Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[GBPack]

How so?

Did the HD consoles recently start to slump in sales vs Wii?

Did the low priced Wii bundles dominate sales this past Christmas?

Are people unwilling to spend $399 on a console bundle? (see: Kinect + HDD bundle price)

Taking a look at recent data suggests not only is the hi-end console market viable, it's thriving.

The only thing different is it isn't dominated by Sony anymore. There are no seismic shifts in sales away from consoles or console games and in the console space, there isn't a dramatic shift toward cheaper either ... so with that said, I'm not sure where all these people are getting the impression that nextgen will be a gimp-fest of wii clones with gimmicks.

I think it's safe to say that what to expect nextgen is a lot more xb360/ps3-type than Wii-type.

And the reason for that is simple, both MS and Sony already have their "wii consoles" on the shelf right now. They did the "mid cycle refresh" and as the prices come down, both ps3 and xb360 can comfortably fill the role of casual/mom console while being profitable and shrinking in size.

This leaves room in the pricing bracket for high end consoles (which are necessary to differentiate the growing onslaught of tablets and smartphones).

A change from this would have to be accompanied by an aggressive 2 year refresh Apple-style model with forward compatible games.

Otherwise, these fresh new consoles will have ipads breathing down their necks before their replacements are ready.

It's different because Wii happened, and it sold over 90 millions units. You don't need a huge leap in power to differentiate next-gen. Yes, Kinect and the 360 are selling well, but this is at the tail end of this gen, when prices are lower than initially, and there is something that to differentiate it and make it the "hot" item in Kinect. The 360 experienced its best year yet, largely due to Kinect, and a good majority of that crowd doesn't care about graphics.

Obviously, this is just my stance on next-gen. I could easily be 100% wrong, but, to me, going for power doesn't seem to fit Microsoft's strategy (or at least the one that I think they're going for). See, the main reason why they started the Xbox brand was to invade and dominate the living room. Now, they're in the process of doing just that. They have Xbox, Live, and Kinect. From what I see of Microsoft, Kinect is clearly a large part of their future, and Xbox is FAR more than just games. They want to have the Xbox at the forefront of the living room, utilizing Kinect and Live to access all your entertainment needs, like TV, internet & apps, music, movies, and games. If they want to succeed in that goal, I don't see how they could make a giant, loud, power-hungry, hot console, and they especially don't want to repeat the same RRoD fiasco. I just don't see the average consumer wanting that big box in their living room, or for even some, it might not even fit in their entertainment center, etc.

In order to make it appealing, I think they would have to make it smaller, sleeker, and quieter. And to top it off, I doubt next gen they will sell Kinect/Kinect 2.0 separate. They want Kinect in every household. That right there is going to be additional cost to the overall console package.

And for those UE4 comments, they definitely don't mean that Wii U wouldn't be a platform. Like Rangers said, the name may change (I fully expect it to), and Nintendo has been oddly secretive about Wii U developments. Take for instance the Darksiders II trailer. The Wii U logo wasn't found at the end. Or for Project CARS, they initially had a picture on their website with the Wii U logo, only to have it removed shortly after.

 

[TheChefO]

It's different because Wii happened, and it sold over 90 millions units. You don't need a huge leap in power to differentiate next-gen. Yes, Kinect and the 360 are selling well, but this is at the tail end of this gen, when prices are lower than initially, and there is something that to differentiate it and make it the "hot" item in Kinect. The 360 experienced its best year yet, largely due to Kinect, and a good majority of that crowd doesn't care about graphics.

Obviously, this is just my stance on next-gen. I could easily be 100% wrong, but, to me, going for power doesn't seem to fit Microsoft's strategy (or at least the one that I think they're going for). See, the main reason why they started the Xbox brand was to invade and dominate the living room. Now, they're in the process of doing just that. They have Xbox, Live, and Kinect. From what I see of Microsoft, Kinect is clearly a large part of their future, and Xbox is FAR more than just games. They want to have the Xbox at the forefront of the living room, utilizing Kinect and Live to access all your entertainment needs, like TV, internet & apps, music, movies, and games. If they want to succeed in that goal, I don't see how they could make a giant, loud, power-hungry, hot console, and they especially don't want to repeat the same RRoD fiasco. I just don't see the average consumer wanting that big box in their living room, or for even some, it might not even fit in their entertainment center, etc.

In order to make it appealing, I think they would have to make it smaller, sleeker, and quieter.

Having said all that, I present to you the perfect console for that purpose...

It's small, quiet, affordable, can play TV content, internet based apps, music, movies, games, and Kinect.

It's called the xbox360SS (superslim, not supersport ) 28nm version of the existing console on the shelf today.


That was my point in response to you.

They have this already.

There's no point in watering xb360 down with another product just like it. All a weak xb720 console will do is abandon the consumers that brought them to the place they are at now.

RRoD was an engineering/manufacturing mistake and a completely avoidable one at that. The power envelope was not the culprit.

 

[steampoweredgod]

It's different because Wii happened, and it sold over 90 millions units. You don't need a huge leap in power to differentiate next-gen. Yes, Kinect and the 360 are selling well, but this is at the tail end of this gen, when prices are lower than initially, and there is something that to differentiate it and make it the "hot" item in Kinect. The 360 experienced its best year yet, largely due to Kinect, and a good majority of that crowd doesn't care about graphics.

Obviously, this is just my stance on next-gen. I could easily be 100% wrong, but, to me, going for power doesn't seem to fit Microsoft's strategy (or at least the one that I think they're going for). See, the main reason why they started the Xbox brand was to invade and dominate the living room. Now, they're in the process of doing just that. They have Xbox, Live, and Kinect. From what I see of Microsoft, Kinect is clearly a large part of their future, and Xbox is FAR more than just games. They want to have the Xbox at the forefront of the living room, utilizing Kinect and Live to access all your entertainment needs, like TV, internet & apps, music, movies, and games. If they want to succeed in that goal, I don't see how they could make a giant, loud, power-hungry, hot console, and they especially don't want to repeat the same RRoD fiasco. I just don't see the average consumer wanting that big box in their living room, or for even some, it might not even fit in their entertainment center, etc.

In order to make it appealing, I think they would have to make it smaller, sleeker, and quieter. And to top it off, I doubt next gen they will sell Kinect/Kinect 2.0 separate. They want Kinect in every household. That right there is going to be additional cost to the overall console package.

And for those UE4 comments, they definitely don't mean that Wii U wouldn't be a platform. Like Rangers said, the name may change (I fully expect it to), and Nintendo has been oddly secretive about Wii U developments. Take for instance the Darksiders II trailer. The Wii U logo wasn't found at the end. Or for Project CARS, they initially had a picture on their website with the Wii U logo, only to have it removed shortly after.

The HD market is bigger than the wii market, and a hardcore gamer may buy 20-40+ games as compared to a casual who may buy 3-6 games.

Many of the biggest 3rd party franchises appeal to the hardcore gamer, and it certainly wouldn't bode well if this hardcore market consolidated in one platform while the other two struggled for the more diluted purchases of the casuals' smaller market with weak hardware.

There's also the possiblity that many third parties may want to bring their biggest and best new ips to the console that allows their vision to be fulfilled... a ton of new high end ips, that without more than one viable powerful platform would be basically defacto exclusives and would also cement first place position.

Whoever ignores the hardcore does so at their peril, and it isn't guaranteed that novel interfaces will yield massive success with casuals either, it is a gamble.

I can tell you if one or two consoles get samaritan-like and the other one or two gets witcher-2-like games, the hardcore will tell the difference.

I'm reminded of the comments by a fellow poster regarding the movie 300 bluray and dvd, a casual-not-into-hd was putting the dvd or something, and the fellow viewer got and put in the bluray... the casual had trouble comprehending-what-was-happening and though there was something wrong with his dvd-disc that he had to return it because it was bad. The same may happen, the casual-may-not-fully-comprehend what is happening when he sees the powerful console in action and may think something is wrong with the weak console and simply return it or stop using it... if the gap is big enough.

PS

Regarding hot and loud, the ps3 was neither at launch, I'll give you that it was big, but many appliances are big, hdtv-dvrs may have similar sizes.

 

[metacore]

We are repeating that 3 x 580gtx mantra , and just yesterday Tim said :

"...and now the Samaritan demo requires 2.5 teraflops, an order of magnitude higher."
http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/09/epics-tim-sweeney-predicts-the-next-20-years-in-gaming-technology/

I think 2.5 Tflops is not such a scary numberWe should remeber it was bieng rendeered @ 2560/1600 with MSAA under Windows and dx11. In their gdc peresentation they implying it was all work in progress, brute force approach. Personally i thin samaritanian demo look should be easy achievable on 720/ps4.

Maybe Lay-osh or our resident devs can comment on what they think about the assets size/quality in that demo and if it should be feasible?

Also, another quotes from mark Rein sounds rather optimistic.

“People are going to be shocked later this year when they see Unreal Engine 4 and how much more profound an effect it will have.”

http://www.vg247.com/2012/02/10/dice-2012-unreal-engine-4-to-be-revealed-later-this-year-says-epic/

 

[GBPack]

Having said all that, I present to you the perfect console for that purpose...

It's small, quiet, affordable, can play TV content, internet based apps, music, movies, games, and Kinect.

It's called the xbox360SS (superslim, not supersport ) 28nm version of the existing console on the shelf today.


That was my point in response to you.

They have this already.

There's no point in watering xb360 down with another product just like it. All a weak xb720 console will do is abandon the consumers that brought them to the place they are at now.

RRoD was an engineering/manufacturing mistake and a completely avoidable one at that. The power envelope was not the culprit.

But Microsoft is opening more and more studios and devoting them to Kinect titles. What are they planning? Have their studios make games for Kinect on 360 and the rest on the 720? That doesn't really make sense.

I read somewhere that the 360's old hardware is holding back Kinect's potential, or something like that. And like I said, Kinect seems to figure a large part in their future. I highly doubt they will abandon Kinect in their next-gen console. Instead, upgrade it. Look at the iPhones and iPads and whatnot. They still sell at upgrade every couple of years.

I think they could easily target both sectors - the "gamers" and the "casual" - by targeting the middle ground. I'm not saying I think Microsoft will go full Wii next-gen, but something moderately more powerful, where you can still see a difference in visuals for the "gamers" and then market Kinect 2.0 with more advanced features, etc and other multimedia capabilities for the "casuals." Kinect is growing rapidly, and I bet that Microsoft wants those consumers on board as well for next-gen.

Also, as a side note, why can't I edit my posts? I saw some mistakes in my previous post, and it drove me crazy that I couldn't fix them

 

[TheChefO]

I think 2.5 Tflops is not such a scary number

Indeed.

HD7970 is ~3.8tflops @ 925mhz.

at 600MHz ... that works out to ~2.5tflops

 

[TheChefO]

But Microsoft is opening more and more studios and devoting them to Kinect titles. What are they planning? Have their studios make games for Kinect on 360 and the rest on the 720? That doesn't really make sense.

I read somewhere that the 360's old hardware is holding back Kinect's potential, or something like that. And like I said, Kinect seems to figure a large part in their future. I highly doubt they will abandon Kinect in their next-gen console. Instead, upgrade it. Look at the iPhones and iPads and whatnot. They still sell at upgrade every couple of years.

I think they could easily target both sectors - the "gamers" and the "casual" - by targeting the middle ground. I'm not saying I think Microsoft will go full Wii next-gen, but something moderately more powerful, where you can still see a difference in visuals for the "gamers" and then market Kinect 2.0 with more advanced features, etc and other multimedia capabilities for the "casuals." Kinect is growing rapidly, and I bet that Microsoft wants those consumers on board as well for next-gen.

Also, as a side note, why can't I edit my posts? I saw some mistakes in my previous post, and it drove me crazy that I couldn't fix them

The way you bring kinect2 with the new platform is by adding it onboard (piggyback technique ... see ps3 w BRD). The initial push of console gamers are hardcore. They will be the new console at a higher price (assuming the specs are worth it). This enables MS to amortize the cost of the initial run with a higher price, and present a nice base of kinect2 enabled consoles to developers.

After a year of this, introduce a kinectless xb720 for a lower price.

All the while, kinect+xbox360 will still be on the shelf.

All the investment MS is making in kinect will pay off in the future, and they can monetize the advantage today and in the near future with xb720 sitting on the shelf next to xb360's.

But as I said, sacrificing the advantage that brought them into the livingroom in the first place is a good way to get shown the door. It isn't so much about winning the console space as it is about securing an influential push into the livingroom. A big key to that for MS all the way up to the point they introduced Kinect, is the hardcore gamer.

They demand high end specs, not middle of the road.

Wiiing out in this manor especially to sacrifice for casuals will not be looked upon with understanding eyes from the hardcore market.

They will be leaving themselves open for a huge competitive advantage for Sony (or another).


As to the notion of xb360 limiting Kinect, that's true. Just as xb360 is limiting graphics, physics, interaction, etc. That's what happens with hardware from 2005.

Having said that, if you want cool, quiet, small ... then older spec makes sense. It's perfect for that purpose, and for casuals that don't care much about graphics, physics, interaction, they just want the interface ... well xb360+kinect is perfect for them. For the ones that want more, xb720.

There's no rule that says a new box can't sit on the shelf next to the old box. Nintendo proved that point rather well with Wii next to xb360/ps3. And for the staggered Multi-SKU approach, in varying degrees, Sony and MS proved this can work too.
_____________
As for editing posts, I think it takes a few days or posts for that to pop up for whatever reason.

 

[liolio]

We are repeating that 3 x 580gtx mantra , and just yesterday Tim said :

"...and now the Samaritan demo requires 2.5 teraflops, an order of magnitude higher."
http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/09/epics-tim-sweeney-predicts-the-next-20-years-in-gaming-technology/

I think 2.5 Tflops is not such a scary numberWe should remeber it was bieng rendeered @ 2560/1600 with MSAA under Windows and dx11. In their gdc peresentation they implying it was all work in progress, brute force approach. Personally i thin samaritanian demo look should be easy achievable on 720/ps4.

Maybe Lay-osh or our resident devs can comment on what they think about the assets size/quality in that demo and if it should be feasible?

Also, another quotes from mark Rein sounds rather optimistic.

“People are going to be shocked later this year when they see Unreal Engine 4 and how much more profound an effect it will have.”

http://www.vg247.com/2012/02/10/dice-2012-unreal-engine-4-to-be-revealed-later-this-year-says-epic/

That's where Console forum fails because it's so focus on FLOPS and ATI/AMD cards.
Most people here doesn't get that top FLOPs figures doesn't say the a whole story, and if there were more carefully but their analysis they notive the Nvidia does the same job as ATI with a lot less "FLOPS". FLOPS are not made equals even in the GPU realm.

As for Rein he is a loud mouth and he has something to sold so well one can come to its own conclusion about his claims.

 

[TheChefO]

As for Rein he is a loud mouth and he has something to sold so well one can come to its own conclusion about his claims.

Agreed.

No matter what the NG consoles are, he will likely be claiming they are the greatest thing since sliced bread as it helps his agenda to sell games and license UE4.

Having said that, Rein wasn't the one that quoted 2.5TFLOPS for Samaritan...

 

[liolio]

Having said that, Rein wasn't the one that quoted 2.5TFLOPS for Samaritan...

It's Sweeny so it's either real useful FLOPS or Nv FLOPS

 

[ninelven]

I'll just leave this here:

2006-7: CPU's become so fast and powerful that 3D hardware will be only marginally benfical for rendering relative to the limits of the human visual system, therefore 3D chips will likely be deemed a waste of silicon (and more expensive bus plumbing), so the world will transition back to software-driven rendering. And, at this point, there will be a new renaissance in non-traditional architectures such as voxel rendering and REYES-style microfacets, enabled by the generality of CPU's driving the rendering process. If this is a case, then the 3D hardware revolution sparked by 3dfx in 1997 will prove to only be a 10-year hiatus from the natural evolution of CPU-driven rendering.

Predicting the future is hard...

 

[babybumb]

Wii U will be horribly CPU and memory limited compared to upcoming hardware and PC.

Even a 360 can probably run UE4. They just have to turn off features and scale back in every area all the way down to 540p.

 

[Teasy]

Has nobody else here realised yet that Rein said nothing about UE4 running on a as yet un-named system? His words have been completely twisted. He just said that the Unreal Engine currently runs on "PC, MAC, XBox 360, PS3, IOS, Android, WiiU, PSVita and some platforms we're not allowed to mention by name yet". He then went on to mention UE4, and said nothing about what it would run on.

 

[Teasy]

More UE4 next gen hints (basically some blog wrote up Rein's statement):

http://loudmouthedgamers.com/blog/2...running-on-systems-i-cant-talk-about-by-name/



I think that should seriously crimp some of the uber low spec talk. In fact given what Samaritan ran on, it points towards a pretty darn high spec.

UE4 will scale massively in terms of graphics fidelity. So UE4 running on a certain piece of hardware tells us little about its specs outside of it having a relatively modern rendering pipeline. Not that its an issue since that article is a fabrication.

Wii U will be horribly CPU and memory limited compared to upcoming hardware and PC.

I'd be interested to see your guess on how WiiU's CPU and memory will stack up in comparison to this "upcoming hardware" you mentioned.

 

[MarkoIt]

By the way, Samaritan demo is not Unreal Engine 4. It's Unreal Engine 3 with DirectX11 features. Unreal Engine 4 won't be a traditional engine, but probably more a software architecture and an amazing set of toolkits. I expected that they will not only aim at game developing, from mobile to high-end (with different kind of renderer engine) but also at CGI rendering, maybe with the possibility to use off-line renders as plugins like for example with CE3 for Cinema.
Considering this last feature, they may want Unreal Engine 4 to be able to scale and render images on entire server farm, in a way that could be much reused for OnLive on a smaller scale.
Convergence between the movie industry and the gaming one will begin in the next-generation and come to a conclusion in the one after.

 

[KULTKILRZ]

I just don't see the average consumer wanting that big box in their living room, or for even some, it might not even fit in their entertainment center, etc.

In order to make it appealing, I think they would have to make it smaller, sleeker, and quieter. And to top it off, I doubt next gen they will sell Kinect/Kinect 2.0 separate. They want Kinect in every household. That right there is going to be additional cost to the overall console package.

i think microsoft needs a mascot

 

[steampoweredgod]

Wii U will be horribly CPU and memory limited compared to upcoming hardware and PC.

Even a 360 can probably run UE4. They just have to turn off features and scale back in every area all the way down to 540p.

Memory limited? Isn't the rumor that there's a nice chunk of edram? It also likely benefits from some nextgen high bandwidth memory.

Assuming they haven't nerfed the cpu, the new cores probably have at the least 2x the performance of the cell-ppu/xenon cores.

There's also likely a pretty fast bluray drive allowing for better streaming... and if nintendo was wise they'd put a nice chunk of solid state memory to allow for uber streaming capabilities for seamless high detail worlds.

What I'm wondering is can the newer gpus handle baked clothing animation like shown in the luminous engine? Or does this require a beefy cpu solution? I certainly don't recall seeing such advanced animation even in the latest pc games, is there a gpu constraint or mere neglect from the software side?

 

[east of eastside]

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/artic...archers_use_integrated_gpu_to_boost_cpu_speed

Researchers at North Carolina State University have found a way to improve CPU performance more than 20 percent using a GPU built on the same processor die.

"Chip manufacturers are now creating processors that have a ?fused architecture,? meaning that they include CPUs and GPUs on a single chip," said Dr. Huiyang Zhou, who co-authored a new paper based on the research. He explained, "Our approach is to allow the GPU cores to execute computational functions, and have CPU cores pre-fetch the data the GPUs will need from off-chip main memory."

The research was performed in conjunction with AMD, who talked about plans to increase CPU/GPU integration in a presentation to analysts last week. Based on that presentation, the techniques identified in this research could be used in AMD processors within the next two years.

Although this research appears to be focused on current PC technology, most likely AMD's Fusion APU, it also has obvious applications for improving ARM processor performance.

Along with a plan to transition into SOC processor production, possibly including ARM chips, AMD is promoting standardization between different processor architectures. Their HSA, or Heterogeneous Systems Architecture, initiative is intended to standardize the way various components integrated on a single processor interact with each other.

Interesting, this article fits with the ARM based GPGPU concept I proposed earlier and is sponsored by AMD.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Shouldn't they stop calling them GPUs now? If the CPU is fetching data and the 'GPU' is processing it, than it's a glorified vector maths unit. Call them VPUs or something, and change the press releases to "CPUs using VPUs, processing units derived from GPUs, blah blah..."

 

[TheChefO]

Shouldn't they stop calling them GPUs now? If the CPU is fetching data and the 'GPU' is processing it, than it's a glorified vector maths unit. Call them VPUs or something, and change the press releases to "CPUs using VPUs, processing units derived from GPUs, blah blah..."

SPE

SVU Streaming Vector Unit - that would work.

Either that or they just get integrated to the CPU architecture as math coprocessors did way back when and Intel/AMD will just add a DX to the processor model num... :smile: