs although Cell's SPUs might still be somewhat more performance in certain very narrow and specialized tasks.

The other potential solutions would be an AMD Fusion chip or perhaps a custom Intel chip with beefed up integrated graphics. But considering the direction they went with NGP, I find ARM a potentially very interesting choice. Especially when you look at Nvidia doing significant integration with ARM cores.

Cell is basically dead with this announcement, IMO.

Arm processors are designed at the hardware level to use less power, it's the way the transistors are layered on the silicon. The design has a drawback, it can not be run as fast as other designs like a Cell or x86 or just about anything else. The ARM design is great for a portable but not for a console, not for a computer running a database but can be used in a server farm to serve media.

The push by Arm for smaller die size like 14nm allows even more efficiency or speeds approaching 1/3 the 90nm cell design. A cell at 14nm would have (guess) 6 times the performance of an Arm at the same die size because the cell could have a much greater clock speed. This rough comparison is not about the architecture but about how the transistors are deposited on the Silicon.

Cell dead, too soon to tell. Sony uses the Cell BE in their 4k editing hardware so it does have dual use at this time. The Cell is used in Toshiba TVs and IBM may be using a cell derivative in newer Power PC designs.

No. And again, no. Not going to happen next console gen, and might not happen the console gen after that either.

But absolutely guaranteed that noone will be gaming at 3840x2160 or 3840x2400 (the two most common "4k" resolutions out of about 4 or 5 proposed "4k" resolutions).

Hell, there still isn't even an industry standard for 4k yet with panel makers each making their own version of what they think "4k" should be. This will have to be settled before anyone even thinks of standardizing on "4k" for a mass consumer (versus Niche early adopter) device.

You like 4k. We get it. But it isn't going to happen for next gen consoles.

Regards,
SB

It's not that I like 4K res, it's here now but everyone seems to be ignoring it and denying it's existence. There is no need for a PS4 if we are going to have only 1080P games. A PS3.5 makes more sense in that case.

 

[MarkoIt]

I agree. That's the beauty of this situation for Nintendo. They can be the only company offering new tech and it won't cost the earth. They can provide the same experiences as on PS360, but improved, stealing potential buyers of the new motion formats. The next round of consoles is Nintendo's to lose IMO (in terms of total sales and public mindshare). Sony and MS are going to beshifting towards software platforms and universal devices anyhow I think. There's even the possibility that in a couple of years, PS will cease to be a console and be instead an entertainment brand. PS will appear on phones and TVs and such as running PS brand games. And regards MS, DX was already a software brand they happened to hang a console off! Unfortunately for MS their gaming brand is tied to their OS, and they haven't managed to get their OS onto set-top boxes and mobiles and now onto the new smart CE devices, so they've limited their options. For MS's gaming brand to continue, they need to sell OSes as well as infrastructure, whereas Sony can just sell infrastructure on other people's OSes.

If MS is smart, they will push a LOT for gaming on their next mobile OS. The partnership with Nokia was a big win for them: they can easily sell millions of phones.

I think NGP will be Sony's last console. There won't be a PS4, because they can't afford it.

As for Nintendo.. they need to innovate, and i don't think 3DS will be enough.

 

[MarkoIt]

It's not that I like 4K res, it's here now but everyone seems to be ignoring it and denying it's existence. There is no need for a PS4 if we are going to have only 1080P games. A PS3.5 makes more sense in that case.

There is no 4K. No standards, few movie are recored in 4K, no optical support and more important: no need. Jesus, they are still selling 40 inch 720p tv sets out there!
There won't be any need for 4K until people will start asking for much bigger screen. It's still far away, and it won't be a concern for years.

 

[Squilliam]

Sure. After all, not every product in the world has to be unique. Almost all go toe-to-toe in features, just offering a bit better experience or a bit better value.

In this case, Kinect and Move are fragmented, like EyeToy. Wii2 could offer the very best camera and motion interface, dealing with some of the interface issues by using higher resolution and faster cameras than Kinect, say, allowing for a wider FOV, and provding much better Move-like experiences because every game will target that interface, rather than currently on PS3 where it's hit and miss, or being added as an after thought. An iterative step from the current gen seems perfectly valid to me.

Correct me if im wrong but the general improvements Move offers over the Wii hasn't set the world on fire with excitement. It seems that the experience has to be tangibly better or new or different before people get excited about it. Kinect is new and exciting and therefore has a much better sales rate than Move. The existance of incredibly popular FPS titles on consoles points to the fact that people just use whats available, if they really wanted 'the best' controller they'd probably play more so on PC for that genre. The fun is in the games and the experience of playing them, not this strange obsession over how they are played whether you're talking iOS touch screen or M+KB or regular console controller. What Nintendo has to do is offer a better experience, one which is significantly different or better in order to get peoples attention. If they don't do this then it is possible that some other console maker is going to steal their lunch if they do what Nintendidn't.

I don't think MS and Sony have offered adequate counters.

As it stands both Microsoft and Sony are shipping the same / more consoles than last year and Nintendo are shipping considerably fewer. I don't believe that Nintendo has come out of the introduction of Move and Kinect unscathed as both Sony and Microsoft have increased their sales seemingly at the expense of Nintendo. By the time Nintendo gets around to releasing a new console we'll be 3 holiday seasons and 2 whole years into the new motion controls for Kinect and Move and therefore it is likely they'll both have an adequate motion game library and probably more than competitive.

That's partially true, although Sony's inability to pull off more than they have isn't because it's hard so much as they are in a bit of a mess. At it's core PSN on PS3 was a workable online experience built pretty much from scratch. If Nintendo have been working on a decent network in the background for years (there was rumour of such a Mario NET before Wii, which proved to be nothing, but it shows things could have been happening only with nintendo not wanting to roll their designs out piecemeal but instead waiting for a final product that meets their high QA), it's certainly possible, if not particularly probable, for Wii2 to have a decent network structure and services.

Even so you have to consider that the people who have been drawn into multiplayer and these online networks are locked out from Nintendo's network because they have already invested in content for Live and PSN and they have friends on Live or PSN which they play with. So even if they developed and rolled out their network tomorrow they would have a considerable problem getting these already attached people to switch networks.

 

[patsu]

I think NGP will be Sony's last console. There won't be a PS4, because they can't afford it.

Hard to say… with the recent moves, they should be able to do one relatively cheaply because of shared components with other (high volume) devices.

The Playstation Suite, if executed well, should bring in non-game apps and casual games. What's left are the native games. Goto's article seems to say Sony is focusing on NGP native apps and OS at this point. It should benefit the next hardware (home console or otherwise) based on similar platform. In fact, the info -- if true -- is a good counter-balance to the multi-platform PS Suite announcement.

 

[3dcgi]

Above agrees with what I have been reading. I think I read something about going to ray tracing rather than by hand developing fills and determining shadows and lighting. On the fly ray tracing requiring much more processing which would not be possible on a wii for instance and might have issues on Xbox and PS3. Bliting a fill or texture is less CPU/GPU intensive than raytracing/generating a fill or texture.

The cost in developing a game with ray tracing being MUCH cheaper than by hand. The cost of developing a game using OpenGl or DirectX calls being cheaper than lower level.

I have the impression that openGL calls can be resolution independent. The same ray tracing call used in openGL could be used on the NGP or PS3 and would not require a change. It would "just work". The CPU would not be in this case as important as the GPU for future systems.

I think I have that right.

OpenGL is resolution independent. There's no such thing as rendering "by hand." There have been many debates about rasterization vs. ray tracing and while ease of development is touted as an advantage for ray tracing I don't think it makes development much cheaper. My impression is most of the cost these days is in creating the art assets and working on gameplay code so I don't see a large difference based on the rendering style.

 

[rpg.314]

Well, ARM is going to run into problems when they to clock the CPU in the 3 GHz range ..

Why would they be unable to clock their CPU's to 3 GHz?

 

[corduroygt]

Why would they be unable to clock their CPU's to 3 GHz?

You can't just clock any design to whatever the process will allow. You generally need to add more pipeline stages to a CPU to make it clock higher, which causes bigger branch prediction penalties, which then in turn requires making a more sophisticated branch prediction unit, all of this makes your chip bigger and now you have to worry about clock distribution and skew, etc.
By the time ARM has reworked their architecture to run at high clock speeds, they may not be more power efficient than the competition, depending on how they resolved their issues and did the design.

 

[Rangers]

I'm pretty sure the OP article is wrong or mistranslated. I sure as hell hope so. I think this is a possible delay maybe, maybe from 2013>2014 or something, nothing more.

Look, even Cevat Yerli inerview says this gen is getting boring

You said previously that you expect the next graphical breakthrough to come in 2011/2012 and that it might coincide with new console hardware. Do you still believe we'll see new consoles that soon?

For some reason my gut feeling is still that we'll see a new generation in 2012, 2013. Factually spoken, it looks like I'm going be wrong, but my gut feeling is that there's going to be a new one because it's really getting old and tight in this space.

Maybe even if the makers dont want a new console, the developers can pressure them into it.