Next-Gen Game Consoles Still Years Off 386
jfruhlinger writes "Gamers who have grown bored with the current generation of game hardware will have to sit tight a bit longer. Word on the street has it that the next PlayStation won't be ready until 2014, and the next Xbox won't appear until Christmas 2013 at the earliest."
Weird abstract... (Score:5, Insightful)
If the gamers are bored with the game hardware, they may find it immensely more interesting to start playing games on it.
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I enjoy my games immensly on the 360, but i cant help but wonder what new hardware would allow for. The 360 has some serious improvements over the 1st gen xbox, both in terms of graphics and what it can do gameplay wise (physiscs, amount of objects on screen etc.), recently with forza 4, i got a very good taste of what the 360 is really capable off, but i couldnt help but wonder, if 2005 era hardware (and let's be honest, in 2005 my PC was stronger then the 360 already) can pull this off, what would be poss
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Talk to the game makers and ask them why they are not making games for your modern PC hardware.
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There are a couple games that take good advantage of PC hardware. Just Cause 2 was pretty good at it, although not the best. Metro 2033 had hardware tessellation (DX11) graphics, something none of the consoles can do, and so did Stalker: Call of Pripyat. And of course, The Witcher 2 was looked amazing IMO, far and away better than anything any console has done yet.
Actually I think the bigger problem is PCs themselves. A lot of them are pretty old and don't support the newest features, so if you want your g
Re:Weird abstract... (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with the PS3 is the GPU, it's essentially a GeForce7800GTX with a few mods. The other problem with the PS3 is the OS. It's so memory hungry compared with the 360. The 360 uses 32MB and it has a 10MB embedded frame buffer for render targets. The PS3 uses (last time I programmed it) 40MB main memory for the OS and 7MB of video memory with no embedded frame buffer. MSAA needs more memory in the PS3 but does NOT on the 360, unless you're going to do more processing on the MSAA frame buffer. The GPU on the PS3 is so slow that you use a significant amount of CPU time reducing the load on the GPU. You usually do backface removal, degenerate triangle removal, zero area triangle removal, offscreen triangle removal and triangles hidden by occluders removal just to reduce load on the vertex pipe. Then you do MSAA resolving and any other image post processing on the SPUs as well.
The PS3's GPU is a boat anchor. A year later and 75% the speed!
I will say however that it was fun to program. You spent all your time doing cool shit optimizing around the GPU, whereas on the 360 you spend your time dong game code. Booooring.
CATCHPA: irking. The perfect work do describe the PS3
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You usually do backface removal, degenerate triangle removal, zero area triangle removal, offscreen triangle removal and triangles hidden by occluders removal just to reduce load on the vertex pipe
Is a "degenerate triangle" one that is effectively just a line- and wouldn't that then be a "zero-area triangle", or is that latter used to refer to a single-point triangle (i.e. all vertices the same point)?
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According to this site: http://www.mathwords.com/d/degenerate.htm [mathwords.com] it is effectively a line segment. However, there are three points involved which is probably where the need to determine it can be "reduced" (my term, probably not mathematically correct) to a simpler form. Some calculation has to take place to determine it is in fact a "degenerate triangle".
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Wow. Fascinating input from a programmer who enjoys the challenge of code optimization. Old school. Wish you hadn't posted anonymously so this post could be modded up and seen by others.
BOTH are insanely slow (Score:4, Interesting)
You can see it best when you run a console game on a PC, the only taxing thing is when you turn all the options on (in your graphics driver) and raise the resolution because on the same resolution and same options as a console, your PC will fall asleep.
It ain't just GPU or even memory. It is even such a simple thing as HD speed. What game developer would code for the slowest laptop HD out there? A console developer.
Put all the limitations together and you can see why some of the biggest money earners in gaming history have not made their way on to the console. The Sims and WoW. None of the games are visually immidiately impressive but they simply take a LOT of memory and a LOT of random disk access.
Why? Because they are non-linear games. The next time you wonder at the marvel of the graphical complexity of a BF3 or even a Rage, ask yourself this... how much am I seeing at a time? Randomly? The games are on rails, with very old style dark corridors between areas to allow the swapping of areas. They remind me a LOT of theme park rides. Where you have large rooms seperated for sound and sight with dark corners.
The real way to tax a PC is to load up the Sims or Operation Flashpoint and to load up the scene with different models. The makers of F.E.A.R. talked about this, they could choose either to have a room impress with lights or with monsters but not both. Next time you see a "big" area on a console, ask yourself, what is missing. What did they have to cut in Y to make X happen.
With a PC, you can simply do both. That is why custom maps, mods and whatever are often so much more impressive to what the original game developers can do. Because anyone that uses mods KNOWS their PC must exceed the recommended spec, not just meet minimum. But on the console, it is all the same absolute minimum approach.
Remember all those people that thought a PS3 would make a good linux machine? They probably never tried it. When was the last time you where happy with a PC with 256mb memory, the smallest and slowest laptop HD they could find and a power consumption that would make Nvidia blush?
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More FPSs and remakes in "True" HD of HD games for PS3 and XBox360. I am not desperately waiting for a new consoles generation. The more fun games I played this generation are PSN games that do not require so much GPU power, like both Echochrome games, Pixeljunk games and many others. Not that I not love games like Uncharted, Battlefield, Gran Turismo ... those games will be/are amazing with better hardware, but the fun is not proportional to graphics for me
Think Avatar (Score:2)
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20080659-17/next-xbox-to-feature-avatar-like-graphics/ [cnet.com]
Re:Think Avatar (Score:5, Informative)
How many times do we fall for that line?
"The (next generation of console) will offer graphics comparable to (the latest Hollywood CGI-laden blockbuster)". No. No it won't. It never has, and won't until our computers are so powerful that real-time photo-realism with nearly unlimited levels of detail becomes trivial. As good as current hardware is, it's still nowhere near that point, unless you're content with rendering a very limited scene, which is what all those impressive tech demos do.
Movie graphics are pre-rendered, of course. They take anywhere from minutes to hours per frame to render, and they can use high-end server farms to do this. Consoles are real-time systems. They must render their scene using commodity hardware in 1/30 to 1/60th of a second, in addition to computing everything else a game requires (physics, animation, audio, AI, etc).
I'm guessing some people would be pretty surprised at how much smoke and mirrors are still used, even on modern systems, in order to keep the frame rate reasonable with decent graphical fidelity. If we (speaking as a game developer here) want to be able to run on a reasonable range of systems, we have to do crazy amounts of optimization work. Our artists still have to reuse textures, conserve memory, reduce polygons, use LODs, and simplify shaders. If that's still not enough, then we're forced to cut content out (simplifying models or geometry) until we CAN run in real-time.
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Part of the problem is that if players are focused on what the graphics can do then they're always going to be wanting something a bit better. It would be a better idea to focus on what the games can do with gameplay instead. Ie, is the game actually fun as opposed to what it looks like.
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Try building a gaming PC using 2007 components, that'll give you a good indication of what consoles can do in 2012.
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Actually, Battlefield 3 is the only example you could use that is actually wrong. They went all out for PC, as mentioned in this interview [alienwarearena.com].
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If that were true they wouldn't be able to port it to consoles. The engine would be optimized for PC's and the polygon counts far too high for consoles' limited resources to handle. That said it's not like he's "lying". Maybe stretching the truth a bit. Or maybe not. I've been purposely avoiding watching videos so the game will have full impact on my eyes when I run it on my Radeon 6950.
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Dude Cell may not have "lived up to the hype", but it wasn't a failure. Devs who program exclusively for the PS3 are able to use a whole host of tricks to offload GPU computation to the SPUs. There's a reason that even though the PS3's GPU is 25% slower than the 360's, PS3 exclusives look better than any other console game.
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bored with the current generation of game hardware
Post had a typo: s/bored/boned/
Good enough already (Score:2)
More polygons means more work for artists which means higher budgets and more risk. What's the incentive for a new console when current gen consoles can do anything one could actually want to do?
The question is, what sort of game are people going to want to play that will require new hardware? If you're just throwing a new coat of paint on the same old game designs, what's the point?
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a good example of new possibilities would be forza motorsport. Fm4 has no open wheeled cars, partly because there is no animation/simulation code for open wheel suspension. This could be down to the fact that they simply didnt have the code for it, it could also been just beyond the capacity of the 360 to properly simulate/render the suspension components. Newer hardware would solve that.
Another issue that the next gen xbox would tackle is the disk format. downloadable games might be the future, but for the
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The question is, what sort of game are people going to want to play that will require new hardware?
a good example of new possibilities would be forza motorsport. Fm4 has no open wheeled cars, partly because there is no animation/simulation code for open wheel suspension. This could be down to the fact that they simply didnt have the code for it, it could also been just beyond the capacity of the 360 to properly simulate/render the suspension components. Newer hardware would solve that.
Yes, interesting, but looking at pretty pictures is not "playing". Much like watching TV pro sports is not "exercising".
I'm thinking the main achievement of the next game gen is an explosion of standard hardware... 100% of controllers will have a really nice microphone and/or bluetooth mic so game designers can count on it for ALL users. 100% of next gen systems will have something like the kinect so game designers can count on it.
Bracelet accelerometer controller interface? Headband unit with accelerome
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More polygons does not mean more work for artists at all. 3D models are created in full resolution and poly count reduced to fit the poly budget of the machine they are targeting. In fact, it might actually mean less work for artists due to less optimization needed. Even 2D sprite games with large item counts (Diablo II, etc) are now created in 3D and rendered as 2D sprites to save on time.
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There isn't much point. I think the next BIG (well, currently happening) change is the availability/easy mode gaming.
iphone/android/appleTV/GoogleTV. A quick AngryBirds/Whatever 2 minute game session whilst the adverts are on, then back to the program.
dollar or 2 for a game, short duration. Done.
The costs for new platforms in both hardware and development are making games crazy prices when our phones aren't far off the same gfx ability as gaming rigs of only a few short years ago.
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More polygons means more work for artists which means higher budgets and more risk. What's the incentive for a new console when current gen consoles can do anything one could actually want to do?
Not necessarily. I expect most graphics are done in Maya or similar and then the polys are reduced down for production. So even in modern games it may well be the inputs are high poly models. They probably even fiddle around with the reduction to see how low they can go.
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And that is fine, given that the consoles aren't running nearly as much stuff in the background. Plus, since the hardware is one single well known configuration, a lot of extreme optimization can take place. Consoles look good enough for modern games and they play well enough too. With networking capabilities they can update software, etc. as needed. They're fine, albeit expensive for what they provide.
Personally I game on my PC though; I don't see a need to buy a console for gaming when I have a perfectly
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Yes, but what are they actually going to do with more RAM besides make prettier graphics? What gameplay mechanics would be possible on a new system that aren't on todays consoles?
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What gameplay mechanics would be possible on a new system that aren't on todays consoles?
My answer to that depends on your answer to this: What gameplay mechanics are possible on Xbox 360 (without the Kinect sensor) that weren't possible on the original PlayStation?
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That's pretty much why I don't own any current gen hardware yet. There's not that much. Going from PSX to PS2 was a significant leap, you couldn't have done GTA3 on the PSX. I don't know what game you could say that about on a current gen console.
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I don't know what game you could say that about on a current gen console.
Heh... you could say that about any PS3 game, really. Let's use GTA4 as an example.
The basic gameplay is the same, but every single detail is very different... more realistic. The visceral thrill of a car chase or a gunfight is much greater than with the old games, just because of the better graphics, sound, and physics. It's easy to dismiss this stuff, but I tried picking up San Andreas again and it just wasn't the same. GTA4 had
Both 512 MB (Score:2)
Rage actually looks better on 360 than PS3, purely because the PS3 just doesn't have enough RAM to hold the art assets to render a single scene at a time
Xbox 360 has 512 MB of RAM and integrated graphics. PS3 has 256 MB of RAM and 256 MB of dedicated VRAM. Why again doesn't the PS3 have enough RAM?
Games usually try to target console first, and then just port to PC
Why is this the case, as opposed to aiming higher with PC exclusives?
and they're not about to redo the entire game's graphic design for a port.
They already do for ports to Wii and ports to DS.
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Rage actually looks better on 360 than PS3, purely because the PS3 just doesn't have enough RAM to hold the art assets to render a single scene at a time
Xbox 360 has 512 MB of RAM and integrated graphics. PS3 has 256 MB of RAM and 256 MB of dedicated VRAM. Why again doesn't the PS3 have enough RAM?
John Carmack has said so, and I trust him. Something about the PS3 only giving you access to some of it.
Games usually try to target console first, and then just port to PC
Why is this the case, as opposed to aiming higher with PC exclusives?
It would be nice if game companies targeted PC, but other than genres that demand it (RTS, turn based, etc.) the PC gets largely ignored. I think the reasons are twofold: they believe that they can target the console, port to pc, and get away with it, still selling the game and making everybody happy, even if PC gamers could do better, and because of the belief that on PC there is rampant piracy whereas o
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The Xbox 360 is UMA and therefore low-res games free up the RAM for use by the game rather than the graphics, the PS3 ain't and its vaunted advantage in memory bandwidth doesn't turn out to make it any faster than a 360 in practice, so if you're a developer the 360 could be more roomy for many types of games. And if you could meaningfully run Linux on it, it would matter. Snicker.
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The PS3's OS is more bloated than the Xbox 360's. You get about 480MB of usable RAM on the 360 and 460MB on the PS3. Even worse, the PS3 has a split memory architecture, so you only get about 210MB of system RAM whereas on the Xbox 360 you can use all of it however you want.
As for you last point, there aren't that many games that release on both the 360/PS3/PC and Wii. Those few that do are usually outsourced to external developers so they're basically a different game altogether.
...and both have an operating system (Score:2)
The PS3 reserves RAM for it's OS stuff.
And the Xbox 360 doesn't? What's that dashboard I see when I press the home button during a game?
John Carmack has tweeted about this in the past.
It appears I can't search Twitter without having a Twitter account. Would you share some links?
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As a former game dev I'll tell you.
both consoles have 512MB total memory.
360 has shared memory, the OS takes 32MB. The 360 GPU has a 10MB embedded frame buffer. MSAA becomes memory-free under most circumstances.
PS3 has 256MB main memory, 256MB vram. OS takes up 40MB main memory, 7MB vram. No embedded frame buffer, Nx MSAA takes N times more memory for the color buffer PLUS you still need two non-MSAA color buffers for display. So on a 1280x720 2xMSAA game you loose 15MB for the OS and an additional 7.2M
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That's not unfortunate, that's economical. I benefit by being able to play more games on my older hardware, saving me money. The producers get to spend less on artwork, and increase the distribution of their games, making them more money. It's a win-win scenario.
Graphics are good enough now that graphics alone can't justify an upgrade. Only novel game mechanics could induce me to buy a new system. What game mechanic is going to use a gig of RAM?
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Only novel game mechanics could induce me to buy a new system. What game mechanic is going to use a gig of RAM?
Still rocking the Nintendo 64 huh?
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Indeed I do. I played OoT for the first time this year. Too many great classics to be terribly worried about new games.
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I played OoT for the first time this year.
This is blasphemy! This is madness!
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Funny thing is, the N64 actually had a RAM upgrade that many games could use... or even require.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Expansion_Pak [wikimedia.org]
Why don't the PS3 and 360 have something similar? Because they could certainly use it.
Even a bump to 1GB would be very useful.
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Environmental destruction? AI? Map size? More capable and fleshed out console OS? Day/night cycles? Less optimization workload for developers?
Microsoft has the most to lose by waiting (Score:4, Interesting)
They're already past the 5-year traditional console lifespan (a tradition that's been sacrosanct since the Atari days). And with Playstation gaining ground every day, they're looking real long-in-the-tooth of late. PS3 has MMO's now, user-created content, games that don't have to span several discs (because of the blu-ray drive), blu-ray movie playing capability, etc. The 360 was in the lead for a long time (in the U.S. at least) and MS could have easily secured that lead if they had followed the 5-year lifecyle and bitch-slapped Sony with a next-gen console in Christmas 2010. Instead we got the Kinect, their Wii knockoff that came years after the Wii novelty had worn off (my Wii is sitting in my closet if anyone wants to buy it).
It's a real shame too. Call me a nationalist if you like, but MS was the first American company to compete in the console industry since Atari. And it was nice to not have to wait until a title had been released in Japan for several months to finally get it in the U.S. Sony and Nintendo always treated the west like they were doing us a favor by lowering themselves to even release a game outside of Japan. MS was the first company in a long time to treat the U.S. and Europe as a first-class market instead of an afterthought. And they actually gave us Western-centric games instead of just poorly-translated JRPG's to boot.
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The 360 was in the lead for a long time (in the U.S. at least)
You mean excluding the Wii?
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Wait, at what point did the PS3 start "gaining ground every day"? Last I checked (2 months ago), the Xbox 360 had been thoroughly outselling the PS3 almost constantly since the Kinect came out (a year ago, now).
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You must have only checked the US numbers.
Re:Microsoft has the most to lose by waiting (Score:4)
I thought we were passed this. All three consoles sold more than 50 million units. No one lost, everyone won; with Nintendo winning a lot more granted especially given they've been making a profit on their sales since day one. I do have to wonder how many units they each sold to unique customers though, I know I had to replace my 60gb launch PS3, and the RROD debacle surely skewed the 360s numbers a bit.
Years off? (Score:4, Insightful)
I know there'll be people saying it's not a next-gen console because it's graphics aren't much if any better than a PS3, but I would say it is, because it is one that has been designed after seeing the results of the current gen. Like the Wii, Nintendo decided the key to advancement was not pushing graphics, but other aspects of the user experience.
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Exactly. A lot of people really have no idea how powerful the WiiU really is. The specs are quite a big step over the current generation. The real question will be if Nintendo will catch up with the PS3/360 for online gaming. If they can bring it to the level of the PS3 and keep it free and open for developers to integrate (Ie. STEAM), it'll be a huge hit. By the time MS and Sony come out with theirs, they will be 40 million consoles behind Nintendo, and may never catch up again.
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What sucks is that its potential will never be fully realized (at least by any third party). All development is done for either a PS3 or 360 and then ported. To make it worse, by releasing in the middle of a console generation games will not look much better than any other console, but when the new generation comes out the new consoles will probably have way more horsepower. So either Nintendo will have to release a new console to keep up (doubtful) or the Wii U will be dismissed in the same vein as the Wii
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If this will be released in the middle of the generation than so was the 360 for last generation.
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As far as I know, Nintendo hasn't released the WiiU's specs. Where did you get those numbers?
Why make a new system... (Score:2)
...when you can add a stick / camera for more money?
Personally, if I want to play tennis or go bowling, I go out and play tennis or go bowling
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You can if you do the same thing you'd do for any other sport on this earth and find a suitable playing field. Boxing is a sport that many people enjoy participating in and gyms with practice rings are readily available if you know where to look.
"next-gen" is this gen (Score:2)
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The next generation is in your hand (Score:2)
The phones are selling such high volumes and adding capabilities so fast that any new hardware console, ostensibly designed for games only, will have a problem getting to critical mass. Not only are we in a post-PC world, we're in a post-game-console world as well.
Smart phones screens are to small and touch screen (Score:2)
Smart phones screens are to small and touch screens only work for some kinds of games and for others they suck big time.
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Not only are we in a post-PC world, we're in a post-game-console world as well.
And a post $75 game world. Like it or not, your next hundred game purchases are probably going to be much cheaper than your previous hundred game purchases...
One big cultural issue is that "REAL gamers exclusively play remakes of sequels of FPS that cost $60 each" but I don't think that's gonna fly on the iOS / Android world, or at least it hasn't started to fly. A touch interface is nice for scrolling and scroll-like game interfaces. Not so good for FPS triggers.
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Phone gaming is a lot of fun, and has a low barrier to entry so it's not going anywhere anytime soon. That's the advantages.
The disadvantages are that it's not well suited to truly social gaming (things Rock Band or even just HALO LAN parties), completely impractical for some still-very-popular game genres (FPS, music simulator games, realistic racing or flight sims, RTS, and probably others). Now, consoles aren't perfect for all those either (RTS on a console is a joke compared to on PC), but they're very
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Wow! What a business opportunity for someone.
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The next generation of game consoles is in your hand. It's running either iOS 5, Ice Cream Sandwich or Mango, depending on why your interest lies (sorry, Android is the closest you're going to get to Linux).
Nah, a console needs a GPU, which alone will suck more power than the whole phone. Phone hardware is power-constrained, not just by battery, but also by heat management design of a phone. Also, while touch screen is fine for many kinds of games, it just doesn't cut it for most arcade and action games.
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phones don't have the battery life to play games (Score:2)
phones don't have the battery life to play high end games for a long time and if you need to be on AC why not just use a PC / Console then?
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The next generation of game consoles is in your hand. It's running either iOS 5, Ice Cream Sandwich or Mango, depending on why your interest lies (sorry, Android is the closest you're going to get to Linux).
The phones are selling such high volumes and adding capabilities so fast that any new hardware console, ostensibly designed for games only, will have a problem getting to critical mass. Not only are we in a post-PC world, we're in a post-game-console world as well.
Again with the post-PC and post-console prediction. The opening of a new market doesn't automatically mean the death of a previous market. Also, try telling me that I should be playing a game like Skyrim on my phone instead of a 60" screen with surround sound home theater speakers, and we'll all know that you and I are *very* different demographics.
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Post-PC world? How many college students do you see writing papers on their Androids?
Soon, most of them, be it Android, or maybe iOS or WP or even a "real" Linux. They'll be doing it with tablet + attached keyboard, sometimes with phone + attached keyboard + external display.
Scaling the PS3 (Score:2)
Reasons to look forward to a new "Next Gen" (Score:2)
What we need is next gen display tech (Score:2)
An "Open" game platform ... ISO/OASIS/W3C ... (Score:2)
An "Open" game platform and standards would kick PS3...XBox to the curb of ancient technology history, and finally allow global "Open" game platform innovation.
Re:Do not want (Score:5, Informative)
Yea, what you're looking for is not a game console, I believe it's called a com pew tur or something like that.
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How many people can play Brawl on one Wii console at once? Four. How many people can play a game on one PC at once? Typically one, due to publishers wanting families to buy two to four copies of a game [cracked.com] for multiplayer.
What does that have to do with running your own os on a console?
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Well, considering the average number of players per console not on the wii is 2, and the majority of AAA titles that have multiplayer is actually 1 with online play, there's no longer much difference.
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How many people can play Brawl on one Wii console at once?
This is why the Wii is the only true console of this generation. It's fundamentally different to PC, ergo it's designed for a different type of game and audience. Historically, consoles have always done well with simple, casual game with a shallow learning curve, PC's have been the home of complex, long drawn out or difficult games.
Ask the same question of a PC and Xbox, Most Xbox and PS3 games are designed for one player per copy the same as PC games. Realistically, they are consoles trying to be PC's whic
Dealing with absolutes (Score:3)
Typically one
Can you play all games on a console with 4 players? No.
Can you play some games on a PC with 4 players? Yes.
Is it much harder to find games that can be played with 4 players on a PC than on a console? Yes.
Is it much harder to sell games that can be played with 4 players on a PC than on a console? Yes.
This is the sentiment that I was trying to capture with "Typically one." I understand that there exist exceptions to absolute statements, but compared to the consoles, local multiplayer on PC remains a rounding error.
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The point of a console. Is that everything is given to you in a nice little box.
The Hardware is balanced for affordability and high performance gaming. Meaning the CPU doesn't need to be Uber fast when your GPU is the slowest part. So you can get hardware balanced for gaming. The same thing with the OS if the box is designed for high end gaming have a generic all purpose OS doesn't make much sense, and giving low level access to the end user is a good way for the average gamer to make things worse.
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What...? It's called a partition. No one expects to be running PS4 games at the same time they've loaded up Linux or Windows.
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Your first point is an argument against your second point.
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When was the last time you were able to upgrade a few parts in your console to add a nice boost to its capabilities?
Nintendo 64 Expansion Pak. Some games required it (Perfect Dark; Majora's Mask); other games used it for more detailed lighting and even 480i graphics (as opposed to the typical 240p). Also Kinect for Xbox 360.
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updating/upgrading computer hardware is merely a matter of swapping out a single piece.
Unless that piece is your PC's motherboard, at which point you'll also need to swap out the CPU and RAM. You may also need to swap out more of your expansion cards if your new motherboard doesn't have slots for your old cards (e.g. PCI to PCIe, AGP to PCIe, ATA to SATA). About once a console generation, you might as well buy or build a new PC because motherboards will have changed so much.
Number of players per machine (Score:2)
We're miles ahead in every category.
Except in number of players per machine. Very few PC games support split- or otherwise shared-screen co-op using one TV and two to four USB gamepads. One reason is that apart from a few geeks [pineight.com], almost [slashdot.org] nobody [slashdot.org] is willing to hook a PC up to a TV or a TV-sized monitor. But perhaps Cracked columnist David Wong is on to the real reason, calling the requirement of a separate PC and copy of the game per player a cheap revenue-enhancing scheme for game publishers in his article [cracked.com].
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Very few PC games support split- or otherwise shared-screen co-op [instead needing] a separate PC and copy of the game per player
Well, okay, we're ahead in every category that **counts for something**.
In other words, cost doesn't count for something. You're entitled to your opinion, but I must respectfully disagree.
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Except in having games that are actually fun.
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I think PC games and console games are just different, although there's lots of overlap.
A cap of 5 GB per month (Score:2)
They better get rid of any physical media, and make it download only.
Good luck downloading even a single-layer BD-ROM's worth of data over a 5 GB per month satellite link; it'll take you five months. As long as there are still areas unserved by fast broadband without obnoxiously low caps, consoles will still need to use physical media. Even the PSVita will use cartridges.
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I highly, highly doubt they're going to go to "4K gaming" when no one has a 4K TV set. The standards for 8K were only just agreed upon last week. 4K products won't come for several years yet. I very, very much wish for a super high resolution monitor with 300ppi screen, but it won't happen anytime soon. As for the consoles ultra high-detail (with all those fancy techniques like MSAA) 1080p gaming (with an excruciating emphasis on 3D) will be pushed.
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Also 15 years sounds dumb. I doubt it will even last 9 years. Nintendo will eat their cake with the WiiU and a 2 year head start, and they'll be forced to avoid a repeat. Anyways we'll all be old or middle aged and internet will have moved on to "web 3.0". At least slashdot will never change... as ugly and dysfunctional as always!
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I think you give them too much credit. Personally, I can't wait to hear the talking heads talk about the time-tables for the next-next-gen consoles and how much better they are than the next-gen consoles.
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The Wii-U is Nintendo's PS3/360. The Wii is the same generation as the original XBOX.
You could argue that console generations are split solely by years, and not by console power, but if you do make that argument you will have to also agree that there have been a ton of different console generations, since the consoles often release one or two years apart.
If you claim that time is the only determining factor for console generation then the PS2 would be part of generation x, and the gamecube and XBOX would be
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The Wii-U has a high chance of being another Dreamcast
Especially with that overgrown Visual Memory Unit-looking thing between the buttons and the left stick. But I bet it'll be the opposite of the Dreamcast in terms of friendliness to home developers.
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It really isn't "between" generations. We are already due for refreshes from ALL the companies. People are clamoring for new systems right now. Nintendo will be the first to capitalize on it.
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I figured the only way I was going to be able to clear the backlog of good games available for the last generation was to skip this one :) The extended duration of this generation is throwing a wrench into that plan though, as I'm going to be out of games in the next year or so. But I don't really want to buy a current gen console only a year or two before the next gen comes out, so I'm hoping indie PC games will fill the gap.
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It really isn't a lot different than what happened with the cable/phone/internet companies.
After a lot of hemming and hawing they all provide essentially the same service now.
So Microsoft adds non-game functions to their living room device, and Apple puts their general purpose device into the living room.
That is a far cry from "consoles are dying!"