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

[tongue_of_colicab]

4g will be widespread in 5-6 years with likely speeds of 50-100mbps or higher for millions of people.

Don't forget you have not just got the cost of designing and bill of materials of a new generation of console, but your install base re starts at zero...with online scenario it could gently switch over to a steam like setup allowing for infrastructure to get better with instant install base of millions.

I'm not sure about it needing to be free? But the industry is already moving to a free model..advertising (+shady data collection)
I envisage a spotify like scenario where it's free for a trial period with ads, or free with limited usage with adds with a full upgrade to monthly subscription on offer.

It makes sense for everyone...the marks against it are infrastructure which will be better...and the traditionals who don't like digital....we have seen what happens to the wants of traditionals when new technology enters

4g is going to be ass for gaming. I live in Japan atm and I have a LTE pocket wifi device thats rated at 75mbps, so pretty much what you are talking about. Now never mind that you don't actually get 75mbps, you'll get 5 if you are lucky in the evening hours, also never mind data caps in most parts of the world, what do you think lag is going to do? Cloud gaming already sucks as far as lag goes on a land line, with a mobile connection it's pretty much not done. Sure, there will be people who don't care but anyone playing games on a regulair basis won't exactly like the lag to say the least.

It doesn't make sense for everyone. It only makes sense for companies because it's easier for them and earns them more money. It doesn't have any benefit at all for gamers.

It's not cheaper. You don't own anything anymore so you are totally dependant on MS/sony/etc, you can't resell or trade your games, no matter what, you get much more lag than now. And lag sucks, no matter what you are getting worse IQ and by the looks of it you are not going to get better gfx either because constantly updating hardware costs a lot of money.

Please do tell me, where do I benefit?

 

[Sonic]

4G is useless in America for the cloud because of data caps, throttling, coverage, and price.

Yeah in the case of the US, where MS has its main focus, in a cloud based gaming world I see ISP's now getting a piece of the gaming pie. And that is absolutely horrendous. Either way those companies will get paid, especially the likes of companies like Comcast who will gouge either the consumer of MS for a pass on their networks.

Also have to wonder if it is indeed cheaper for the hardware maker to go the cloud route. As others have mentioned the costs of constantly upgrading and the power bill could become outrageous. Oh and then you'll have to pay out the ass for customer support because there's always going to be some kind of issues, It might be cheaper in the short term, but in the long term it could turn out to be an ever expanding investment that could balloon up in size. With traditional hardware it is a massive up front investment to the console manufacturer with the allure of reaping large profits later on. The upcoming generation will tell us if traditional console gaming is dying and if other solutions will take over or coexist or dwindle.

 

[Grall]

So you really think they're going to make a console thats twice as loud/hot as 360 was?

Twice as loud, no, because the 360's cooling solution was simply terribly designed. The PS3 dissipated considerably more heat at a much lower noise level. Twice as hot? No, because that would be too expensive. Also, power efficiency is starting to become a big deal, a device constantly belching 350W during gameplay would be a cause for concern for many people. That's quite a space heater, and if you got AC going you'll blow another chunk of power to cool off that heat.

 

[Sigfried1977]

Not matter what hardware you put in, 5 years later pc hardware will be much faster and capable of much better gfx.

And no-one will give a shit, so I don' think it's that unreasonable really.

 

[french toast]

4g is going to be ass for gaming. I live in Japan atm and I have a LTE pocket wifi device thats rated at 75mbps, so pretty much what you are talking about. Now never mind that you don't actually get 75mbps, you'll get 5 if you are lucky in the evening hours, also never mind data caps in most parts of the world, what do you think lag is going to do? Cloud gaming already sucks as far as lag goes on a land line, with a mobile connection it's pretty much not done. Sure, there will be people who don't care but anyone playing games on a regulair basis won't exactly like the lag to say the least.

It doesn't make sense for everyone. It only makes sense for companies because it's easier for them and earns them more money. It doesn't have any benefit at all for gamers.

It's not cheaper. You don't own anything anymore so you are totally dependant on MS/sony/etc, you can't resell or trade your games, no matter what, you get much more lag than now. And lag sucks, no matter what you are getting worse IQ and by the looks of it you are not going to get better gfx either because constantly updating hardware costs a lot of money.

Please do tell me, where do I benefit?

Well that sounds amazing, however the technology is out there now, it just needs refining and enlarging which will happen in 5 years with a combination of cable and 4g.

It benefits you because you will not have the bulk of games and stuff laying around, you will have one service that goes on every device, no buying 1 game or app for every device..no everything will run seamlessly from a phone to a tv.

You will get instant upgrades to your games, other will be like digital tv subscription service where everything is one button away with no faffing about, no boxes to spend money on, no sky high electricity bills, don't forget most people. Fork out for box live gold account anyway, along with digital tv, spotify and likely many others, xbox live 1080 or what ever other it becomes will merge all services into one..more efficient and cost effective for everyone..physical disks will become like records.

You won't need a second hand market because there will be no physical games.

 

[Arwin]

While I don't doubt it could happen and it will happen to a certain extent eventually, it is simply inefficient. Gaming is not like TV, where one single content stream satisfies many customers. Everything online/in the cloud/through a webpage, all these things we've been through before, and it is simply not the best solution for everything yet.

I've been through this discussion many times before, but for the moment I still think that consoles that more intelligently stream their data from the web, so that you can basically start playing before the game is even downloaded, will be the most efficient solution for quite a while yet. I am simply not buying that the infrastructure will be cheaper and more stable if everything is server-side. Consoles can stand in individual homes without all too significant cooling and backup solutions as a huge distributed network that should be much cheaper than having everything central.

Of course eventually power will become trivial, and when bandwidth becomes trivial as well (everyone is on fiber optics) then I can definitely foresee a future where you stream everything all the time. It's a pretty risky proposition though, also for the consumer if at some point none of your data lives locally and is completely out of your control. I would choose some kind of caching/mirroring option every time, and if set-up well, that should be as efficient as anything.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Thread closed as a mishmash of topics already discussed in other threads, while the OP hasn't bothered to contribute anything more to the discussion.

 

[babcat]

I was just going to post in my thread a few minutes ago, but it seems one of the moderators closed it. I will not comment in detail on how I think that is heavy handed, because I'm afraid I will get banned. However, I would like to post here a few of the comments I was going to make on my thread.

First, I think the PS3 will utilize about 350 watts of power. I do not think that is an excessive amount of power for a console going for a more hardcore audience in addition to casual gamers. It would be crazy for the WiiU, but not for the PS4 or XBox 720. 350 watts is not really a lot, and is not a whole lot more than what the PS3 consumed. Utilizing top notch cooling technology and a slightly larger case I think it is perfectly doable. Making the PS4 and XBox 720 larger than previous systems and much larger than the WiiU could also give physiological appeal. People may think (and be correct) that the bigger system means it is more powerful. Also, with a larger system more noise damping tech could be utilized.

Secondly, I think this coming generation is different than all generations before. The reason is that a high powered PS4 or XBox 720 will make games pretty darn close to photorealistic. Even if there are technological breakthroughs in the ten year life cycle, I don't think they will be worth making a new console. Once you get to almost photorealistic even a ten fold increase in processing power is not really going to allow for a huge increase in graphics. I can imagine a situation where the PS4 or XBox 720 are making such good games five years from now at a fairly reasonable price (lets say $399 or so) that top notch GPU sales are hurt. Why pay $599 for a new top notch GPU when you can pay $399 for an entire system that can produce fantastic games that look almost as good as what the graphics card could produce?

The near photorealistic graphics of the PS4 and XBox 720 are going to be enough to keep customers hooked for at least ten years, regardless what new GPU technology or memory technology comes out. Once you get to the quality of Crysis with all the best mods, with the highest textures, improved lighting, and with additional improvements from new rendering methods there will be NO LOGIC in wanting a short five year lifespan for your console. A console with that level of performance could last ten years. Simply put, a PS5 launched only five years into it's lifespan could not produce games that looked significantly better than PS4 to the average person.

Third, the only thing that Sony has to hold onto now is the hardcore audience. The tablet age is here, and casual gamers have countless android and iOS games to play. There will be more and more of these games as time goes on. With the launch of the ROUGE PowerVR technology iOS and android games are going to look pretty darn good. The low end of the market is taken, and the WiiU will be trying to take the high end of the low end market.

What will make the PS4 successful and also the XBox 720 is if they go after the high end, and do what it takes to make their system capable of producing near photo-realistic games. Right now we are reaching a point where more and more power makes less and less of a difference when it comes to getting close to photorealism. The curve has NOT flattened out yet, but that time is coming.

The key is for Microsoft and Sony to try and place their systems AS CLOSE TO THE FLAT POINT of that curve as possible this generation, and plan for a LONG lifespan. I don't think that will be very hard to do. To be blunt, I just think it will take....

1) Decent CPU -- Nothing too awful powerful is needed here. I would say fifty watts max or less.

2) Top End Current GPU -- For the PS4 I would say a modified 680 GTX at 20NM to reduce power consumption, with a few modifications and improvements. I don't think this would consume more than 200 watts.

3) Plenty of RAM -- At a minimum four gigabytes are needed. Anything less is not worth launching. Eight gigabytes would be what would allow the system to stay future proofed for 10 years.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Babcat's post moved. This thread remains closed until someone can convince me (PM if you want) that it has relevance, considering we already have thread for next-gen tech, a thread for next-gen business choices, a thread for alternative distribution looking at download speeds, and a thread on game streaming services. Repeating/dividing those topics with this thread makes zero sense to me.