The Next Console Cycle

[Trekker4747]

When the next cycle of consoles comes around, how screwed is Microsoft going to be? (Who I believe really dropped the ball this time around.)

Because, pretty much, they're gong to have to use Blu-Ray technology which means they're machines are also going to mean profits going right back to Sony.

Oh, and when do you think the next console cycle will start? (And how much do you think MS and Sony will try and to emulate the Wii-mote?)

 

[clint g]

Microsoft is far from being screwed. On top of selling more consoles in the US than Sony, they also have Xbox Live which is raking in money. Also, its generally believed that this current console cycle is going to last alot longer than the previous ones, with each console receiving incremental updates.

 

[eastman23]

Also, its generally believed that this current console cycle is going to last alot longer than the previous ones, with each console receiving incremental updates.

Agreed. I haven't heard any rumours of a new consoles yet and I don't think we will for at least a year or more. Hell, Project Natal and the Playstation Move aren't out yet and I suspect that Microsoft and Sony are going to want to give those pieces of tech some time to develop.

 

[Teelie]

I wouldn't say Blu-Ray is a shoe-in at this point either. As pointed out the existing console cycle is looking to be at least a decade long before we see the next ones and by then Blu-Ray could go the way of Laser-disk (flash in the pan tech) or something else entirely (the dreaded to some downloadable only content model).

We're already seeing technology that experiments with holograms and holographic storage which around the time the next wave of consoles comes out might be a viable form of storage.

 

[Rii]

I'm hoping Wii HD will show by Christmas this year. Microsoft will jump next, Christmas 2011 perhaps, with Sony a ways behind.

I expect all players will go for relatively conservative updates over existing designs; perhaps merely supercharged supersets of current architecture to ensure seamless backwards compatibility and eliminate the learning curve. Nobody is going to want to bleed themselves like Sony/Microsoft did this generation and Nintendo has demonstrated that it isn't necessary. Blu-Ray is a safe bet for Microsoft's next console. The infrastructure won't quite be there for download-only, and alternative techs will be uncomfortably expensive and unnecessary to boot.

 

[firehawk12]

Yeah, I don't think we're going to see photonic bandgap material in our consoles anytime soon.

I don't know if a Blu-Ray is a must, since most games are still making due with fitting on 2 DVDs. That said, they screwed up by not having mandatory hard drives and the next MS system will probably be designed with HDDs in mind to allow for installs (ala Forza 3 and multidisc PC games).

That said, if they want to take over the home market or whatever, not having Blu-Ray and relying entirely on their own online movie store seems very silly.

 

[Rii]

^ Yeah, I think they could get away without Blu-Ray for games, but if they want the console to be the 'home entertainment centre' as they seem to, I can't see them passing it up. Certainly not in favour of a DVD drive, the price difference will be minimal by then. And as for funneling profits to Sony, that's not a big deal. DVD has a licensing fee and some of that goes to Sony. Sony gets money for the HDMI port on later X360s too.

Re: architecture. For the PS3, instead of having 6x3.2GHz you could have 8x5GHz or something. Increase the system RAM to 1-1.5GB, do something similar with the graphics subsystem... and voila. Also, such an approach would support the 'incremental' approach suggested by clintg above, you could even have games that run on both PS3 and PS4, the difference between 'medium' and 'ultra' settings on a PC. Could possibly have an 'upscaling' mode for old PS3 games too. Of course all that depends on how effectively the architectures actually scale, but I suspect that if they're not interested in producing $700 consoles offering quantum leaps in performance it may work out reasonably well. The multi-core nature (particularly in the case of PS3) of the current machines would help with that too. Can't get more GHz out of the chip without temps going through the roof or yield rates going through the floor? Tack on a few more cores.

 

[Timby]

I wouldn't say Blu-Ray is a shoe-in at this point either. As pointed out the existing console cycle is looking to be at least a decade long before we see the next ones

You're saying we won't see new systems until at least 2015? I think not.

 

[The Evil Dead]

I think we'll see a new generation of consoles in 2012 or 2013.

 

[firehawk12]

^ Yeah, I think they could get away without Blu-Ray for games, but if they want the console to be the 'home entertainment centre' as they seem to, I can't see them passing it up. Certainly not in favour of a DVD drive, the price difference will be minimal by then. And as for funneling profits to Sony, that's not a big deal. DVD has a licensing fee and some of that goes to Sony. Sony gets money for the HDMI port on later X360s too.

Re: architecture. For the PS3, instead of having 6x3.2GHz you could have 8x5GHz or something. Increase the system RAM to 1-1.5GB, do something similar with the graphics subsystem... and voila. Also, such an approach would support the 'incremental' approach suggested by clintg above, you could even have games that run on both PS3 and PS4, the difference between 'medium' and 'ultra' settings on a PC. Could possibly have an 'upscaling' mode for old PS3 games too. Of course all that depends on how effectively the architectures actually scale, but I suspect that if they're not interested in producing $700 consoles offering quantum leaps in performance it may work out reasonably well. The multi-core nature (particularly in the case of PS3) of the current machines would help with that too. Can't get more GHz out of the chip without temps going through the roof or yield rates going through the floor? Tack on a few more cores.

I think that might be the natural evolution of consoles barring a one console future. I mean, even on the PC very few games are DX10/11 only, so having an iterative system that allows games to play in a DX11 mode for the early adopters who want the best looking games (and, as much as I hate the idea, 3D games) while being compatible with the DX9 specs of current systems might be a good idea.

Certainly the bad economy has something to do with the delay as well, as is the move toward crappy Wii games (Natal/Move) and Facebook games(Third party publishers buying up Facebook game developers). There's absolutely no reason to launch a 500/600/700 dollar system any time soon.

There's also a certain factor of diminishing returns. I'm certainly tired of UE3 looking games - especially since no developer has been able to make human beings that don't look like crap - but the average person doesn't really care. I feel like we're at a similar point with polygon graphics as the SNES era with sprite graphics... there needs to be some new practical technology available to developers that is the next technological leap. Maybe that's real time Ray-Tracing along with even better physics middleware... but that seems to be ages away.

Heck, we still can't get "true" HD games. Most games are like 500+p upscaled to 720 or 1080. While I certainly agree that 60 FPS is better than more resolution, there's no reason why we can't have both. The problem is, only super nerds care that Halo or Alan Wake is sub-HD, so selling a system that is capable of "true" HD isn't going to be enough.

 

[CommodoreKong]

When the next cycle of consoles comes around, how screwed is Microsoft going to be? (Who I believe really dropped the ball this time around.)

Because, pretty much, they're gong to have to use Blu-Ray technology which means they're machines are also going to mean profits going right back to Sony.

So is Sony screwed because their Vaio notebooks use Windows operation systems, which means profits going rich back to Microsoft?

Sony owns a number of patents for the DVD format and they are already getting a small amount of royalties for each DVD drive and Xbox 360 game pressed to a DVD.

I'm sure the Blu Ray royalties are slightly higher then DVD right now but Microsoft isn't going to be screwed because they have to pay royalties to Sony.

I'm hoping Wii HD will show by Christmas this year. Microsoft will jump next, Christmas 2011 perhaps, with Sony a ways behind.

I doubt we'll see Nintendo's successor to the Wii this year, the Wii is still currently the best selling console worldwide and most of their major studios are still working on or have just recently finished Wii games so they wouldn't have much of a software lineup if they launched this year.

Plus we know the 3DS is going to come out before March of 2011, I would imagine they would want to focus on that before launching another console.

 

[Sephiroth]

were getting to the point where consoles don't realy need an upgrade, atleast a physical one, X-box is set up to do ALOT through download, if only they would get thier heads out of thier asses about the HDD's drop the price SEVERELY on them and release a terrabyte (or bigger) HDD

 

[Hermiod]

The current user bases for the current consoles are so big that it would be insane to switch away from them now and move on to the next thing.

Any new consoles would absolutely require backwards compatibility otherwise the third parties won't be interested. They're struggling as it is without Microsoft and Sony telling them to move on to the next big console with its vastly increased development costs and tiny user base.

 

[firehawk12]

Well, look at how backwards compatibility died out. We sort of assume that the next gen consoles will preserve the same architecture like the Wii, but who knows.

I wouldn't be surprised if all the crap we've downloaded is dead on the next systems.

 

[Sephiroth]

Well, look at how backwards compatibility died out. We sort of assume that the next gen consoles will preserve the same architecture like the Wii, but who knows.

I wouldn't be surprised if all the crap we've downloaded is dead on the next systems.

XBL keeps good track of what you have bought online, when Trek came back I was able to re-download the episodes I had bought without having to pay for them again

 

[Hermiod]

XBL keeps good track of what you have bought online, when Trek came back I was able to re-download the episodes I had bought without having to pay for them again

I don't think that's what firehawk meant. While yes there is a record of what you've downloaded, who knows if any downloadable full games or even DLC will remain compatible.

 

[firehawk12]

Yeah, there's no reason to expect that Xbox 720 will support any Rock Band songs or Halo maps or XBLA games. We just assume they won't screw us.

 

[Jax]

The next console race probably won't begin till 2015 at the earliest and then Microsoft will be on its own because I don't see Nintendo releasing the next console in the same year.

Nintendo are in bigger trouble because by then the Wii will be flatlined IMO and I don't think they can replicate the same success without bringing basically Wii 2.0 which would be just pointless. Sony themselves might not be able to afford to produce a PS4 after the amount of money the PS3 lost even though things now are looking solid for the console they could be 2 years behind the next M/S console and be out the race again b4 it even gets going.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I think we may be close to a ceiling in terms of game console capabilities. Despite the rather bizarre way they went about it, Sony did have the right idea by going for heavy parallelization. I think we've reached a point where the CPU isn't the bottleneck--it's going to be RAM, storage, and video. I don't think it makes much sense to keep ramping up the CPUs in both speed and number. RAM is cheap enough now you could probably take a PS3, keep the current specs in terms of CPU, but ramp the system memory up to 3GB and have another 1GB for video memory. Increase the clock and throughput on the video card and it'll feel like a whole new system.

Graphics improvements over the last few generations have come from three things: polygon counts, texture resolution, and shaders. Polygon counts and shaders are tied to clock speed on the graphics hardware, while texture resolution is bound to your video memory. I'm simply skeptical that current games have come even close to maxing out the PS3's CPU architecture. Any improvements in the next generation will probably not focus on making the CPU considerably faster.

It's also worthwhile to keep in mind that there are serious diminishing returns on CPU clock speed these days. That's why CPU speeds seem to have topped out around 3GHz. Most of the performance gains we're seeing anymore come from having multiple cores, rather than upping the CPU clock.

I might point out that PS2s are still selling pretty well. Sales figures are no longer released (as far as I can tell), but as of late last year they were still moving over 100K units a month! And that's for a system that's about 10 years old.

I have a feeling that, no matter what the next generation is, it's going to take even longer to adopt than this one did. There will be a lot of people who will jump on the chance to get a cheap 360 or PS3 once the 720 and PS4 come out.

 

[Jadzia]

Parallel could take things higher level, but I think what may need to happen is greater specialization of the multi core paradigm.

For example, physics takes a lot of processing. So instead of have 6 identical processor cores, there could be a hardware module specifically for physics. It could use a reduced instruction set, and be hard coded (circuitry over software) and optimised for its function.

I'd expect a physics engine would perform much better that way than with the current inefficient object oriented physics code, various layers of API abstraction, and running as a threaded task in a general purpose (unspecialised) processor.