Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

Anything would be better than using Hollywood again, wrapper with ati R300 could be considered huge improvement.

 

Well, if nv takes care of the cpu for nintendo as well, then it is sure to be an ARM core.

 

a radeon 5650 or so would be a great chip to go into a next gen wii esp if you link it to a weaker cpu. I think its supposed to retail at $80 or less and thats the board with ram and gpu. So it should be pretty cheap for nintendo and very powerful esp compared to the current consoles. It should also be able to do whatever the wii can do easily.

Since its dx 11 which i'm sure all next gen consoles will be based on (even though sony is stuck with open gl since the card will come from nvidia or ati most likely it will have a dx 11 feature set) it should make it simple for nintendo to get ports of games on other systems. Even if the other systems run them at 1080p vs 720p or sub hd res on the wii hd it will still be a big boon for nintendo.

 

How are you so sure? I'm of the opinion saying something is a "Dx_" card means nothing in the console space.

 

No, but it's unlikely they'll go to "fully customized chips" excluding perhaps Nintendo depending on what kinda road they'll be taking (though i think they won't go just boosting the Flipper-design like with Wii), which means they'll be taken from the PC world, which means they'll be DX-something chips

 

Back to the discussion about SSD vs HDD I found this article interesting:
http://www.realworldtech.com/page.cfm?ArticleID=RWT123009125025
Especially this part:

16 or 32 GB could viable for next generation systems, in fact more than viable competitive as price goes down whereas for HDD storage grows but price is constant.
On top of that it doesn't prevent manufacturers to sell proprietary HDDs for extra storage... even if I don't like this option.

 

Kinda simple really - If next gen systems go with something off-the-shelf, or something not too far removed from that then we're likely looking at-least at having hardware compliant with a DX11/OGL3.2-like hardware featureset. That's hardware - Software API could be either one of those, something newer (DX12/OGL4.0), a superset of features somewhere in between DX11/OGL3.2 and DX12/OGL4.0, et cetera. Microsoft typically pimps DX - The original Xbox and the 360 both use modified featuresets that set them apart from any official DX revision. SONY will likely be using OGL again (because they'd be stupid not to and because DX is tied to Windows) - If it's anything like this time, it'll be fairly feature competitve with DX. It's also possible that by this time we'll have more intimate control over the hardware, perhaps the capacity to code in C, or something else entirely. The point however is that there is little to no liklihood that we'll see hardware based on anything older than what we see in PCs right now, either in hardware features, or in terms of the APIs we'll be using to communicate with them - It is more likely that any hardware and APIs we come to utilize will be significantly more advanced than what have access to today. Furthermore, it is not likely we'll see fully custom hardwares either.

 

The main graphics companys are now pushing foward with ms's spec. Sometimes OPENGL which is lagging behind dx at the moment.

IT would be silly for sony or nintendo or someone to go to ati. Oh those are nice dx 10/ open gl whatever cards you got , but we want something with a diffrent feature set.


They will go and find the best bang for their buck and any of those wlil leaverage the work these companys are doing on the pc side.

also for ms they can stick with dx and its synergy with the pc market. Sony and nintendo can use open gl and get synergy from that approach.

 

For what it's worth, OpenGL isn't all that popular or common on the PS3.

 

but the gpu in the ps3 is a dx 9 / open gl whatever gpu right ?

 

Well, it has that featureset and it's a derivative of the 6800/7800 line.

 

I don't know what DX11 is like, but as we move towards more programmable hardware, the featureset will become less fixed. I mean, what would LRB be in DX terms? It could be programmed to run anything at all. DX rating would then just mean the software engine MS have created, and I expect would be adopted by IHVs to categorise generations of hardware.

 

LBR is a figment of your imagination as last I heard it was scrapped and not competitive with current gen cards while on a newer process node.

 

That's somewhat the exaggeration! Even if it's been shelved, the point still stands that programmable hardware will exceed any DX featureset. It'll come down to performance, how well the programmable hardware can match less versatile, more optimised parts.

 

Sorry should have put a smiley face after that.

Your right the question comes down to performance and it seems that performance for the lbr wasn't even up to dx 10 performance parts. Dx 11 performance parts should be even faster and more programable.

 

I was wondering about the significance of the statement that Natal would run on the Xbox 360 CPU would have on the possibility of a Wii-ised release in proportion to the Gamecube to Wii transition in that they would release updated hardware inside a streamlined package.

So rather than using a new architecture it would be more of the same or more of similar to the same. Say for instance instead of Valhalla for the Xbox 360 we get a slightly revamped model instead.

So Xbox 360 -> Natal:

Im just wanting to get feedback here not on the technical merits but whether or not its feasable. We're less than a year out from the release of whatever console is going to be packaged with Natal, could we see updated hardware even if it only goes as far as to increase the core count from 3->4 and the cache from 1 -> 1.5MB?

 

I think it is totally feasable technically, I have been playing with the same idea myself.

Last year Microsoft said Natal would get the same marketing as a new console would get and you can not afford to do that every second year, so the idea struck me that they could pull a Wii trick, slightly increase the hardware capability (cpu and gpu) and keep full backward compatibility, allowing new software to sense the hardware and take advantage of the extra performance of the new units.

If it´s good move from the business perspective is a totally different matter. They have to market it in a clever way to not totally confuse the market.

 

No, because Natal has to work with the existing userbase, unless MS forgo it as a peripheral and you have to buy a new console to use it. Developers will still need to target the minimum machine spec, which means not making use of the better features of any updated console.

The hardware we have now, we'll have until the next iteration of consoles. There'll be no RAM, processor, clockspeed or other increases to the systems.

 

Of course the camera has to work with existing console spec as well, I saw the camera as a possible marketing vehicle to a slightly upgraded console as well that would prolong the life of the 360 with a few extra years until the next console iteration. But as I said it may not make sense from a business perspective.

 

But how would you support a two-tier performance platform? Developers would need to create a second version of the game, for a platform starting with zero userbase. Unless there were lots and lots of Natal360s sold, there'd be no market. And then you'd want to charge a premium for the extra effort, which wouldn't go down well. Otherwise you're doing more work for no gains. And if there's no upgrade path for existing 360 owners, they could get peeved with a requirement to buy a whole new console, if there's anything about it worth upgrading to that their standard 360 can't do.

MS can't pull a Wii as Wii was a whole new generation, not an add-on for GC. Perhaps Wiimotion was developed and intended as such, but finding too much juice was lost on the input tracking, Nintendo decided to double everything up as an easy solution?!

I can't see the performance loss being hugely impactful on 360, especially if games are designed for it rather than ports. Cross-platform titles will no doubt look ~identical to PS3.