With the recent E3 demonstrations of new motion-based control for consoles —
Microsoft's Natal,
Sony's Motion Controller, and Ubisoft's
camera-based system for the Wii — analysts now
expect the current console generation to last longer than normal. Microsoft exec Shane Kim said he expects the Xbox 360 to last until around 2015, in part due to Natal and
new services available through Xbox Live. Signal Hill's Todd Greenwald thinks
this cycle may not need to end at all:
"Microsoft and Sony have invested so much in their current hardware line, as have third party publishers, that we don't think any party is seriously interested in throwing away these investments and starting over from scratch. For all of these reasons, we think this cycle will last longer than those in the past, and don't see new hardware coming until 2011 at the earliest, and 2012 to 2013 more likely (if at all — if new services like OnLive take off, or if Xbox Live and PlayStation Network become more and more robust, there may not be a need for another console cycle).'"
2015? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Well, console graphics already look dated. Waiting until 2015 for the next version would be a big boost to PC gaming. NVIDIA and AMD sure aren't going to stop releasing graphics hardware, so people who want a modern gaming experience will have no choice but to go to the PC.
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Dated? Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix doesn't look that dated to me. Then again, I can see how the attempted realistic graphics would be dated though - those are always the first ones to start looking bad. Team Fortress 2 will keep looking good long after Counter-Strike: Source becomes painful to the eyes.
Good enough is? (Score:5, Insightful)
Have we really reached the point where "Good enough is"
Is the XBox 360/PS3 really the pinnacle of console gaming for the next 5 years?
With the Wii selling bucketloads more initially than anything else, despite having inferior graphics hardware, have the other two finally realised that Faster chips, bigger numbers and impressive specs are really just nothing more than macho posturing?
Re:Good enough is? (Score:4, Interesting)
Both Microsoft and Sony can create faster variants of their existing hardware, but mandate that new games are backward compatible.
I.e., they can release a PS3.5 as the PS4 that can handle 1080p60* gaming (possibly in 3D with a 3D monitor) based around the same hardware, just running faster or with more resourced. Games detect the console, run in 720p on the PS3 without some fancy graphical effects (assuming physics runs on the SPU in Cell and the new one has ~30SPUs compared with 7 in the current PS3), lower resolution textures (due to less RAM), etc.
Sony always make a console last 10 years anyway, but they also release the new high end 5 or 6 years into that lifespan whilst the previous model mops up the low end of the market and new poor markets around the world. I think it would be suicide to not build upon the hardware base in the PS3 - going with a new architecture would be a folly given their financial situation.
* I know that the PS3 can do this, but most games are in 720p, if that.
Parent
Nintendo DS games with DSi extras (Score:3, Interesting)
Both Microsoft and Sony can create faster variants of their existing hardware, but mandate that new games are backward compatible.
As can Nintendo. Most Game Boy Color games early in the GBC's lifetime could display in grayscale on a Game Boy Pocket, and Nintendo has stated that some new DS games will have extra capabilities when inserted into a Nintendo DSi system of the correct region.
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Is the XBox 360/PS3 really the pinnacle of console gaming for the next 5 years?
The hardware is good enough for good games. It has been since the Commodore 64. The problem is, games are more and more boring.
Re:Good enough is? (Score:4, Insightful)
The hardware is good enough for good games. It has been since the Commodore 64. The problem is, games are more and more boring.
Actually, I disagree in part.
Some really good games have only become possible with better hardware. Except that graphics hardware comes last in that list. But more memory and CPU speed have allowed for more complex games. A game like Oblivion or Fallout 3 would not have been technically possible on the C64, even if you would've been happy with Bards Tale style graphics.
Parent
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Some really good games have only become possible with better hardware.
I have to agree. [youtube.com] But even the original 2D version was a classic.
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Oblivion's world larger? I don't think there's ever been a gaming world larger than Daggerfall's. It would take something like two weeks real time to walk from one end to the other without using fast travel.
Some genres just weren't possible on the 8-bits (Score:2)
The hardware is good enough for good games. It has been since the Commodore 64.
Could the Commodore 64 have run a first-person shooter like the Doom or Quake or Unreal series in real time? (Probably not; no 3D rasterizing hardware nor sufficiently fast CPU.) Could the Nintendo Entertainment System have run a social simulator like The Sims or Animal Crossing? (Probably not; enough battery-backed RAM on a cartridge to save the state of a town was cost prohibitive during the NES's commercial era.)
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> Have we really reached the point where "Good enough is"
No. I'd say we reached it one generation ago. More precisely: one generation ago is when we've reached the point where style matters more than polycount. Not saying that next-gen games aren't awfully pretty: some are. What I'm saying, though, is that there are many ways to go for pretty, and polycount and high-resolution aren't fundamental to a good number of those. See Okami, for instance.
I suspect this is the lesson Nintendo learned. Last generat
Re:Good enough is? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, it's a hell of a lot more than macho posturing.
The GFX on the Wii look pretty poor on a decent sized 1080p capable panel. The Wii is sorely underpowered for today's display tech.
Now, it's still good fun, but I really don't buy into this horrible fanboyish meme that seems to hae taken hold, that the two are somehow exclusive. You CAN have both. There is no reason that bad graphics make good games. A Wii or other machine with Wii-like controllers and Wii-like games but with and updated GFX hardware would be great.
Parent
Re:Good enough is? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that the two often are exclusive. Games cost a lot to make and it's easy to blow the entire budget making something look spectacular and then realise there's nothing left to actually make it fun. Similarly, when you're restricted on the graphics front by less powerful hardware, you're forced into making games with selling points other than how they look.
Obviously it's not always the case, there are exceptions to both rules and I would never be one to argue against better looking games as long as they are still fun to play, but there is a somewhat sensible reason behind the 'bad graphics' argument.
Parent
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Oh sure. But I'm not advocating photo-realistic Wii Tennis here! Just a few more pixels would be nice, some more anti-aliasing, that sort of stuff. At the moment quite a few of the games look blocky on a 1080p capable screen, even when using the component/576 mode.
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Because Wii games are more fun. I don't like FPSes, I find them the most boring genre ever invented. And even the non-FPS games- it's the same damn thing I've been playing for the past 20 years. I'm tired of that. Wii games tend to have more new material. Even the games that are old genres have motion controls which give it a nice change. And of course the Nintendo first party games are polished to hell and back.
As a gamer of over 20 years, someone who uses to spend 8 hours a day gaming- I can't thi
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> The GFX on the Wii look pretty poor on a decent sized 1080p capable panel.
They look like a smeared mess, IMHO.
What bothers me isn't that it can't do HD, but that it doesn't even do an on-board upscale. If it did the upscale as graphics were written into the image buffer, it could get a MUCH better upscaling than any TV could do to the content, by understanding it better.
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Have we really reached the point where "Good enough is"
No, we haven't. As we know, both the PS3 and the Xbox360 are struggling with true 1080p content, most games advertized as 1080p actually run at a horizontal resolution lower than 1920. We need faster consoles still to take full advantage of the current FullHD displays.
Obviously none of this has anything to do with how good the actual games are, and as Nintendo has shown quite vividly, the actual playability of the games matter more than eye candy. However, I don't see these two issues to contradict each oth
Re:Good enough is? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well "Good enough" for now. The last update to consoles brought HD compatibility with the now standard HD TV, and good use of internet connection. Without both of those consoles would look like backward technology.
But we certainly haven't reached good enough for gaming in general. Games do look good enough, but the worlds they simulate need more power.
For example, go to the top of a building in GTA IV and look into a street in the distance, it is empty. That game does a good job of having an illusion of a busy city, but it really is just that. Four blocks away from you there is nothing.
Wouldn't it be great if every brick in every building was simulated, and having ten million entities walking around the city with you, rather than the 50 odd that follow you around at the moment.
Of course you don't need all this to have a fun game, some of the better games on the 360 are geometry wars and braid, both of which are 2D. And the success of the Wii speaks for itself.
But I think it would be sad if the development of more immersive environments stalled here.
Parent
That early? (Score:4, Funny)
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Don't feel bad. I'm still waiting for a price drop on the PS2. ;)
You can probably pick one up on eBay for cheap. Or do you live in a country with prohibitive import duties on consumer electronics, like a few countries in South America?
Blu-Ray... (Score:2, Flamebait)
I don't think I'll care about my PS3 having a motion sensor. I only play fighting games, Metal Gear Solid, and Ratchet & Clank. No real need or want for motion control from me. I have a Wii and I barely touch the thing anymore (wow I just typed that then paused then laughed) and won't until Mario Galaxy 2 comes out.
The reason my PS3 has longevity is because it plays Blu-Rays, it won the format war, and unless some new disc type comes along or digital downloads with all of the extra content of a BD come
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Oh, right - this discrimin
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And in The Future...
#1 "You mean you have to use your hands?"
#2 "That's like a baby's toy!"
How many watts? (Score:2)
Why can't your computer be powered partly by a bicycle wheel, while the computer monitors your exercise and requests power from time to time? Don't pedal when the computer tells you to, and your computer shuts down.
Good luck keeping up the pedaling long enough to finish downloading the 8 GB game you bought. Or are you talking about a mass migration away from desktop PCs and 150-watt consoles in favor of machines that sip power like laptops and Wii consoles?
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fine physiques?
No, sorry, wrong.
Games will be controlled by the mind, and gamers will be known by their gelatinous forms.
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Yeah... but it's all about money, and Microsoft and Sony want a piece of that pie.
There's no doubt that the "hardcore crowd" can make a company money. When Blizzard releases something, it's practically guaranteed to generate vast quantities of cash. But there are a lot more gamers out there than just the hardcore crowd.
I'm fairly confident that games for... let's call them "seasoned gamers"... won't be going away. Making these games makes people money, presumably enough of it otherwise they would have st
Re:Blu-Ray... (Score:5, Interesting)
Until cheap, reliable haptic control systems emerge (not a for about half a decade if things like the Falcon, and the cost of more flexiable systems, is anything to go by), motion control will be limited in usefulness to a few casual games that don't require fast and accurate responses.
Parent
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That claim comes up every now and then, but at this point in time its really kind of baseless. The major failure of the Wiimote is simply that it just doesn't work the people expected it. It doesn't give you 1:1 mapping and thus your movement on the screen ends up having little or even nothing to do with your actual motion. Its not even a matter of precision, its simply not enough sensory data to do any kind of real 3d tracking. That's the sole reason why the experience ends up a little flat, as you end up
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Fixed that for you.
MotionPlus doesn't give you 1:1 mapping. The controller has still no idea where it is in 3D space. The controller now has sensors to measure rotation independent from acceleration, which will allow to make the mapping of action a good bit better then before, as it will get much harder to cheat the thing, but it will still be a lot of guessing of what the player did, instead of just taking the coordinates and bringing them into them game. So MotionPlus is more an intermediate step, then the solution to the 1
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Yes they did.
However, was there not research showing that the attach rate (i.e. frequency of game buying) was very much lower for casual/Wii gamers? Making the Wii continue to pay might be difficult.
Wii Points attach rate? (Score:2)
was there not research showing that the attach rate (i.e. frequency of game buying) was very much lower for casual/Wii gamers?
Does this include only retail titles or also VC and WiiWare games purchased with Wii Points?
Re:Blu-Ray... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes they did.
However, was there not research showing that the attach rate (i.e. frequency of game buying) was very much lower for casual/Wii gamers? Making the Wii continue to pay might be difficult.
That's a myth.
From Wikipedia:
Best selling PS3 games:
Xbox 360 games selling more than 3.31 million:
Wii games selling more than 3.31 million:
So the Wii has 5 games that have sold more than any game on either the PS3 or the Xbox 360.
Looking at it another way, the top 10 PS3 games have sold a total of 21.4 million copies, the top 10 Xbox 360 games have sold a total of 29 million copies and the 10 Wii games have sold a total of 133 million copies. The consoles themselves have sold 21.3, 28, and 50 million copies each respectively. So for the Wii, excluding Wii Sports, that's 87 million top 10 games for 50 million consoles: 1.7 games per console. The other two consoles manage only 1 top 10 game per console.
In terms of total games, PS3 has sold 94 million and the Wii has sold 353 million. Not sure about the Xbox 360. So that's 4.4 games per PS3 and 7 games per Wii (6 excluding Wii Sports).
Clearly, the idea that the Wii has a lower "attach" rate is pure BS. It might have been true initially but now the attach rate is significantly higher for the Wii.
Parent
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maybe you missed some key words in the analysis like
So for the Wii, excluding Wii Sports, that's 87 million top 10 games for 50 million consoles: 1.7 games per console
or
So that's 4.4 games per PS3 and 7 games per Wii (6 excluding Wii Sports).
It pays to read the whole comment, its not like we're asking you to read TFA or TFS.
Longer console lifecycle will kill them (Score:2, Interesting)
If you consider the fact that most games are constantly looking for the latest and greatest, whether it be hardware or software or (god help us) controllers, there will be only negative results from the lengthening of the console lifecycle. By extending the life of these boxes, console manufacturers are going to face the waning interest of consumers.
In some respects, the decision to keep current consoles longer makes some sense. There has not been any serious change in gameplay since the earliest consoles f
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Re:Longer console lifecycle will kill them (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
XBox 360 looks promising (Score:2)
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Does the PS Eye need a general purpose core? (Score:2)
On PS3 you have only 1 general purpose core
The hypervisor in PS3 Other OS runs on a SPE core, not the general purpose core. I'd imagine that the new motion control system could likewise have an SPE dedicated to it.
Could've happened last generation (Score:2)
This cycle will be long, but not for that reason (Score:2)
The reason there's no new hardware from the console maker is that there is no new hardware from the chip makers. We hit the GHz ceiling a couple years ago, and as a result today's chips aren't better by enough to make it worthwhile.
I suspect MS and Sony want to see where the multi-core thing is going (CPUs support a dozen complex threads, while GPUs support a few hundred simple threads.) Will one line of chips take over the other? Will we find masses of simple cores are better than a few complex cores?
Re:This cycle will be long, but not for that reaso (Score:2)
The reason there's no new hardware from the console maker is that there is no new hardware from the chip makers. We hit the GHz ceiling a couple years ago, and as a result today's chips aren't better by enough to make it worthwhile.
This is a myth. The clock speed of a processor isn't directly indicative of its performance, which has never stopped increasing.
Each core in a Core i7, at 2.66Ghz, is faster than a whole 3.8Ghz Pentium 4 and uses a quarter of the power. There's no tradeoff between core count and speed, modern CPUs have both.
I Like This (Score:2)
The next gen (Score:3, Funny)
>... we don't think any party is seriously interested in throwing away these investments and starting over from scratch.
Man, wouldn't it be funny if Nintendo did a hardware refresh in a year or so and called it a next generation machine? They could make it backwards compatible to the Wii, have simultaneous releases for both systems, but distract Sony and MS to no end. But would it be the Wii2, or the WiiII (or Wiii)?
Definitely true in my case (Score:3, Funny)
Xbox 360 redesign? (Score:2)
I don't any 360 will last that long - they'll RROD themselves way before then!
I imagine that the Xbox 360 won't last that long, but a hypothetical Xbox 360 Slimline with the same capability as Xbox 360 might last the rest of the time.