2 
The last major hardware release of the seventh console generation, the PS3, was waaaaay back in 2006. Six years on, and we’re about to see the next generation of gaming begin, with the launch of the Wii-U before the end of the year. It’s hardly surprising that the gaming community has been starting to anticipate major announcements from both Microsoft and Sony about their next wave of consoles, too. Here’s what to expect:
Back around the launch of the PS3, Sony stated that it’d have a 10 year life cycle on store shelves. Microsoft similarly estimated that the release of Kinect would take the life of the Xbox 360 well into 2015. If those targets are to believed, then we’ll be keeping hold of our precious consoles for another three or four years. To be honest, I’d rather not wait that long, but if had my way all the time, 3D would’ve been banned two years ago and Justin Bieber would be tried for crimes against music.
Hopefully the new Xbox won’t be called the Xbox 720, because frankly that’s a stupid name. However, it works until we get the official announcement, because the rumoured code name of ‘Durango’ is equally as stupid. At least I think so anyway. Is that a hard “g” or not, Microsoft? And what does it even mean?
Meanwhile, Sony has a track record of adding a new number to their consoles with each new iteration, however if you look at the unique naming of the PSVita and a leak indicating that the new console is named ‘Orbis,’ there’s a chance the Japanese company won’t come out with the ‘PS4.’
Everyone’s favourite area of speculation always concerns the hardware; with the only constant rumour concerning the presence of an AMD graphics card. I’m skeptical of many of the hardware rumours, especially since some people are reporting the Xbox 720′s CPU could well contain a whopping 16 cores, proving that yes, rumours can be as extravagant as they are varied.
Whatever the new specs, we will be sure to see a massive increase in both graphics and processing power for both machines, especially when people like John Carmack (founder of the game studio iD, which created the Doom and Quake game-series) insist on creating textures that take up 1TB of space, like we saw with Rage.
Latest rumours suggest that the PS4 will include 4K resolution-support; far higher than the current 1080p available on most HDTVs. I think this is rather likely since it would help Sony sell its own 4K TVs, and would allow greater graphical potential — though it will inevitably help bulk the price out somewhat.
One aspect of the hardware that we can be pretty confident about is the rumoured lack of a disc drive in the Xbox 720 to focus on direct downloads or, as some people seem to think, a reintroduction of game cartridges by using SSD drives. I’m dismissing both of these, simply because they would be ineffective and too costly to implement.
As you no doubt know, it’s possible to download games directly through Xbox Live, but could that be the only way to obtain new Xbox games for this new console? Not in my opinion, simply because the right infrastructure doesn’t exist yet, and broadband speeds are far too varied across the world. Last week It took me all day to download an 800Mb piece of DLC; imagine how long it would take me to download iD’s 22GB colossus Rage?
Additionally, SSD cartridges would be far too expensive to implement worldwide. During a quick search on Amazon, I discovered that a 50GB SSD drive is around the £60 mark, whereas 10 blank Blu-rays are £10. Obviously the companies would be privy to better wholesale prices, but that does say a lot, doesn’t it?
Yes, it is true that Sony does have high investments in Blu-ray, and Microsoft would be indirectly supporting its rivals if they included it. But if they want their console to be able to keep up with demand and the increasing size of games, inclusion of Blu-Ray drives are essential unless Microsoft made its own high-definition disc (and we all know how that worked out last time).
Add-ons have been a very serious part of the current console generation with the rise of motion-control, sparked by the success of the Wii. While there are no specifics yet, the Xbox 720 is sure to include the successor to Kinect; word on the internet is that it could well be powerful enough to read lip movement. Throw in the rumoured augmented reality glasses from June’s leak, and it would need some serious power. That rumoured 16 core CPU isn’t looking so over-the-top now, is it?
Over on Sony’s side, an updated PS Eye for Kinect-style controller-free gaming could serve as a nice replacement for the PS Move. Sony definitely needs to look at this area, considering the Kinect sold almost twice as many units as the PS Move.
Both of these rumours are incredibly likely I’d say, given motion controls have proved incredibly popular with the casual gamer demographic (just look at the success of the Wii) and both companies will likely want to reap the rewards motion controls have to offer.
I’m sure the biggest question that will be on the lips of many gamer will be, “Does it have backwards compatibility?”
Well, that would depend on the console. The assumption over at Gamesradar is that the PS4 probably won’t include backwards compatibility, and I’m inclined to agree. Any PS3 owner who bought one after 2007 will know that later models don’t play PS2 or PS1 discs because the cost of implementing that feature was so high and Sony just couldn’t see the benefits. I think it’s pretty unlikely Sony will come out and include it as a feature for the PS4 for the same reason. If any old games are available, it will probably be as a direct download.
As for the Xbox 720, I think it’s rather likely that there will at least be a selection of the back catalogue available, whether it be by disc or through Xbox Live. The most likely scenario is that almost none of the games from the original Xbox will be 720-compatible, with a few exceptions for the popular games. As for 360-to-720 compatibility, most of the games will likely be compatible. Especially since six of the eight games in Microsoft’s cash-cow franchise Halo are Xbox 360 titles.
On a side note, June’s Xbox leak gave an impression that 3D would be integrated as part of Kinect 2.0′s AR glasses, which I find rather disappointing, mainly because I despise 3D and the only people I know who claim that they like it are purposely doing it to annoy me.
It’s important to bear in mind that those leaked documents are over two years old and Microsoft has had plenty of chances to include 3D in its Xbox 360 games since then. In fact, only three Xbox exclusive games have included 3D; all of them developed by third parties. So I’ll take that with a pinch of salt, especially since 3DTV sales have been incredibly slow so it wouldn’t be a worthwhile investment, especially considering they have little to gain financially by implementing 3D.
Sony on the other hand claims to still be invested in 3D, despite it not being mentioned in relation to its gaming division for nearly 18 months, so expect to see new 3D stuff on the PS4 as it tries to push people to buy one of its 3DTVs.
Given E3 is still the biggest date in the diary for gaming companies, both consoles are more than likely to make an appearance at next year’s show, in June. It seems like the obvious choice I know, but it’s still the best place for both companies to launch their stake in the next generation of consoles, especially given this year’s conference was remarkably lacklustre, and Microsoft pulled back from January’s CES show this year, so they’re unlikely to unveil anything there.
A release date? Christmas 2013 would be nice, but I wouldn’t put any money on it. I’d say Christmas 2014 as the most viable candidate at this time, especially since the later parts of the year have been the unofficial window for console releases.
There could well be a change in that trend, but with all the impulsive present-buying at Christmas, it’s the best period for selling a new console. As anyone who tried to buy a Wii for Christmas 2006 can attest to…
In the end, the Xbox 360′s early launch gave it the edge over the PS3 in terms of sales, and both companies will know that. Rather than playing the waiting game, I’m sure they both want to beat the competition to the market. But who will be first? Only time can tell, with that one.
Despite various rumours flying around the internet, there are still a lot of unknowns, but here are a few things I would ideally like to see changed that haven’t already been mentioned:
PS4
1/ Controller Redesign.
The Playstation controller design is now 18 years old, which is almost obsolete in technology standards and don’t even get me started on the shape of the damn thing. Ergonomics especially didn’t seem to be a thing in 1994, and for whatever reason, Sony didn’t change the design with the launch of the PS3, instead choosing to just shove new components where it could.
My advice? Follow the lead of Microsoft’s design with a controller that fits comfortably in a hand; Nintendo’s done so with the Wii-U’s pro controller, and if Nintendo copies something then it must be good (anyone in the know will be aware it’s usually the other way around).
2/ Make it as slim and sleek as possible at launch.
Don’t announce a new slimmer model a couple of years down the line in an attempt to boost sales, when the only change is the look of the console. Basically, don’t ever re-release the console unless it’s had a major hardware overhaul.
Or unless you’ve got a special limited-edition Crash Bandicoot model.
3/ Ignore 3D.
Please let it die with as much dignity as it can?
Xbox 360
1/ Make Xbox Live Gold free for all members.
Sony did just that; hell even those money-grabbing bastards at EA are making the Old Republic free to play this Autumn.
2/ Allow third parties to create apps for the Xbox.
Makes sense in this day and age, right?
What both companies should include
1/ Work on some original innovation rather than copying what has sold well for someone else *cough* motion controllers *cough*. We’re looking mostly at you here, Sony.
2/ Support independent development and modding. Microsoft did this well with Kinect, but there’s always room for improvement. Sony needs to stop suing people who can crack their hardware and software.
Did we miss any must-have features out, do you think? Let us know below.
Image Credit: Kinect 2.0 3D, PS4 and PS Eye Patent from Games Radar; Durango from T3
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“Ergonomics especially didn’t seem to be a thing in 1994, and for whatever reason, Sony didn’t change the design with the launch of the PS3, instead choosing to just shove new components where it could.”
They did redesign it (http://www.ign.com/articles/2005/05/17/e3-2005-playstation-3-the-controller) and everyone hated it so much they fell back to what they already knew.
Why was it hated? Did people just hate how it looked or had someone managed to actually have a play with it. My thought would be that Sony would’ve made it comfortable to hold.
In pretty much every forum and site I saw at the time people were universally slagging it off. At that point it doesn’t actually matter what if feels like to use as people had made their minds up.
This is a bit of quite interesting info about it though.
http://www.ps3vault.com/what-really-happened-to-ps3-boomerang-controller-1206
I like the Dualshock 3, it’s not uncomfortable and its a lot lighter than the Xbox 360 wireless controller and has a built in battery, why o why did Micro$oft not put a rechargeable battery in as standard?
That’s a bad thing to me, the PS3 controller doesn’t feel solid in your hand whereas the 360 one does.
Fer enough, I like both the controllers, but I’ve been a playstation boy since the PS One so the controller is like second nature.
Ok, maybe he should have stated that it should have been redesigned – but not in the shape of a space ship dildo
Because it wasnt an improvement? you ddnt even need to hold it to know it was ****..
It probably didn’t help the redesign was reminiscent of the original xbox controller – a monstrosity that barely fit in the largest of hands, maybe I’m biased because I have fairly big hands but the ps3 controller always feels uncomfortable and the analogue sticks are in an incredible awkward place compared to other controllers
In terms of rechargeable battery not included in the xbox controller it brings the cost of the controller itself down, on amazon official xbox controllers plus the play and charge kit is only a couple of quid more than a ps3 controller, cheaper if you buy the battery third party (gamestation’s own works just as well). Why microsoft decided to use their own connector rather than something simple like mini usb used in the ps3 I’ll never know, but I’d guess to make more money
“2/ Make it as slim and sleek as possible at launch.
Don’t announce a new slimmer model a couple of years down the line in an attempt to boost sales, when the only change is the look of the console.”
They do make it as slim as possible.
The slim line versions are released later on in the life cycle because it takes a while to get the hardware scaled down. No matter how small they make it, given a few years they will always be able to make it smaller. By you logic, they should never release it.
PS3 has the best standard digital joypad on the market today.
But as an analogue joypad, it’s appalling. The triggers are even worse than the buttons they replaced on the PS2 pad, the thumbsticks have no purchase on top and are badly placed for the motions your thumb has to make to push them directly up, down and to the sides.
I get the feeling, though, like Apple on the one-physical-button-on-the-mouse thing, they’ve stuck to their guns for too long to go changing it now.
I guess I’m the only one that finds the Playstation pads comfortable?
Fits my hands perfectly, the only bummer are those rear triggers.
The 360′s pad gives me thumb cramp.
I’m with you
I am with Mentalist, PS controllers have to be the worst, they where fine in the ps2 V N64 days, even id the N64 was better but it had that odd extra D-Pad that did nothing as everyone used the C-pad with the right hand… oh well.. but having all 3 current gen systems Xbox is the best controller for comfort. the sticks have a few more dead spots than the ps3 but i still find the ps3 hard to play FPS games on, infact i went and spanked a load of £££ on the move and the big gun cradle so i could play killzone 3 with that rather than the controller.. was just as uncomfy but the fun aspect made up for it.
There is a reason why years after release hardware gets smaller. It just isn’t possible to get a slim version out when the console releases as the hardware wouldn’t be powerful enough. Once technology advances enough after a few years they can scale down the size of the hardware whilst keeping the same performance + release a slimmer version of the console.
In my opinion, I don’t mind the shape of the controller (I prefer the Xbox controller any day apart from the D-pad…why not 4 individual buttons like the ABXY?) but I think they need to get rid of the flappy paddles that I assume were meant to be triggers. I find it funny that basically no games use them for triggers though. Also I think the thumbsticks have much room for improvement.
You know what, I skim read this article, and it’s only going back through it properly that I discover it’s utter drivel.
” Is that a hard “g” [in Durango] or not, Microsoft? And what does it even mean?”
It means a city in Mexico, it’s a codename, like the City codenames Microsoft give to almost everything, like Windows 95 was Chicago and Natal was the codename for Kinect.
If you don’t know that sort of thing, you probably shouldn’t be writing future-prediction articles for tech websites.
+1
If it makes you feel any better, I added that line in when editing it, and of course I bloody well know it’s a codename, and a place in Mexico. It’s called comedic relief, and publications employ it to “spice” these pieces of “drivel” up so commenters like you don’t call it “boring drivel.”
Durango is a place in Mexico – you learn something everyday!
whats Mexico
It’s definitely a type of beetle, that I know…
Is looking at the commercial prices of SSDs and writable Blu rays to determine likely distribution media comic relief?
What about the breezy dismissal of a November 2013 release date for (at least Microsoft’s) next console, which publicher sources and technical leaks have been implying for quite some time.
Is the examination of likely backward compatibility ignoring the issues of processor architecture in the forthcoming consoles, and not mentioning the potential of the Sony-Gaikai purchase in this field comic relief?
Is the misunderstanding of the conflict between the advantages of fixed system specs over a (comparatively) long lifecycle, versus the desire to produce cheaper, smaller, cooler, quieter systems for consumers comic relief?
Is the implication that Sony made a paid-for online service free, when they have most recently taken steps to add extra paid-for options in their online service comic relief?
Or is it just poor journalism?
Whoa, looks like someone’s boss hasn’t given them enough work to do today…or is it school holidays still?
It’s school holidays still, Kat, and they’re extremely boring (to me anyway).
I was considering letting this slide, but I didn’t want to let your backhanded accusation of childishness be the last word in this argument. Future games consoles are a bit of a pet subject for me. I used to work in the games industry, and I have read many fine articles on this subject, particularly from Rich Leadbetter at Digital Foundry. This, article, though, I think it’s quite well established, I don’t rate much.
I apologise for the hysterical rantiness of my previous comments (although this IS the Internet, home of the hysterical rant). Ironically, I considered toning the last one down a bit, but I wrote it in a hurry during a long compile.
+10 for ‘of course I bloody well know’
What you need to learn about Gizmodo is that if you know more about the article subject that the writer – then a member of staff will automatically get militant on you in the comments because their half assed staff want a larger quantity of articles than fewer, high quality ones.
I love how you know more about this site than the editor. Do you live in London? Perhaps we can job-swap.
I love an hysterical rant as much as the next person, but I think you missed the point there Mr Mentalist (if that is in fact your real name). Not EVERY point in the article was there for comedic effect.
Also, top marks for the editors not going for the usual ‘sorry you disagree with some of our content’ angle and instead telling people to piss off. It’s refreshing.
I do agree, however, that hysterical rants are part and parcel of running a news site which encourages commenting. It is in fact a large part of the reason I read them.
I said nothing about knowing more about the site. Knowing more than the writers about poorly informed and shockingly researched articles like this on the other hand…
“…because their half assed staff want a larger quantity of articles than fewer, high quality ones”?
I’m getting really hacked off with you, Espy. Why bother reading Giz, if you’re going to continually bash us? I’m showing you the virtual door here, in other words.
Well, if you supposed tech journalists writing pieces on Xbox Live don’t even know that Microsoft support indie developers on xbox live then of course I’m going to bash you. It’s for your own good, it’s down right embarrassing.
Your opinion will only be valid if you’ve ever tried to make an indie game for the Xbox , if it was so easy and so cheap then the Ouya wouldn’t be doing so phenomenally well on kickstarter.
I’m saying it needs to be made easier and cheaper so indie developers can get their foot in the door rather than having to pay $40,000 to make a patch available
Don’t believe me? Believe Tim Schafer instead
http://www.hookshotinc.com/interview-schafers-millions/
My opinion will only be valid? I’m sorry, I didn’t realise I had to make an indie game to correct such an obvious error in a tech journalism article.
And as I pointed it out it isn’t an error, just because there is a section on xbox live marketplace for ‘Indie Games’ doesn’t mean they support indie developers well enough
Be more specific then. You can’t just say “support independent developers” – Microsoft do. In your opinion, they don’t do it well enough, but at the end of the day, they still do support them.
And also, if you’ve ever used PSN and Xbox live, you’ll see why xbox live isn’t free. The service is light years ahead of PSN.
Espy, while we don’t ban commenters here on Giz UK, you’ve proven over recent weeks that you don’t like what we’re doing here on the site. So why don’t you do us all a favour, and move on please?
Stop feeding!
I just logged in to ask exactly that question lol
Either they’re reading it to be smug or they’re full of:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUjh9Id6Id8
Definitely disagree with XBox Live Gold becoming free – there’s a reason that XBox live is lightyears ahead of PSN in terms of multiplayer gaming and that’s because MS can justify spending serious cash on it.
PSN is a joke and Sony realised their mistake far too late by introducing an additional paid tier.
I definitely agree with you.
3rd that.
TBF approx £30 quid for a years worth of acess. Been part of Live since the first xbox when all you got was online play.
why charge at all? no real need. steam doesnt charge and neither do most onloine games bar the MMORPGs
£30 a year for 10 years is almost the cost of a 2nd console. fair enough xbox might be better but i havent seen the need to blow £300 on online for my ps3…
For delivery of a secure (compared to other consols) network with exlcusive content, new apps and constantly developing. Steam is just a game delivery.
I’ve got my Last.FM, Love Film, YouTube set up, download demos, new DLC. see video clips of up coming games and not had my card details lost
In addition well known for years Sony is losing money on the consols (the actual consols themselves) and the only way they could try and beat Xbox live is to under cut on price.
Finally your justification of the £30 for 10 years. I could easily save that up by just cutting down a couple of pints a year so doesn’t really hold anything for me
odd, steam and my ps3 do all of those for free.
i dont play enough to pay for online. and if i want online i will play on PC which is much better than xbox…. i dont see the need to pay for online and it would put me off.
Leak personal deatils for free – a bargin
Again I’ll add that xbox done this for years before hand and have been innotive ever since.
“Pc is better then xbox” is a massive generalisation though. The right PC is better then all 3 put together but as I’m working away atm I’m on a Dell 486 with on board graphics, Penitum 4 and windows xp so right now my xbox > my pc for gaming.
I’m not knocking it completly – but for me I don’t mind paying £30 for a service that hasn’t let me down for 10 years and improved every time.
Agreed, you get all the services (BBC iPlayer, 4OD, Netflix, Lovefilm, ITV Player, Youtube – And alot of streaming sites via the browser, Music Unlimited, Home, Movies Unlimited, Picture editing and viewing software, the ability to play video out of my HDMI TV and sound via my 5.1 Surround Sound direct from the PS3.
For games and online gaming the 360 hands down, but I don’t play that much to justify that, Playing against some fucking American 12 year old, talking on the mic. Meh, not for me.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/video-games/Xbox/8906043/Xbox-Live-customers-hacked-in-fresh-cyber-fraud-case.html
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/xbox-live-hacked-accounts-stolen/131
http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2012/02/26/xbox-live-accounts-still-being-hacked/
You’re right. Xbox live is secure and much better than PSN. It’s a pity the XBOX 360 console is just a flaming piece of shit.
Nothing like dealing in absolutes when having a fan boy war
Not knocking PS3 – I think its good, just Xbox Live > PSN
Now GTFO Noob, lolz hax
But trolling aside. Paying for online multiplayer is stupid. And frankly can’t beleive Microsoft get away with it. You’re essentially paying for your own internet service, again. You’re. paying. to. be. online. Wait. What? I have to pay for something i already have?
No, paying for online multiplayer is a joke!
Why am I paying £30 a year and still have adverts shoved in my face?
Wrong, i like paying for Live, it works better than PSN, cant remember the last time it got hacked, twice and had all my details nicked..! Also Ms customer service is amazing and every customer service in the world should work like theirs. £35 a year is nothing really and it always works. Not to mention the updates are smarter and take seconds rather than days to install vs PSN. dont like it go play PSN.. enjoy waiting for everything every time you want to play a game..
I mentioned it because frankly playing for multiplayer is a pain. I don’t play multiplayer that often and it would be nice to be able to do it casually without having to worry about renewing a subscription every year.
I’m not opposed to paying it its just annoying, especially since there are still adverts on the dashboard for gold members. Really it should be subscription or adverts not both
yer i could did the Advert vs payment rule..
Microsoft dropped the Metro name for it’s operating system for one very simple reason, it’s going to be used for the next Xbox console and Playstation rival, which will be called;
…Metro Station.
Why-a-thankyou…I’ll be here all night.
It says a lot about how much sleep I’ve had over the past week, that I actually chuckled a little when reading that.
I thought the wii-u will be more current gen. Its not much more powerful than the xbox or ps3 AFAIK.
I think 3d is the future of gaming, but we need to get rid of them damn glasses. I agree with justin beiber up in geneva though!
IMO they HAVE to keep the naming system. Its just going to get messy otherwise. The 720 would be even more stupid than the 360 as a name, as it suggests just blinding going round in circles
Getting rid of optical(or other) media drive would be suicide. Games would have to come down in price as they would have no resale value. And lots of places cant even connect to online stores anyway.
Sony had motion control in ps2. Well before Nintendo. They just didn’t do anything with it. The original eyetoy could use it…
Nintendo first had motion controls (as far as I can tell) back in 1989 with the release of the (rather shitty) power glove. Just sayin’
SSD drives are expensive but surely they would use SD cards as a viable alternative?
You can currently get 64gb cards for around £20?
“What Can We Expect From These Consoles Anyway?” A few thousand more Call of Duty’s and other crappy mainstream rubbish.
Part of me realises there’s no point getting excited for a new generation of consoles, I can count the number of truly great games this gen on my fingers!
On the other hand, I’ve started to notice a pattern that gives me a little bit of hope.
Megadrive and Snes: Awesome!
PS1 and N64: (and I know I’m going to get flamed for this) Kinda crap.
PS2, Gamecube and Xbox: Awesome!
PS3, Wii and 360: Kinda crap.
We might get lucky and get another awesome gen next. I hope we do anyway.
i am flaming you sir.. N64 was great (as long as you had Goldeneye or Mario Kart) other wise, yer all other games were pretty lame..
Never played Goldeneye (Didn’t get into FPS’s til PS2) but yeah Mario Kart was good, wasn’t enough to define a whole generation as good though.
but FPS on the Ps2 (and the Ps3) is just terrible, N64 gave it a controllable system, much better than the PS sticks but i think the trigger placement was the key! Xbox built on it and that is now the best console for FPS. (wont beat PC, but then PC lacks the balance the console holds i find) shame you missed out on Goldeneye, Best game of that era by a long shot, first 4 player split screen that worked and was fun to play.
I’ll have to disagree with you there. FPS on N64/single analogue stick controls is terrible, you really need dual analogue sticks to do it any sort of justice. I think Sony did the world a favour introducing dual analogue sticks and thus allowing FPS to not suck on consoles.
Goldeneye was great though.
Guess I’ll be flaming you too. The PS1 had some great games.
Final fantasy, metal gear solid, parappa the rapper, Tekken, Wipeout, Oddworld, Vagrant Story, Twisted Metal, Soul Reaver, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil and last but not least; JUMPING FLASH!
The N64 had some of those and a few classics like Mario 64, Zelda, Fzero and Mario kart but the glacial release schedule really hurt it.
How can you leave Incredible Crisis off that ps1 list!?!?
to be honest u get what u pay for with xbox live…..
you dont get hacked and you get much better chat capabilities with xbox.
Regarding backward compatability for the PS4, it’s actually going to be quite easy. When deciding on implementing the Cell, Sony and Toshiba (I think?) designed an emulation suite that enabled everything that works on the Cell to work in an x86 environment via emulation with no additional hardware needed.
Given that Sony are going to be using x86 architecture for the PS4, like the Llano AMD chips (as rumoured), it should be really easy to natively play PS3 games on the PS4.
- Third parties do make apps for the Xbox.
- Microsoft supports independent development. There’s a massive Indie section on XBLA.
Fix up
By third party apps I meant being able to make and release apps in the Xbox live app marketplace in a similar way to how you would release it on google play or the apple app marketplace, so far its mainly first party apps or video/music services that have made an agreement
They may have XNA and the Indie games section but from what I know XNA is a pain to code with and the costs of adding even just a patch to XBLA are insane. I don’t know the exact figures but google can help you out there. If it were as easy as it could be the Ouya would have no chance of infiltrating the indie games market
I though XNA was relatively easy compared to standard game development?
Consoles are a lot more locked down than the phones and require pretty extensive testing and QA certification before games are even allowed on the store. There’s the security aspect as well, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo aren’t going to let anyone just publish their “app” in case there are security flaws that could compromise the entire system.
You need to do your homework again:
“I discovered that a 50GB SSD drive is around the £60 mark”
I can buy 128GB for £60. When it goes to mass production, I bet a 30GB SSD won’t cost more than £9.99
If MS put a 150GB-200GB SSD drive in all next consoles it would be cheap cos any manufacturer would want that press..
Yup, 256GB SSD is close and soon to be £99 (check Kingston). It would cost Microsoft less than £50 to put a 256GB in a console when they order over 10 million units
Got your facts wrong about backwards compatibility on the PS3.
“Any PS3 owner who bought one after 2007 will know that later models don’t play PS2 *or PS1* discs because the cost of implementing that feature was so high and Sony just couldn’t see the benefits.”
Every PS3 plays PS1 discs just fine. It’s only PS2 games that they dropped support for. The PS1 games that are on PSN are simply rips of the PS1 discs anyway, so there’s certainly no technical reason why the PS3 shouldn’t support PS1 discs. It’s easily powerful enough.
Which brings me to another point. What makes you think the next Xbox won’t be backwards compatible with original Xbox games? I’m sure the next Xbox would be powerful enough to emulate them, considering the 360 is (more or less). If it’s not backwards compatible with original Xbox games, that would be a purely business decision. Can’t speculate on whether or not it would be able to emulate 360 games though.
That 4k resolution thing seems unlikely. It’s taken us 6 years just to START getting blurays into the home. DVDs are still the majority.
If Sony think they are getting 4k TVs,players and movies into the mainstream over the next six, they’re clearly smoking something wacky.
I’m not fussed about 4K at all and I really can’t see it being adopted any time soon but at least if it was supported for playback it would mean there was a certain amount of grunt in the machine, which would only bode well for games at 1080p at a decent frame rate?
Anyone know why they dont just chuck games on 32gb class 10 microsd’s?
cost and piracy.. Sds are much easier to duplicate than HD-DVD/Blu-Ray.
Also Some of sonys games are bigger than 32gb with them dumping copies on the disc to reduce seek times (mind you this would be undone by the seek time of the SD card.) But a disk is about 20p and a card is way into the £s
Dont ignore 3D its going to happen and its fun, also the tech can be used for smart split screen by syncing image 1 with glasses one and image 2 with glasses 2 meaning you can do that social gaming thing in the frontroom again.. i miss the days of MP play with games like goldeneye where all your mates where playing in front room, jeering and laughing as they riddled you with bullets from a PP7 on pistols only mode!
dont make live free, keep it at around £35, drop the TV stuff to silver though cos that’s silly, but Live is good paid for cos the service is much much better than sony. The tracking and reporting players, the connection, the content is all much better. Also im sick of sony taking 3 days to install an 100mb update.. i hate it so much that i cant remember the last time i connected my ps3 to the internet, its pretty much a blu-ray player only now.
Kinect is one of the greatest bits of tech about, its just not really used enough on the console. The lip sync thing is not a rumour MS released a video showing how great it is. you need to check out current innovations at http://research.microsoft.com.
Whenever third parties make stuff for a console it sucks, all the controllers and add ons that are not PS or Xbox suck so bad with the two exceptions of Turtle beach headsets and logitech wheels (ps3 only for logitech)
What i want to know is will they have N-range wifi (or the next wifi mode)
will they both allow Blu-ray and up to 4K (not that it really matters as with the exception of games we cant output 4k on the mass market yet, we can just about afford to make 1080p as a Broadcast and film industry and we are miles away from ironing out all the issues we still have with the HD formats.)
will the consoles connect to tablets (Surface for MS, but Nexus or ipood for PS4?)
decent external HDD and USB support for everything not just personal media.
fully customable desktops? (personal one here i think, but still)
I think the Xbox 360 slim has N range wi-fi unless I completley misunderstood the specs I was reading and you can buy a N adaptor for the Original 360 models, no idea about the ps3 though
and custom desktops you say? I hadn’t thought about that, may have to steal the idea
oh really, i never got a slim Xbox so i never looked into the spec same situation with the PS3, tis ok really as i cable network both and just run the PC and laptop wireless in the office.
Yer, take the 360`s current desktop, i use alot of the apps that are in sub menus and i dont use alot that are top level. i would like to move the tiles about to suit me. however im sure people pay to have them on top etc..