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[bhlaab]

Except it doesn't really work that way. You can reduce costs some, but it's still a fixed product with a fixed manufacturing line. It's why newer RAM is always cheaper than older RAM. Those things don't transfer backwards.

And there won't be another console generation after this. So who cares how long it lasts. If this current gen could last 10 years, the next console model will be dead long before people want new hardware. So the point remains, they're not going to get in a dick waving contest if it contributes zero real world benefit and costs them an extra 1 or 2 billion in lifetime profit.

It's not a dickwaving contest though. Ask anyone, RAM is the #1 limitation on consoles, both in graphics and gameplay. And since console cycles are getting longer and longer with no signs of that trend going away, to not just future proof but barely even present-proof the most potentially crippling piece of hardware is silly.

And if they are instead spending that money on yet another gimmicky console processor that underdelivers that's even sillier.

 

[Plinko]

it's better for them to go with 6 cores than to stick with the 3 cores & run at 2X the clock speed because of heat & power consumption.

PS Vita seems to be doing just fine with a 4 core CPU & 4 core GPU.

It's not even out yet! How can you say that it's "doing just fine?"

 

[guek]

...with terrible ultra low res textures, a LOT of pop ups and streaming issus, bad framerates with shitload of screen tearing and sub hd resolution. Yeah, sure.

If you seriously believe this crock of horseshit is the norm, just go play PC and quit bitching about rumored console specs

 

[east of eastside]

X gene, ARM...

You guys really believe MS isn't going to go with the more obvious? It will be Intel again because they have a working relationship. And it will be AMD for the GPU.

Consider that MS has plans to reinvent the PC in a smaller cheaper box and integrate it with their mobile devices. Consider the partnership ARM, AMD, and MS have made on heterogeneous multicore computing.

AMD is heavily rumored to be going the ARM license route. Search--"Project Win".

 

[Log4Girlz]

I'm a big boy now...most people who play video games are f'ing adult males. Let the RAM be upgradeable sometime in the future. The adoption rate would be damned close to 100%, the type of people who would buy an Xbox Next or whatever would have no problem sticking in an extra doodad to get more capabilities and developers can be guaranteed near 100% adoption rate.

 

[bgassassin]

It's not a dickwaving contest though. Ask anyone, RAM is the #1 limitation on consoles, both in graphics and gameplay. And since console cycles are getting longer and longer with no signs of that trend going away, to not just future proof but barely even present-proof the most potentially crippling piece of hardware is silly.

And if they are instead spending that money on yet another gimmicky console processor that underdelivers that's even sillier.

This was the first gen that really went long. Another long gen is not good for consoles IMO. I don't like how other consumer electronics are having accelerated improvements on hardware, while we want consoles to go in the opposite direction. Consoles should stick to a 5-6 year window and seek profitability sooner.

 

[NemesisPrime]

I'll be surprised if they even use a cell at all.

There won't be a Cell in the PS4.

 

[bhlaab]

If you seriously believe this crock of horseshit is the norm, just go play PC and quit bitching about rumored console specs

I do play on PC. That's the thing, I'm sick of every game I play being made for consoles with 23kb of memory!

 

[rCIZZLE]

I feel it's about damn time for a new console with hopefully some new IPs attached. Gears 3, Uncharted 3, Killzone 3, God of War 3, Fable 3, fuck, fuck, fuck.

I wonder if we'll end up with a messed up gen if the new playstation ends up launching a few years after the new nintendo and xbox.

 

[Log4Girlz]

This was the first gen that really went long. Another long gen is not good for consoles IMO. I don't like how other consumer electronics are having accelerated improvements on hardware, while we want consoles to go in the opposite direction. Consoles should stick to a 5-6 year window and seek profitability sooner.

They are getting longer because development times and costs are ever increasing. Sticking to a 5-6 year cycle would kill off a sizeable chunk of the industry.

 

[F#A#Oo]

Bah! All this hardware innovation but where is the gameplay innovation?

This is why in my book Nintendo will continue to be the only one of the 3 players that actually understands on a very basic and fundamental level that hardware yes is important but ultimately what is far more important is the need to offer a fresh way of interacting and playing with our games.

I can't get excited about hardware like I did with 8/16/32/64 bit era...at that time I knew the ceiling had not been reached and that graphics and game design were going to be getting really massive leaps of advancements...

For me the DS/Wii era has shown me actually the ceiling for interacting/playing with games is really high and we have yet to explore it fully and it seems only Nintendo who realise that this avenue is the way forward...

 

[Log4Girlz]

Bah! All this hardware innovation but where is the gameplay innovation?

This is why in my book Nintendo will continue to be the only one of the 3 players that actually understands on a very basic and fundamental level that hardware yes is important but ultimately what is far more important is the need to offer a fresh way of interacting and playing with our games.

I can't get excited about hardware like I did with 8/16/32/64 bit era...at that time I knew the ceiling had not been reached and that graphics were going to be getting really massive leaps...

For me the DS/Wii era has shown me actually the ceiling for interacting/playing with games is really high and we have yet to explore it fully and it seems only Nintendo who realise that this avenue is the way forward...

Kinect 2 will most likely be packaged with the system.

 

[herzogzwei1989]

It's probably no different than when Xbox 360 was nothing more than a dual core PowerPC G5 with a Radeon X800 card, for dev kits.

 

[guek]

They are getting longer because development times and costs are ever increasing. Sticking to a 5-6 year cycle would kill off a sizeable chunk of the industry.

Not if distribution and product models continue to diversify.

Some times I wonder if devs want to bring about their own destruction. Give them a console with 16gb of ram and a quad SLI GTX 580 and I guarantee we'd see even more developers spend themselves into the ground with bigger budget games they can't sustain.

 

[F#A#Oo]

Kinect 2 will most likely be packaged with the system.

Really?

I doubt it unless MS is going to be pricing their console $499+...

Or maybe MS will go controller-less? Now that would be ambitious...and real risky...but I would support them if they supported their strategy right...

 

[bgassassin]

They are getting longer because development times and costs are ever increasing. Sticking to a 5-6 year cycle would kill off a sizeable chunk of the industry.

That to me was due in part to having to adjust to the hardware PS360 had. Creating hardware that isn't such a radical change should allow devs to be more efficient in their game creation.

 

[onQ123]

It's not even out yet! How can you say that it's "doing just fine?"

it's a handheld that can run a game that looks like Uncharted Golden Abyss, it's doing just fine .

 

[thuway]

There won't be a Cell in the PS4.

Not only does Sony own it, but the damn chip is scalable. Its absolutely fast as anything else, developer's have experience, and it will cost virtually nothing. Why not?

 

[LegendofJoe]

I feel it's about damn time for a new console with hopefully some new IPs attached. Gears 3, Uncharted 3, Killzone 3, God of War 3, Fable 3, fuck, fuck, fuck.

Agreed, this is the number one reason I'm ready for new consoles.

 

[F#A#Oo]

Not only does Sony own it, but the damn chip is scalable. Its absolutely fast as anything else, developer's have experience, and it will cost virtually nothing. Why not?

IBM stopped Cell development a few years ago is why...

 

[H_Prestige]

Bah! All this hardware innovation but where is the gameplay innovation?

This is why in my book Nintendo will continue to be the only one of the 3 players that actually understands on a very basic and fundamental level that hardware yes is important but ultimately what is far more important is the need to offer a fresh way of interacting and playing with our games.

I can't get excited about hardware like I did with 8/16/32/64 bit era...at that time I knew the ceiling had not been reached and that graphics and game design were going to be getting really massive leaps of advancements...

For me the DS/Wii era has shown me actually the ceiling for interacting/playing with games is really high and we have yet to explore it fully and it seems only Nintendo who realise that this avenue is the way forward...

I thought the ps3 and 360 innovated gameplay far more than the wii, because of the addition of all these online modes. The wii has some fun 4 player party games. That's nice, but we've been doing that same routine ever since the n64.

Your post kind of reads like "restricting hardware = more innovation". It's not like the games are created in a vacuum, they depend on hardware innovation too.

IBM stopped Cell development a few years ago is why...

Sony can ask IBM to make them whatever they want. Was IBM still developing the GC/Wii CPU technology in 2006?

 

[bhlaab]

Bah! All this hardware innovation but where is the gameplay innovation?

This is why in my book Nintendo will continue to be the only one of the 3 players that actually understands on a very basic and fundamental level that hardware yes is important but ultimately what is far more important is the need to offer a fresh way of interacting and playing with our games.

I can't get excited about hardware like I did with 8/16/32/64 bit era...at that time I knew the ceiling had not been reached and that graphics and game design were going to be getting really massive leaps of advancements...

For me the DS/Wii era has shown me actually the ceiling for interacting/playing with games is really high and we have yet to explore it fully and it seems only Nintendo who realise that this avenue is the way forward...

Yeah, except the Wii the Kinect and the Move are all dogshit which was perhaps a blunder on the behalf of the manufacturers

 

[Jtrizzy]

I'm a big boy now...most people who play video games are f'ing adult males. Let the RAM be upgradeable sometime in the future. The adoption rate would be damned close to 100%, the type of people who would buy an Xbox Next or whatever would have no problem sticking in an extra doodad to get more capabilities and developers can be guaranteed near 100% adoption rate.

This times a thousand. I know it hasn't been successful in the past, but IMO PC gaming is a pain in the ass. I just bought a 2600k/580 setup, and I spend more time scouring forms for tech support or waiting for patches than I do games. Yeah BF3 etc are amazing, but consoles are just so much easier to deal with.

I would as crazy as this sounds, I'd trade my uber rig for a PS3 that could play games at 60 fps and true 720 in a heartbeat.

 

[Log4Girlz]

That to me was due in part to having to adjust to the hardware PS360 had. Creating hardware that isn't such a radical change should allow devs to be more efficient in their game creation.

Some have adjusted admirably, but it seems quite a few developers are still struggling. The investment to create ever more advanced hardware continues to rise and development budgets keep increasing. Let's just say they remain fixed next generation, I still believe limiting the generation to 5 years would be more of a hurtful thing than a helpful thing.

Now, if MS said, hey you have to develop for this API which will make the Next Next Xbox perfectly backwards compatible, and capable of actually improving performance in a game (just like what PC's do), then I would take it all back.

 

[Jorok Goldblade]

Really?

I doubt it unless MS is going to be pricing their console $499+...

Or maybe MS will go controller-less? Now that would be ambitious...and real risky...but I would support them if they supported their strategy right...

Kinect costs much less for MS to make than it retails for, and getting 100% install base for the device means that they can make it a more integral part of the X-Box experience, as well as using it as a selling point right out of the gate. Microsoft also seems to want the Kinect to be a pc device, so they'll probably use Loop/Ten/XB3 as a trojan horse to get it into people's hands, like Sony did with PS3 and Blu-Ray.

I'd guess it will come with Kinect 2 (Better fidelity, perhaps some range/space issues addressed) and a controller nearly identical to the current one, with small changes like d-pad being fixed. Like the Wii U, it would make sense to allow it to accept 360 controllers, since they're being positioned as a standard PC gamepad.

 

[guek]

I thought the ps3 and 360 innovated gameplay far more than the wii, because of the addition of all these online modes. The wii has some fun 4 player party games. That's nice, but we've been doing that same routine ever since the n64.

Personally I feel the ps3/360's best contribution to gaming is their incorporation of the online marketplace. As far as online multiplayer goes, I think it was all just playing catch up to PC gaming.

Yeah, except the Wii the Kinect and the Move are all dogshit which was perhaps a blunder on the behalf of the manufacturers

Regardless of how much you dislike motion gaming, those ventures made MS and Nintendo lots and lots of money. It aint going anywhere, and I doubt they'd call those products blunders.

 

[H_Prestige]

How would sticking an extra RAM stick in a 360 produce the same results as giving developers brand new graphics technology to design their game engines around?

Giving 360 games a spit shine like PC does isn't even close to next gen.

 

[bhlaab]

Regardless of how much you dislike motion gaming, those ventures made MS and Nintendo lots and lots of money. It aint going anywhere, and I doubt they'd call those products blunders.

Yeah, I'll put them next to my Furbys and Beanie Babies and Tomagotchis in the Hall of Eternal Popularity

How would sticking an extra RAM stick in a 360 produce the same results as giving developers brand new graphics technology to design their game engines around?

Giving 360 games a spit shine like PC does isn't even close to next gen.

Because increasignly large amounts of RAM is necessary for that graphics technology to function. Whew, that was a difficult question to answer.

 

[Log4Girlz]

How would sticking an extra RAM stick in a 360 produce the same results as giving developers brand new graphics technology to design their game engines around?

Giving 360 games a spit shine like PC does isn't even close to next gen.

What I'm saying is that Loop would be made more betterer if it could be upgraded with time to get greater capabilities down the road, instead of making it more expensive upfront or being forced into a new machine/console generation to see any vast improvement.

 

[guek]

Yeah, I'll put them next to my Furbys and Beanie Babies and Tomagotchis in the Hall of Eternal Popularity

Motion gaming has been incorporated into iphones, androids, tablets, the 3DS, the Vita, the Wii U, the Wii, the 360, the PS3, and will almost certainly be in most gaming devices from here on out.

Hate to break it to ya but it's not going anywhere.

 

[Log4Girlz]

Motion gaming has been incorporated into iphones, androids, tablets, the 3DS, the Vita, the Wii U, the Wii, the 360, the PS3, and will almost certainly be in most gaming devices from here on out.

Hate to break it to ya but it's not going anywhere.

OMG BUT HE DOESN'T LIKE IT, ITS TEH CRAP NOW.

 

[bgassassin]

Some have adjusted admirably, but it seems quite a few developers are still struggling. The investment to create ever more advanced hardware continues to rise and development budgets keep increasing. Let's just say they remain fixed next generation, I still believe limiting the generation to 5 years would be more of a hurtful thing than a helpful thing.

Now, if MS said, hey you have to develop for this API which will make the Next Next Xbox perfectly backwards compatible, and capable of actually improving performance in a game (just like what PC's do), then I would take it all back.

The part in bold is essentially Moore's Second Law and something that needs to be better dealt with because consoles unfortunately don't have the flexibility to get away with higher prices. In my view instead of making these "as large as tech allows" jumps. Make as large a possible jump that still allows a breakeven on hardware at launch and focus on accessing newer tech sooner instead of riding a generation as long as possible to recoup money. Like Carmack said as long as they are given the hardware, the desire will always be to do as much as possible with it. That leads to another part of the problem being that devs by nature will always want to see how far they can go with the hardware available. That will also lengthen dev time and drive up budgets. IMO the console market has to do a better job policing itself to avoid imploding.

 

[funkystudent]

I can totally see MS going with the apple rout of quick yearly or 2 year spec upgrades for the xbox from now on instead of a 5 year + cycle.



Also I bet there will be a few timed exclusive deals with TV / movie steaming companies.

actually with the start of a new generation it probably time the big 3 open up there wallets and start buying 3rd parties giant money hats again.

I wounder how big of a spending spree they will go on this time?

$50 million for the GTA DLC was seen as big back then but I could only guess a similar deal would cost in the hundreds of millions now that DLC is a proven thing.

 

[F#A#Oo]

I thought the ps3 and 360 innovated gameplay far more than the wii, because of the addition of all these online modes. The wii has some fun 4 player party games. That's nice, but we've been doing that same routine ever since the n64.

Your post kind of reads like "restricting hardware = more innovation". It's not like the games are created in a vacuum, they depend on hardware innovation too.

The fact that MS and Sony brought out Kinect and Move is a sign that Nintendo was doing something right as it forced both companies to compete and spend money and time in developing their own versions of motion controlled gadgets and games...

As guek said PS3/360 online were just bringing PC gaming to consoles...they just made it popular and more accepted.

I think you're missing the point of my post anyways...and trying to put words in my mouth.

I have nothing against the hardware race but for me and my expectations for where innovation should placed it is in my opinion not to be found coming in the form of the box we place in front of the TV.

Nothing on the PS3/360 tops the moment I first got to experience Wii Sports and motion controls...it was on-par with the first time I played Mario 64 and was in awe that I could control Mario in a 3D space with the analogue stick...

Kinect costs much less for MS to make than it retails for, and getting 100% install base for the device means that they can make it a more integral part of the X-Box experience, as well as using it as a selling point right out of the gate. Microsoft also seems to want the Kinect to be a pc device, so they'll probably use Loop/Ten/XB3 as a trojan horse to get it into people's hands, like Sony did with PS3 and Blu-Ray.

I'd guess it will come with Kinect 2 (Better fidelity, perhaps some range/space issues addressed) and a controller nearly identical to the current one, with small changes like d-pad being fixed. Like the Wii U, it would make sense to allow it to accept 360 controllers, since they're being positioned as a standard PC gamepad.

Hmm yeah...that would be a good way they can fall back on either that way I guess...

 

[Clear]

Honestly I think Sony will go for some kind of variant of the PowerXcell 8i, the enhanced version they were shipping in servers a few years back. It doesn't need to be that much more powerful than the existing Cell BE because the additional load can be offset onto a modern GPU.

I cant see any easy way to get backwards compatibility otherwise, and they absolutely need it because there should be no doubt that whatever MS offers, it *will* offer continuity with the 360.

HD games are too slow and expensive to make, so starting from scratch would be a nightmare, especially when the amount of material available on your online service is likely to be a major factor in your value proposition.

Memory-wise I can't see any more than 2gb being neccessary and objectively they will be looking to launch at no more than 100$ more than whatever the PS3 is at, because there will be much less of a "wow" factor compared to last gen.

 

[Log4Girlz]

The part in bold is essentially Moore's Second Law and something that needs to be better dealt with because consoles unfortunately don't have the flexibility to get away with higher prices. In my view instead of making these "as large as tech allows" jumps. Make as large a possible jump that still allows a breakeven on hardware at launch and focus on accessing newer tech sooner instead of riding a generation as long as possible to recoup money. Like Carmack said as long as they are given the hardware, the desire will always be to do as much as possible with it. That leads to another part of the problem being that devs by nature will always want to see how far they can go with the hardware available. That will also lengthen dev time and drive up budgets. IMO the console market has to do a better job policing itself to avoid imploding.

Its just too tricky. The only way I see that being a sustainable business model, and it can be I'm not saying it can't, but the only way I see that working out is if devs are not allowed to get close to the metal and most stringently code to an API, so not all work is lost when another console cycle comes along and those improvement in hardware can have benefits to legacy code.

Now, what if this model were in place like right now. That means the Nextbox should have come out like 2 years ago what specs would have been reasonable then at an affordable price? Would it provide enough of a leap graphically to ensure people would purchase it?

 

[Kogepan]

Good luck with that.

Why? commodity prices for system ram is dirt cheap compared to 7 years ago.

 

[Epix]

When is CES anyway. Feb?

First week of January.

 

[bhlaab]

Motion gaming has been incorporated into iphones, androids, tablets, the 3DS, the Vita, the Wii U, the Wii, the 360, the PS3, and will almost certainly be in most gaming devices from here on out.

Hate to break it to ya but it's not going anywhere.

So yes I agree with you it's not going anywhere. Down OR Up. It's stagnating like a dead squirrel trapped on a branch.

OMG BUT HE DOESN'T LIKE IT, ITS TEH CRAP NOW.

Good point.

 

[CoffeeJanitor]

I'm a big boy now...most people who play video games are f'ing adult males. Let the RAM be upgradeable sometime in the future. The adoption rate would be damned close to 100%, the type of people who would buy an Xbox Next or whatever would have no problem sticking in an extra doodad to get more capabilities and developers can be guaranteed near 100% adoption rate.

You can't be serious. That would never go over well.

 

[F#A#Oo]

Upgradeable console?

I think it's called a PC...

 

[Log4Girlz]

You can't be serious. That would never go over well.

Lies. Seriously, I'm calling it lies. It didn't work in the n64 days which came out in the age OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS, but it wold work amazingly well in today's day and age. Sorry, I'm sticking to my guns and sticking my tongue out at you.

 

[guek]

So yes I agree with you it's not going anywhere. Down OR Up. It's stagnating like a dead squirrel trapped on a branch.



Good point.

What does this even mean?

Buttons are stagnating, man. When was the last time you saw anyone do anything new and interesting with a button?

 

[Log4Girlz]

What does this even mean?

Buttons are stagnating, man. When was the last time you saw anyone do anything new and interesting with a button?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DUmoJNQK2o

 

[Shanadeus]

Based on info from Wikipedia, The Wii's CPU got a 243MHz boost from the GC (729Mhz vs 486Mhz). Going from three cores to six is a much larger improvement.

It is a play on the "Wii is just two gamecubes ductaped together" joke
Going from the 360s 3 cores to 6 cores is eerily similar...

Oh, and I think RAM will make a pretty big difference when it comes to inter-console performance, and with 2GB it's quite possible the Wii U will come close enough to match the 720 or even end up with better memory (depending on memory speeds and so on).

 

[TUROK]

I could see MS release a 2GB model in 2012, followed by a Xbox Ten that does 4k resolutions with a RAM upgrade in 2015 or so. It probably depends on how the TV market is going to evolve. I'm sure MS will keep the door open for future hardware upgrades this time. It all depends on the VRAM pool if they do 2GB DDR3 system RAM for the CPU(another PowerPC?) and 1/2GB GDDR5 for the GPU the 'problem' is solved. It also seems more 'cost effective' than a unified memory pool like the 360 has. Maybe they can even design it in a way that the GPU can access both pools if necessary.

I like how this is based on nothing at all.

Also, the whole "split pools of RAM" makes little sense if Microsoft is going to have 360 games be backwards compatible, unless one pool of RAM alone will be able to mimic the 360's unified RAM. Unless MS has changed their plans about making the console "forward compatible", I'm betting that the architecture will not be drastically different than the 360's.

 

[guek]

Lies. Seriously, I'm calling it lies. It didn't work in the n64 days which came out in the age OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS, but it wold work amazingly well in today's day and age. Sorry, I'm sticking to my guns and sticking my tongue out at you.

It would work only if upgrades were tied to a marketable product. People don't mind buying extra new shit for their electronics if it directly provides them something they want. Think of the mountains of plastic purchased for the wii.

But people wont do that if it's just there and not marketed directly alongside something they want, and devs wouldn't support it until the expansion hit the mass market because they don't want to fragment the installed base or force consumers to pay more just for their game.

 

[bhlaab]

What does this even mean?

Buttons are stagnating, man. When was the last time you saw anyone do anything new and interesting with a button?

It means that in 4 years the best thing anybody's learned to do with motion controls is turning an iphone horizontally.

It means that while the WiiU and still has motion controls they're clearly placing the majority of their bets onto touchscreen interfaces instead because the wand controller design was a mistake that they're starting to pay for.

 

[thirty]

This would be atleast twice as powerful as WiiU ¿no?

 

[Log4Girlz]

It would work only if upgrades were tied to a marketable product. People don't mind buying extra new shit for their electronics if it directly provides them something they want. Think of the mountains of plastic purchased for the wii.

But people wont do that if it's just there and not marketed directly alongside something they want, and devs wouldn't support it until the expansion hit the mass market because they don't want to fragment the installed base or force consumers to pay more just for their game.

We're not talking about people...we're talking about the Xbox community. They're mostly adult men and I seriously believe the adoption rate of a well marketed RAM upgrade would be near 100%.