Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[Dominik D]

So PC GPUs now can't render games in 1080p with "high AA" (4x? 8x?) and "higher polycount" now?

For what price? If you think that 360+1 will launch for $600 with hope of selling well, I think you're naive. Lets assume that 360+1 will feature DX11 hardware and that it will be as popular as DX10.1 HW today. The price of GPU and related logic alone will be around $150-$200. There's also CPU, drive, HDD, cooling, power supply, cables and all sort of smaller things that ships with the console. There's no way this kind of stuff would ship in, say, 2010 for a reasonable price (especially if 360+1 goes Blu-Ray). 2011+ it's a different story altogether. And, I'm sorry to say that, awesome numbers on the box don't sell goods.

Also if you give extra power in devs' hands, they'll use it. And as we've seen with this generation devs rarely care about resolution. If one can add more particle effects, shadows or some other stuff that actually improves realism by sacrificing resolution, one should. And most of the time devs do.

Or the GPUs likely to be available by the time the next gen consoles come out?
It would be a marketing point. Consumers were introduced to "full HD" in the last couple of years.
Maybe with the next gen, the can tout "true full HD."

PS3 is riding on the "awesome checkboxes" bandwagon. Somehow it doesn't work that well so far.

Now, if "this generation will last longer" and 2012 is really the target date for the next generation of consoles, I think it's pretty wild to guess today how what will be the landscape by then. But possibly that's just me...

I actually (sadly) agree with ConayR.

Sadly because of the substance or sadly because with me?

 

[Rangers]

A double in that amount of time is not much. Even 4x sounds little. I'd say 2GB is the absolute minimum for next generation.

Heh, I have seen on various "hot deal" forums where, granted only after mail in rebate, you can get 4 GB of laptop memory for 9.99.

DDR2 really is as cheap as dirt these days.

 

[Neb]

Heh, I have seen on various "hot deal" forums where, granted only after mail in rebate, you can get 4 GB of laptop memory for 9.99.

DDR2 really is as cheap as dirt these days.

But you have to factor in the memory speed to in the price.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Previous generational changes have been accompanied by memory increases of between 8 and 16 times. Based on historic data, 4GBs of RAM for the next generation is not only plausible, but a conservative estimate. Obviously much will depend on the type chosen and the market price at the time, but when you look at prices these days it seems like increasing RAM would likely be one of the most cost effective ways to improve performance.

 

[eastmen]

For what price? If you think that 360+1 will launch for $600 with hope of selling well, I think you're naive. Lets assume that 360+1 will feature DX11 hardware and that it will be as popular as DX10.1 HW today. The price of GPU and related logic alone will be around $150-$200. There's also CPU, drive, HDD, cooling, power supply, cables and all sort of smaller things that ships with the console. There's no way this kind of stuff would ship in, say, 2010 for a reasonable price (especially if 360+1 goes Blu-Ray). 2011+ it's a different story altogether. And, I'm sorry to say that, awesome numbers on the box don't sell goods.

i have a 3870x2 and it allows me to play dead space at 1900x1200 with 4x fsaa and 16x anistropic filtering. I can actually push it to 8x fsaa and maintain 30fps. This is with a q6600 and 8 gigs of ram.

Now a days you can get a 4850 512meg card for $150 or less and its actually faster than my two chip card. If in 2011 ms can't put a 4850 chip or better in an xbox next at $400 or less than there is a huge problem. I would wager that the next xbox would have a dx 11 card in it and be as powerfull as the high end dx 11 cards later this year. Figuring a 2011 launch that puts them roughly two years behind the high end pcs. I think thats better than the xenos was. Even in 2010 its still do-able.

As for bluray how much will that cost in another year ? There are already sub $200 players out there (not at sale price) this year they will only get cheaper and they include all the components to make it work not just the drive. You can get a bluray/ hd dvd drive for a pc for $100 or less currently.

The xbox next may forgo a hardrive again in the base sku and instead launch with flash ram built in. 16 gigs is going for $30 bucks right now to consumers. I'm sure in 2010/11 you can get that dirt cheap. Then put out a large 250gig or higher drive with the $100 more console and recoup some of the losses.

The cpu could again be smaller and cheaper. Look at the 360. The waternoose was what less than 150m trasnistors and the gpu was 300m tranistors. Tripple the waternoose with a 9 core 3MB cache chip at 3.2ghz and your only at about 500m tranistors at 40nm or even 32nm that would be a very small chip.

Also if you give extra power in devs' hands, they'll use it. And as we've seen with this generation devs rarely care about resolution. If one can add more particle effects, shadows or some other stuff that actually improves realism by sacrificing resolution, one should. And most of the time devs do.

If devs do target 1027x768 again thats what a third of the pixels of 1920x1200 ? a dx 11 2010 gpu should easily be able to do 8x fsaa at 720p without sacrificing particle effects or shadows. Actually i'd believe that 8x fsaa would be as common on pcs as 4x fsaa is today at that point. Some cards on the market are able to easily do 16x fsaa or mixed mode fsaa on many of the games.

PS3 is riding on the "awesome checkboxes" bandwagon. Somehow it doesn't work that well so far.

because graphicly the ps3 doesn't stand out from the crowd. So far this gen the ps3 has had its fair share of good looking games but nothing that breaks away from the xbox 360 in terms of graphics. IF sony had gone with 1 gig of ram and they had truely break out graphics they could have sold many more units. It certianly would have helped them. The problem is they cost $100-$300 more than the 360 when they launched and the main thing they were used for , the ps3 had no precivable advantages. If sony or ms goes the enhanced route and offers a higher clocked system with more ram like nintendo did than this gen there will be one console with clearly better graphics it will garner sales. Esp if it only has a slight rise in costs.

But you have to factor in the memory speed to in the price.

Sure but you also have to factor in the amount of ram ms is going to buy. They h ave sold about 30m consoles this gen so far. That means whoever gets the contract for the next system will be looking at selling at least 30m units worth of ram. That allows them to lower their margins and still make money. The ram will scale with the console as it allways has.

The ps1 had 3mbs of ram i believe the ps2 32mbs and the ps3 512mbs. So thats an increase of 10.7 and 16 times. so we are looking at 5gigs to 8.2 gigs or so.

I'm hopping on 8 gigs. THe worlds they could create would be amazing.

 

[fearsomepirate]

I think Nintendo will go HD because it will be a base consumer expectation by 2012. However, I do not expect a huge upgrade (fourfold or whatever) in power because one of the main motivations for keeping the Wii low-power was to keep development costs from running away. It appears that the HD gaming market is not very profitable overall right now (total losses of all companies compared to total profits), and I don't see Nintendo adopting those values for next gen.

 

[AlNom]

Also if you give extra power in devs' hands, they'll use it. And as we've seen with this generation devs rarely care about resolution. If one can add more particle effects, shadows or some other stuff that actually improves realism by sacrificing resolution, one should. And most of the time devs do.

Exactly... This has been iterated many many times in the past and people don't seem to understand it (or delude themselves). We could have had 1080p this gen, but we'd also have years old looking games at the time the hardware was released. It's a silly metric to impose.

On the other hand, I would expect increased use of MSAA; as others have discussed recently, MSAA is useful for techniques other than alleviating polygon edge aliasing. It would come down to balancing the hardware for framebuffer space, ROPs, and bandwidth (at the very least). I wouldn't expect the ROPs to be designed for 8x sampling rate, but who knows... it's a long way out.

 

[silhouette]

I do not expect any next gen console from neither MS nor Sony until 60gig Pro 360 and 80 gig PS3 begin to sell less than 150-200$. This generation also shows that the sweetspot to introduce a console is 400$, not 500-600$. So a new 400$ console only makes sense when its little brother would sell less than half of its price. I think 2010-Christmas would be a good time for both MS and Sony.

In addition, I still think PS3 will pull ahead of 360 in time.. Cell is obvoiusly more powerful and once developers (3rd parties) get more used to it in time, they will come up with better ideas that can only be done on it. If that happens again around 2010 xmas time, it would be a good move for MS to come up with a new console whose computational performance is much bettter than PS3 (hence much better gfx and more complexity in games) to downplay the difference between 360 and PS3. I am not sure about Sony though.

Architecture wise I am not expecting much difference from current generation. I will be very surprised if MS changes the CPU/GPU architecture once more. For CPU, they are probably going to have 12-16 cores with significantly increased L2 size. For GPU, they will bump up the shader cores and EDRAM size, and probably add integer processing and additional features for Dx11 compatibility, and for GDDR5 will be their friend to increase bandwidth. With also bump of clock speeds, they can achieve again almost an order of magnitude increase in shader/CPU power in the next gen. For Sony, pretty much the same for CPU... Increase the SPU number from 8 to 32, and you are done.. For GPU, I am not sure.. Whatever NVidia has at the time, proabably they will go with that.. This approach will also provide full backwards compatibilty with both 360 and PS3 for Ms and Sony, respectively.

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

As for RAM, instead of targeting a performance profile, it would be nice if you can run several tasks in addition to the game at once, like XMB, Home, PSN Store, etc Or maybe even more than one game, for downloaded PSN games or installed games.

I think this is a key consideration when inventing fantasy specs for the next generation of consoles.

Multi-tasking, or using the system RAM for tasks other than the game currently being played fits very well with the features being added to the 360 and PS3 in order to bring the current consoles into compliance with MS and Sony's vision for their use.

I'd expect the successor consoles to already have these capabilities fully integrated upon launch, both in terms of software and the hardware (RAM) to make it possible.

 

[liolio]

I think that betting on more than 4GBs of RAM for next gen is unreasonable.
Something like 3GBs to make the most of the 32bit addressing space is more likely.

For resolution well it's really a marketing point, obviously the higher the better (everything being equal) but it's not costumers main concern and I don't think it should editors/devs either. For example I'm actually playing my 360 through a SDTV (worse 4/3... ) I plan for buying a new screen but the resolution is unlikely to be pure 720P or 1080p. By next gen every one for sure will run its game on an HD screen but that's not equal to true 720P or 1080P. Upscaling will always be part of the equation so why care so much for the native resolution? (outside of enthusiasts/geeks).

The situation could get even "funkier" in regard to resolution, Joker454 made nice point about "adaptive" AA in the game tech thread but I still think that "variable" resolution should be part of the equation to keep thing as smooth as possible. On the other side I don't think that devs should bear the effort to develop the profiling tool that would allow for it neither have the room on the CPU side. From my understanding is a matter of trade-off for example edge AA is helpfully if you're bandwidth limited but has some CPU overhead (the choice is made depending on the bottlenecks/problems devs are facing).
Now think "next gen" and if one manufacturer choose comes with something close to larrabee (or as flexible).
Each core could run such a profiling tool for both AA and resolution and when done output to an "heterogeneous" framebuffer (say they manage to tag each tile and then up/down scale properly/independently ). I would almost break the idea of "native" resolution it would be become more a "targeted" resolution.

In regard to AA level I really hope that AAx4 will be the norm not too mention AF... Vsync would be great too. For example in indiana jones lego it's possible to force vsync and the effect is quiet important (my wife noticed it) where as she has no clue on resolution.

I hope that manufacturers will provide proper tools to devs next gen for make "adaptive rendering" a breeze. By adaptive I mean the devs choose the resolution that makes most sense perfs wize according too what kind of effect they want to push and then having the system to adapt to keep really most noticeable glitches minimal (frame rate drops, no AA, no AF, no Vsync who are are more noticeable to the average/casual user (even he can't name the effects going on)than the native resolution).
Between I'm starting to hate the 720P/1080P "integrism" as Pc gamers have been playing in "hd" for a while, in a way "sup SD" would make more sense than sub HD.
Hd format for TVs are arbitrary and badly chosen as it looks more easy to produce 16/10 screen and most hd ready 720p display are 13xxx7xx (16/10) and I start to see the same with "full HD" monitors like 20xxx11xx.

 

[AzBat]

Is the idea of "forward compatibility" feasible or even plausible for the next gen? Could it be a way to keep the current generation relevant & profitable?

Tommy McClain

 

[Cheezdoodles]

*sigh*

Just because I didn't mention a GPU doesn't mean it won't have one.

Then mention one.

Also, you can wish for all you want, but somehow I get the sneaking suspicion that you would cry bloody murder when you saw the price. That's just me though.

definately just you. 4gb of whatever is FOTM memory in 2011 will be right in line with 512mb GDDR3 in 2005 when X360 launched.

Honestly, the way the economy is, we don't need $400+ boxes, we need cheaper boxes. You want that dream machine, build a freaking PC. I want to see gaming survive, and companies stay afloat.

Im not talking about dream machines. we are not suggesting some crazy over the top machines, we are suggesting normal upgrades, that are in line with evolution.A 8x jump in RAM over 5 years is not a "dream machine" its just normal computer evolution. Clearly you dont understand how fast things evolve and this makes this discussion kinda pointless.

Your PS4 would been obsolete if it where to launch with 1gb RAM on day one, unless you want something like the Wii is today compared to x360\ps3.

Wii 2 in 2011\12 should have 512-1gb ram.

Consoles don't need super advancements right now, increasing memory to 2GB would be more than sufficient, this isn't a freaking PC you know. There is absolutely no need to jump that high in memory, 2GB is already FOUR times larger than what we currently have...

LOL.

Again its not a super advancement of any kind, its just EVOLUTION.

Last gen we had 32mb or 64mb ram (depending if you had a ps2 or xbox), now we have 512mb. And just like we now have 512mb, next time around we will have much more.

You say "2gb is more than sufficient" sufficient for what?

Lets say that all we want for next gen consoles, is for them to be as competive as the X360 was compared to the PC during its first year.

You sure as hell will not be getting anywhere near that kind of performance from a PS4 fitted with a 6ghz (?) Cell with a beefed up RSX (lol) with 1 gb of ram. It would be ridiculously cheap (if 6ghz is feasible) to produce thought, much like the Wii is today.

 

[Zassk]

This generation also shows that the sweetspot to introduce a console is 400$, not 500-600$.

I think this generation has shown that the sweet spot to introduce a console is way less than $400... unless you completely ignore the Wii.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

In addition, I still think PS3 will pull ahead of 360 in time.. Cell is obvoiusly more powerful and once developers (3rd parties) get more used to it in time, they will come up with better ideas that can only be done on it. If that happens again around 2010 xmas time, it would be a good move for MS to come up with a new console whose computational performance is much bettter than PS3 (hence much better gfx and more complexity in games) to downplay the difference between 360 and PS3. I am not sure about Sony though.

I disagree completely.

The graphical differences between the PS3 and X360 are so small and tiny that i find it very hard to believe that MS would bother to come up with a new console just because the PS3 will pull slightly ahead of the X360 graphically with time.

They will release a new console eventually, but its not going to be because the PS3 has 10% better graphics.

(and ofcourse the next console will be much better than the PS3, technology evolution makes sure of that, you cannot really make something thats worse than the PS3 at this point in time, unless you specifically want to do it)

 

[PARANOiA]

i have a 3870x2 and it allows me to play dead space at 1900x1200 with 4x fsaa and 16x anistropic filtering. I can actually push it to 8x fsaa and maintain 30fps. This is with a q6600 and 8 gigs of ram.

I think that's my point. Do you think "next gen" will be simply this gen's graphics in 1080p with high levels of AA? How disappointing!

Like I said, (IMO) will be focussed on more detail that looks good in screenshots as top priority. Just like this gen.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

It's also very likely we'll see some stable 6Ghz processors within the next 5 years.

Wasn't it IBM who unvieled a 5Ghz processor back in April?

If the PS3 is 2 years old, then it's got at least another 4 years until we see another Playstation (well, who knows really). But let's just say 4 years. 2013, you don't think a 6Ghz Cell processor would be cheap and easy for Sony to use?

I stand by my thoughts, a 6Ghz Cell with a decent GPU (hopefully a beefed up RSX) and 2GB of memory would be capable of some great stuff. Not "omg this is virtual reality so awesome woohoo" stuff, but great none the less.

Intel released a 3Ghz processor in 2003 and we haven't seen much gain in hz's after that. To me it doesn't strike as likely situation to have a 6Ghz processor in a small box in a relatively short time, but we'll see. I just think the direction is not more hz's and has been like that for a long time. There are lot's of issues when the clock speed is raised, part of the reason why everybody went multicore.

 

[function]

definately just you. 4gb of whatever is FOTM memory in 2011 will be right in line with 512mb GDDR3 in 2005 when X360 launched.

I guess that depends partly on how big memory chips are in 2011. If 512 MB chips are out and about then they could use 8 of them, same as for the Xbox 360, if not then I can't see anyone wanting to go with 16.

Iirc MS originally wanted to use only 4 memory chips in the 360 (for 256MB) and were reluctantly pushed into 8. If MS had indeed gone with 256MB, 2GB in 2011 would be looking pretty reasonable. Given a few GBs of fast HDD cache it might not be so bad.

Your PS4 would been obsolete if it where to launch with 1gb RAM on day one, unless you want something like the Wii is today compared to x360\ps3.

It might be what Sony's shareholders would want though. Being obsolete hasn't stopped the Wii from being on course to be the most successful home games system in history!

It's not what I want, but I'd bet MS and Sony (particularly Sony) have at least considered doing the whole "tweak and relaunch" thing ...

 

[Dominik D]

i have a 3870x2 and it allows me to play dead space at 1900x1200 with 4x fsaa and 16x anistropic filtering. I can actually push it to 8x fsaa and maintain 30fps. This is with a q6600 and 8 gigs of ram.

Now a days you can get a 4850 512meg card for $150 or less and its actually faster than my two chip card. If in 2011 ms can't put a 4850 chip or better in an xbox next at $400 or less than there is a huge problem.

How much cooling does this card require? You can't sell PC-size console. In order to include 4850-level card in your console you have to get appropriate parts shrunk enough to be less power hungry. Furthermore when you launch console in, say, September, you should start manufacturing it ~6 months before the launch. By the time you start manufacturing process you have to be damn sure everything works as expected. I still believe that you can't get that far by Feb 2010. 2011? Probably, sure.

I would wager that the next xbox would have a dx 11 card in it and be as powerfull as the high end dx 11 cards later this year. Figuring a 2011 launch that puts them roughly two years behind the high end pcs. I think thats better than the xenos was. Even in 2010 its still do-able.

Again: 2011 - probably yes. 2010 - I don't think it's doable for a reasonable price.

As for bluray how much will that cost in another year ? There are already sub $200 players out there (not at sale price) this year they will only get cheaper and they include all the components to make it work not just the drive. You can get a bluray/ hd dvd drive for a pc for $100 or less currently.

This works _only_ if you think that back-compat is not important at all. BR drives you can buy today won't play DVD at x12. Building BR that can would be more expensive than those cheap drives you can buy today.

The xbox next may forgo a hardrive again in the base sku and instead launch with flash ram built in. 16 gigs is going for $30 bucks right now to consumers. I'm sure in 2010/11 you can get that dirt cheap. Then put out a large 250gig or higher drive with the $100 more console and recoup some of the losses.

Sure, but you're forgetting two important things. First: costs pile up. Faster, smalles CPU, better GPU, more RAM, HDD, flash, Ethernet, WiFi, BR, yada yada. Suddenly you have "perfectly doable" console for $600. Second: there is no way next generation of consoles will win with HW alone. I think this is the main reason why Bach says we'll have to wait a little more. Just like with Xbox 360 and Xbox Live being "center of the experience", next generation needs some added value, be it built-in software or service provided. And whatever it's going to be, you have to build it. This process is slower than taking existing hardware and building console on top of it (although I'm not saying that this part is super easy).

If devs do target 1027x768 again thats what a third of the pixels of 1920x1200 ? a dx 11 2010 gpu should easily be able to do 8x fsaa at 720p without sacrificing particle effects or shadows. Actually i'd believe that 8x fsaa would be as common on pcs as 4x fsaa is today at that point. Some cards on the market are able to easily do 16x fsaa or mixed mode fsaa on many of the games.

Shadows are pretty expensive and this was just an example of what you can use extra horse power on. In the end I stand by my words: no matter how much power you have, most of the time it won't be used for high res. I'd rather use extra power on higher quality skinning, efects (caustics, godrays, soft shadows with variable penumbra size,...) than waste them on high resolution, sterile environments.

because graphicly the ps3 doesn't stand out from the crowd. So far this gen the ps3 has had its fair share of good looking games but nothing that breaks away from the xbox 360 in terms of graphics. IF sony had gone with 1 gig of ram and they had truely break out graphics they could have sold many more units. It certianly would have helped them.

It wouldn't because it'd make console even more expensive. There's a common misconception that it's enough to put more, better HW in the console and boom! sells like pancakes. It doesn't.

 

[Dominik D]

In addition, I still think PS3 will pull ahead of 360 in time.. Cell is obvoiusly more powerful and once developers (3rd parties) get more used to it in time, they will come up with better ideas that can only be done on it.

Oh please. If it was so obvious, we'd see more impressive games from day one. It's either too close to what 360 enables to be significant or there's a huge conspiracy of developers to underutilize PS3's HW.

If that happens again around 2010 xmas time, it would be a good move for MS to come up with a new console whose computational performance is much bettter than PS3 (hence much better gfx and more complexity in games) to downplay the difference between 360 and PS3.

Can PS3 games look better than 360 ones? Most likely yes. Is it going to be an order of magnitude "better"? Definitely not. So who else than those 27 vocal fanboys on the Internet would care about the "difference"? There's a much greater difference in quality between DVD an BR than between 360 and PS3 yet people are not showering BR drive manufacturers with their money. Why? Because most consumers don't care about gradual changes. Either something provides great value and something very unique or it's not worth the money. Sure, new, powerful cosole will appeal to some audience but whether it's 1mln or 5mln of users depends on price (and it's not going to be more than this 5mln).

Still, better hardware is not enough. You need something _really_ fresh to appeal to more than just HC audience (~3mln ppl). Also before we move to next-gen, console manufacturers and developers have to figure out how one can decrease the cost of game development which is already very, very high. Higher fidelity games will require even more assets which are already eating up huge part of the development budgets. If you provide new hardware, you want people to actually utilize it. No sane developer is going to jump on the new, expensive console, that provides better hardware (that you have to utilize) while having tiny market share.

Is the idea of "forward compatibility" feasible or even plausible for the next gen? Could it be a way to keep the current generation relevant & profitable?

If you keep hardware similar enough to the current one, sure, you can add "forward compatibility" as an option for developers. I don't think that it would work the way some questionable leak explained it some time ago though.

But in general - this thread went from "Bach says this generation will last longer" to "I think next console will be this". Somehow we forgot to talk about _why_ Bach thinks so and whether he's right or not. IMO he is and I will reiterate that: better hardware is not enough. You have to offer something new, fresh and compelling to a wider audience. iHobo estimates that there are 3 market segments: hardcore, cool gamer, mass market (3/30/300mln ppl respectively). In order to sell reasonable (>20mln) amount of consoles you need something that appeals to a wider audience. Figuring out what it is and delivering it takes significantly more time than developing hardware itself. IMO this is what Bach had in mind and this is what makes for this generation's longlivety.

 

[eastmen]

How much cooling does this card require? You can't sell PC-size console. In order to include 4850-level card in your console you have to get appropriate parts shrunk enough to be less power hungry. Furthermore when you launch console in, say, September, you should start manufacturing it ~6 months before the launch. By the time you start manufacturing process you have to be damn sure everything works as expected. I still believe that you can't get that far by Feb 2010. 2011? Probably, sure.

I just bought a 1 gig 4850 for $170. So i'm happy. The cooling on my card is a dual slot cooler. It was two chips though , the 4850 cards are more powerfull and have less cooling
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125237

You actually don't even need a fan.

Again: 2011 - probably yes. 2010 - I don't think it's doable for a reasonable price.

IT depends on what you mean by 2010. If the console launches for the holiday 2010 they will surely use 40nm. Video cards are going to be coming out in the next fwe months using it. But how long after wards will it take to hit 32nm ? They may be willing to eat some cost till then. The 4850 is pretty small and cheap compared to other nvidia cards . You can get the 512 meg verisons for $130. We already know they perform very well and are 1m tranistors on 55nm

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/gaming-graphics-charts-q3-2008/compare,740.html?prod[2116]=on

Assassins Creed v1.02
Fraps/TH-Savefile
(1920x1200, 4xAA, Game AF, max. Quality) 38.9 FPS

Call of Duty 4 v1.6
Fraps/Shock and Awe
(1920x1200, 4xAA, 8xAF, max. Quality) 75fps

Mass Effect
Fraps/Virmire
(1920x1200, 8xAA, Game AF, Ultra Quality ) 25fps

I think its obvious that even cheap pc hardware has moved on and if ms goes with a set up like this gen with a good pool of edram and a large gpu they can really make a powerfull system that is far beyond an xbox 2.5 esp if they ramp up the ram pool

This works _only_ if you think that back-compat is not important at all. BR drives you can buy today won't play DVD at x12. Building BR that can would be more expensive than those cheap drives you can buy today

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135188

6x bluray drive at $100 and they make ap rofit on it. Thats a 216mbit/s thats 27MB/s vs 16.2MB/s of the dvd drive in the xbox 360.

Prices of bluray will only continue to come down this year and next year. Its quickly becoming a non expensive disc drive.

Sure, but you're forgetting two important things. First: costs pile up. Faster, smalles CPU, better GPU, more RAM, HDD, flash, Ethernet, WiFi, BR, yada yada. Suddenly you have "perfectly doable" console for $600. Second: there is no way next generation of consoles will win with HW alone. I think this is the main reason why Bach says we'll have to wait a little more. Just like with Xbox 360 and Xbox Live being "center of the experience", next generation needs some added value, be it built-in software or service provided. And whatever it's going to be, you have to build it. This process is slower than taking existing hardware and building console on top of it (although I'm not saying that this part is super easy).

I don't see that happening. sony is rumored to have spent up to $800 on the ps3. I don't see ms coming anywhere near that price next gen. Bluray , wifi , ethernet are not going to be huge costs next gen, they weren't this gen , a wifi adapter can be as cheap as $8 bucks online and they are making a profit. The things that drive the cost ofa console up are the cpu , gpu , ram and mother board costs along with hardrives and optical drives. Sony's console got out of control because they decided to put ah ardrive in as mandatory and went with a brand new barely tested optical drive that ending up having bad yield problems and resulted in many delays and very expnesive drives.

Next gen you may need more than powerfull hardare , but the core gamers who went out and bought the 360 on launch day and supported it for 2 years with huge attach rates and continues to drive huge game sales will want those things. They will want whoever has the best online set up for gaming and the best hardware to play it on. If ms launches first again with a powerfull system the core gamer will go to them. I already know core gamers who wished a new xbox would come out this year ! They are ready to move on .

hadows are pretty expensive and this was just an example of what you can use extra horse power on. In the end I stand by my words: no matter how much power you have, most of the time it won't be used for high res. I'd rather use extra power on higher quality skinning, efects (caustics, godrays, soft shadows with variable penumbra size,...) than waste them on high resolution, sterile environments

Its not just powerfull hardare , but if you have powerfull hardware , good dev tools and have a large base of gamers willnig ot buy tons of games then the hardware will get used.

It wouldn't because it'd make console even more expensive. There's a common misconception that it's enough to put more, better HW in the console and boom! sells like pancakes. It doesn't

Comon missconception ? I don't think so , so far there is one gen that has had cute and quriky new control scheme take off. But its allways been a timing and power scenario to succeeding. The new control scheme on the n64 didn't help it beat the ps1 and before that we didn't have a new control scheme since hte original systems in the 70s. They don't come around ever generation and next gen a wii remote wont be neough to sell people on a new system and if all three systems have wii remotes then whats going to sell one system over the other ?

The ps3 was really expensive because of bluray which has done nothing for the system in terms of games. It was a big mistake on their part and they paided and are paying for it. But a ps3 with no br and an extra 512 megs of ram could have come out in 2005 and would have destroyed the 360 and would have cost less than the ps3 we ended up with to boot.


Once again there are many types of gamers and you can go for the ultra casuals as nintendo has done or you can go for the core. Sometimes you can go for both. There is no reason why ms can't go after the core again in the first year or two with an expensive system. We already know that a $400 system sells well and I expect ms to launch with a $300/400 system again this gen. MS also has the money to take some losses up front to get a leap on the competition.


I don't see any reason why a 9 core /3MB waternoose (500m tranistors or 3x the size and tranistors of the current waternoose) on 40nm vs 90nm and a dx11 gpu with 32MBs of edram or similar with 8 gigs of system ram isn't do able in 2010/2011 for the smae price the 360 cost at launch.

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If that happens again around 2010 xmas time, it would be a good move for MS to come up with a new console whose computational performance is much bettter than PS3 (hence much better gfx and more complexity in games) to downplay the difference between 360 and PS3.

Can PS3 games look better than 360 ones? Most likely yes. Is it going to be an order of magnitude "better"? Definitely not. So who else than those 27 vocal fanboys on the Internet would care about the "difference"? There's a much greater difference in quality between DVD an BR than between 360 and PS3 yet people are not showering BR drive manufacturers with their money. Why? Because most consumers don't care about gradual changes. Either something provides great value and something very unique or it's not worth the money. Sure, new, powerful cosole will appeal to some audience but whether it's 1mln or 5mln of users depends on price (and it's not going to be more than this 5mln).

Still, better hardware is not enough. You need something _really_ fresh to appeal to more than just HC audience (~3mln ppl). Also before we move to next-gen, console manufacturers and developers have to figure out how one can decrease the cost of game development which is already very, very high. Higher fidelity games will require even more assets which are already eating up huge part of the development budgets. If you provide new hardware, you want people to actually utilize it. No sane developer is going to jump on the new, expensive console, that provides better hardware (that you have to utilize) while having tiny market share.

Actually if MS does launch in 2010 it would basicly kill the ps3. The ps3 would most likely at that point be stuck between a $100 360 with the same grpahical ability and its own slew of great AAA titles and a $400 xbox next with graphics far beyond the ps3. At the current rate the ps3 will most likely only have hit $200 on its base sku.