bgassassin
Regular
Wii U may or may not even be $299 in 2013, let alone $249.
What would you buy? A true Next Gen Console or Upgraded 2x PS3/360?
- Thread starter Acert93
- Start date
If Nintendo prices this thing out of their comfort-zone without the hardware to back it up, we will likely see a repeat of 3DS launch rejection.
$250 is about the most they can expect for a xb360 with a tablet controller.
I just build a new PC and still have my 360 and PS3.
At this point, I'm mainly on the PC due to Skyrim, BF3 and coming up DOTA 2.
(as soon as my account is fixed) I'll be using the 360 but the PS3 is done for. I use it as a BR player and have no time for gaming on it. I never even think or pay attention to the WiiU.
From there, the future is pretty easy for me. With the 360 alreayd transitioning to an all in one entertainment device, I expect the next version to build even on more on it. For that, the 360 replacement is an automatic buy.
The amount of actual gaming time I'll spend with the 360 replacement will depend on how much better Kinect 2.0 is and how much more powerful (or close) it is to my PC for core games. I expect the future of my "console" to more towards general viewing than gaming.
At this point, I'm mainly on the PC due to Skyrim, BF3 and coming up DOTA 2.
(as soon as my account is fixed) I'll be using the 360 but the PS3 is done for. I use it as a BR player and have no time for gaming on it. I never even think or pay attention to the WiiU.
From there, the future is pretty easy for me. With the 360 alreayd transitioning to an all in one entertainment device, I expect the next version to build even on more on it. For that, the 360 replacement is an automatic buy.
The amount of actual gaming time I'll spend with the 360 replacement will depend on how much better Kinect 2.0 is and how much more powerful (or close) it is to my PC for core games. I expect the future of my "console" to more towards general viewing than gaming.
I think I may end up with all of them consoles eventually... but first I will get the Wii U. It´s because I sold my Wii... and I want to play Skywards Sword eventually... but I´m not going to re-buy another Wii. Wii U will have backwards compatibility so I´ll get that to play SS and Super Mario Galaxy 2... I´m hoping for Mario Kart as a Wii U launch title but they´ve yet to announce it. We shall see around next E3 I guess.
I should say more. For me, PC is the platform of exciting technology. Consoles are for additional content. For the games I can not play on pc. Nintendo console is the perfect complimentary device to a high end PC. But then, I´m a complete game junkie so... there will be killer apps for next gen Playstation that I will not be able to miss. GT6? You got me. Uncharted 4? Need a Playstation for that too.
So I´d list Wii U as a certainty, Playstation as a big probability. Xbox though... right now I´m going through the list of exclusive Xbox titles and wondering why I even have a 360. Only Halo comes to mind but the future of that franchise seems uncertain to say the least. Still I can´t honestly say that I will never get the next gen Xbox. It only requires some kind of a killer app.
I should say more. For me, PC is the platform of exciting technology. Consoles are for additional content. For the games I can not play on pc. Nintendo console is the perfect complimentary device to a high end PC. But then, I´m a complete game junkie so... there will be killer apps for next gen Playstation that I will not be able to miss. GT6? You got me. Uncharted 4? Need a Playstation for that too.
So I´d list Wii U as a certainty, Playstation as a big probability. Xbox though... right now I´m going through the list of exclusive Xbox titles and wondering why I even have a 360. Only Halo comes to mind but the future of that franchise seems uncertain to say the least. Still I can´t honestly say that I will never get the next gen Xbox. It only requires some kind of a killer app.
bgassassin
Regular
Well it's a good thing it isn't that.
The results don't surprise me whatsoever. It was pretty loaded & it was posted to an enthusiasts' site. If money were no issue I'd go with option 1 myself. I just felt being a little more honest with myself this time around. Had it were it not for the $100 my dad gave me for Christmas 2006 I wouldn't have been able to afford the $400 360 Pro + free $100 gift card at Toys R us. $300 is the most I'll spend on a console. Doesn't mean I'm not excited to see what Microsoft has in store next go round.
Tommy McClain
Tommy McClain
Probably wrong thread but I wonder if MS could sell nextBox on "discount" price with a 2year live contract which costs more than usually. This would solve pricepoint for many of those who cannot/don't want to invest let's say 499 at once.
At least for me I game only casually but do like occasional online gaming. I will weigh in both the price of console and network over consoles lifetime and not just one or the other. If both boxes are about same performance and price and the other doesn't have free online. well, easy choice
Anyway, why would consoles even need to be 299 or somesuch at launch? Ipads, iPhones, highend androids and whatnots sell for a lot more and have way shorter lifetime... I think 499$ is perfectly reasonable launch price.
At least for me I game only casually but do like occasional online gaming. I will weigh in both the price of console and network over consoles lifetime and not just one or the other. If both boxes are about same performance and price and the other doesn't have free online. well, easy choice
Anyway, why would consoles even need to be 299 or somesuch at launch? Ipads, iPhones, highend androids and whatnots sell for a lot more and have way shorter lifetime... I think 499$ is perfectly reasonable launch price.
This topic has actually gave me an idea (which it may not be the right topic for...)...
With PS2, Sony effectively used its DVD playing capability as a selling point.
With PS3, Sony's stake in BluRay and its success was an important factor.
With the next PlayStation, will we perhaps see the stretch/beginning to digital distribution? I guess it depends when they intend to bring these machines out to market and I don't doubt that BluRay will be still onboard (as there is still a market), but surely, the shift to digital distribution in movies is coming and will be here before the next-next generation of consoles. While this may not be of too much interest to us gamers - such a strategy could influence the design of the next console quite considerably (and how much performance it will pack) and with the move more and more to set top boxes and Sony huge stake in the movie industry, it may be interesting to see how this unfolds...
With PS2, Sony effectively used its DVD playing capability as a selling point.
With PS3, Sony's stake in BluRay and its success was an important factor.
With the next PlayStation, will we perhaps see the stretch/beginning to digital distribution? I guess it depends when they intend to bring these machines out to market and I don't doubt that BluRay will be still onboard (as there is still a market), but surely, the shift to digital distribution in movies is coming and will be here before the next-next generation of consoles. While this may not be of too much interest to us gamers - such a strategy could influence the design of the next console quite considerably (and how much performance it will pack) and with the move more and more to set top boxes and Sony huge stake in the movie industry, it may be interesting to see how this unfolds...
What's the most they could have expected people to pay for a $100 Gamecube and a waggle controller?
Oh you mean the revolutionary new controller interface that most of the market hadn't seen before on the shelf for the past 3 years with a fruit label and a commanding mindshare?
Yeah, that thing they were able to manage $250 for a good long while until kinect was announced.
Trying to replicate a half breed tablet which has already been dominating on the market for 3 years, not so much.
has it been 3 years since 2010 already?
It will have been 3 years since Apple launched ipad by the time Nintendo tries to put their Wuu on everybody.
I had to
You failed to respond to my point. I think you didn't provide an answer to my question (How is a custom part going to significantly differ from a PC part?) because your point falls flat.
But I can answer your question for you: GPU technology in the PC segment has come a long way and is the most advanced 3D rendering tech on the market, there do not need to be fundamental differences. Where you will see differences, aside from things mentioned elsewhere (there are things a console won't need), is as consoles have a fixed range of resolution targets and hardware relationships you can see a reduction in some items (like ROPs) and increase in others (like shaders). But fundamentally the GPU technology seen in NV's Fermi revisions for DX11.x and soon GCN from AMD, they don't need major revising. What can make a huge difference, though, is the context. Xenos had eDRAM because of the advantages of a closed box and more finite limit of output expectations. AMD recently gave a glimpse of a GPU with stacked memory on a Silicon Interposer--a tantalizing possibility for a console GPU as it resolves the major memory bottleneck and can bare the burden of some design considerations. Yet this tech will come to PCs at some point as well and isn't what I was addressing in terms of architecture.
Simply put, there is no magic bullet panacea that is going to allow per-mm^2 and per-watt for a console GPU to far outpace a PC GPU--if it could be done it already would be done in the PC space.
To address the Xenos example, I actually noted the release of GCN (SIMD+Scalar) versus the current Barts/Cayman VLIW5/4 designs. Obviously there are going to be changes, and often with these changes come overhead. There are parallels here as DX10 had been banging around for a while (like DX11.x+ has been) and Xenos was not AMD's first run up to a unified part and AMD has obviously been working on GCN for a while. That being said new designs not only have overhead but what we know about GCN is that the SIMD+scalar design is aimed at the issues with Computer (VLIW has been good for graphics) and in NV's Fermi we have a general idea of some of the costs and trade offs. AMD's design won't be the same and yes, fall 2013 is 2 full years away.
But, alas, my look wasn't so much at an *architecture* but the density/performance/power scaling of the process nodes. Obviously architecture of the chip impacts power but there is no magic sauce performance is going to scale beyond the density/frequency. In fact going to a new architecture that has to support NEW features often has to deal with the overhead--but in a console part I would expect the cutting of features (extra ROPs, AVIVO, sideport, more dedicated memory interface) that those savings can be passed onto shader units as they are pretty dense/good bang for area buck.
But that isn't magic sauce... actually, I mentioned that in my post.
Anyways, Xenos was at a neat inflection point where AMD was able to get a unified part to market--but this was already the market trend as PS/VS had risen in count from 4:2, 8:4, 16:6, etc and units began to sit idle. Utilization on current GPUs is also been a focus so the low fruit is taken. Likewise while having SM3.0 on Xenos was nice, if you step back and look at it, the issues with the PS3 are not all RSX related. RSX has solid PS performance and in many cases better texturing performance and has some added features Xenos lacks. Yes it lags in vertex processing and setup and has to deal with both split memory pools and no eDRAM (more system-wide issues, not GPU architecture related) at the end of the day RSX can make competitive looking games.
Which backs up my point: If RSX, a pretty straight PC ported GPU, is relatively competitive with Xenos, why again are we expecting a console-specific GPU *chip* to offer substantially more per-area than the PC parts.
Answer? We should not.
My 2 cents on WiiU...
I think it's going to bomb pretty badly, but not for the reasons ChefO thinks it will. I think Nintendo took a pretty hard wrong turn with software about midway through the Wii's life. There are two major problems I see with Nintendo's MO that haven't changed from the Gamecube era:
1) Miyamoto's belief that "newness" is almost entirely a matter of a new gameplay technique, and his lack of understanding of what fresh content is all about. Basically, Miyamoto's attitude is that there is zero reason to make a game unless there is a new mechanic in it, and vice versa, that rusty old content with a new mechanic put in it is a new game.
2) Nintendo is increasingly indulging its big name developers and letting them make the games they want to make when anyone with a brain could see that's not what the market is demanding. Someone upstairs should have told Miyamoto, "No, you're not making Mario Galaxy 2; you're making NSMB Wii 2." Other M never should have seen the light of day.
As a result, their software output for the last couple years has not gotten a very positive market response. My gut feeling is that overall, people have been pretty disappointed with the Wii, not because it lacks HD graphics (people knew that going in), but because for the last couple years, it's felt really, really neglected. Why plunk $300 or whatever down for a Wii U when Nintendo's going to do the same thing to it?
I think it's going to bomb pretty badly, but not for the reasons ChefO thinks it will. I think Nintendo took a pretty hard wrong turn with software about midway through the Wii's life. There are two major problems I see with Nintendo's MO that haven't changed from the Gamecube era:
1) Miyamoto's belief that "newness" is almost entirely a matter of a new gameplay technique, and his lack of understanding of what fresh content is all about. Basically, Miyamoto's attitude is that there is zero reason to make a game unless there is a new mechanic in it, and vice versa, that rusty old content with a new mechanic put in it is a new game.
2) Nintendo is increasingly indulging its big name developers and letting them make the games they want to make when anyone with a brain could see that's not what the market is demanding. Someone upstairs should have told Miyamoto, "No, you're not making Mario Galaxy 2; you're making NSMB Wii 2." Other M never should have seen the light of day.
As a result, their software output for the last couple years has not gotten a very positive market response. My gut feeling is that overall, people have been pretty disappointed with the Wii, not because it lacks HD graphics (people knew that going in), but because for the last couple years, it's felt really, really neglected. Why plunk $300 or whatever down for a Wii U when Nintendo's going to do the same thing to it?
Very good points as well.
Nintendo 1st party has really been ... drifting I think is a good word for it.
They need a new injection of life and creativity at the helm.
This wouldn't be so bad if they had better 3rd party support, (heck MS barely has a 1st party!) but sadly with the spec they are putting out, they won't be getting first class support from Devs/Pubs.
They will get xb360 and ps3 ports, but nothing to truly take advantage of the tablet interface and if they do, it will be a tablet "app" game which is ported which will be a very odd place for pricing...Do they charge a full $50-60 for a $5-$10 Ipad port which does take advantage of the tablet interface?
In all, it should be enough to survive on in the interim, as I see both Sony and MS pushing xb360 and ps3 more into the kid/family/casual markets with the sub-$200 price-points. But it won't be long before ps4 and xb720 are hitting the market and thus their new Wuu is now rather old and left out of the multiplat discussion much as Wii is/was this gen.
They'll get a "special" version of the same franchises which plays like dog____ and looks about the same in comparison to the real nextgen systems.
