When do the Xbox 3, Playstation 4, and the next Nintendo Console come?
Are they in development now? Any info. at all about these systems?
The 360 was just released in '05, so we probably have another year before they’re going to start talking about the 720 (or whatever).
Sony’s whole idea with the PS3 was a 10-year lifespan like the PSX and PS2 had. The PS3’s lackluster performance might curtail that plan, but Sony hasn’t said anything about a successor yet.
Nintendo is gonna stick with the Wii for a looong time. It was just release in 2006 and it’s the single most popular video game console of all time. I wouldn’t expect a new console from Nintendo until 2011 at the very, very earliest. I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t get a new Nintendo home console until 2013.
Yeah, but the PSOne only had a 5-6 year lifespan at best. It came out in 1995, and the PS2 came out in 2000. While some games came out in 2000 for the PS1, it esentially was immediately over for that system.
By 2001, the PSOne was pretty much a done deal. What’s weird about the PS3 is how the PS2 continues to sell and get games.
I’m wondering if the PS4 will be sooner or later.
Have to disagree there. The PSOne (the redesigned smaller one) just launched in '00, after all, and the console wasn’t discontinued until 2006. Remember, the PS2 launched with a serious dearth of software, so the PSX really held things up until 2001 or so. Heck, Final Fantasy 9 wasn’t even released until '00, and I’m pretty sure Syphon Filter stayed on the system for a while.
Major releases moved over to the PS2 after a while, but the PSX remained vital for a looong time.
So it wasn’t really unreasonable for Sony to expect a 10-year lifespan for the PS3 based on their first two consoles. What they didn’t count on, apparently, was that the PS3 isn’t anywhere near as popular as its predecessors.
It’s possible that Sony might get a jump on the next generation to sort of clear the bad taste of the PS3 out of everybody’s mouth with a console that isn’t a huge jump over the PS3 and not as cost prohibitive.
On the other hand, that would kill the PS3 outright after a very short lifespan. And Sony did stand behind the PSP even though it has floundered for long stretches. So who knows.
There seems to be a five-year span between each console generation. The Xbox 360 was released in 2005 and the Wii and PS3 were released in 2006, so if estimates hold, possibly 2010 or 2011- however, given the fact that all three consoles are still selling well, it may be a few years later than that.
It’s not just that - the last generation of consoles was hellishly expensive to design and manufacture. I don’t see them being replaced after five years. More like ten.
One problem is that once you can do high definition graphics and have gobs of processing power, the bottleneck starts to be the software, not the hardware.
I think what we will see is more interim upgrades, sort of like what’s happened with the DS. I could see a ‘high definition’ Wii coming out in a couple of years. The Xbox could get smaller, cooler, and have bigger hard drives. Maybe some new controllers showing up. That sort of thing. But to warrant a new box designed from the ground up, the hardware would have to be significantly upgraded - so much that it’s clearly a superior experience as a game machine right out of the box. It’s hard to envision what that might be right now, since the current Xbox and Playstation are still very close to state of the art for any reasonable price.
I think the next generation of consoles might not be consoles (in the classical sense) at all – there’s a startup called OnLive that proposes to use HD live streaming via broadband to get basically just the output of the game to the player, and collect his input, the actual calculations being handled by their computers. You get the same look and feel as with a traditional console, without the need for hardware, and especially for upgrades thereof – that’s all done at the provider end. Plus, no more console divides – the system (in theory) allows you to play basically any game ever, regardless of who it’s been developed by for what.
Yeah, I have seen this, and I am excited for it. I’d buy it today.
We won’t get it til Q4 right? 
But, My cousin tends to think it won’t even work.
What do you guys think?
This idea has been floated for desktop production, but it hasn’t come into being because of delay times in user input and transporting a full screen image back at sufficient framerates. Movies have motion blur which allows streaming easier than rendered graphics do.
This is the first generation of console gaming that I haven’t bought into since 1986 when I got my NES. I have to say, I’m not missing it. The Wii looks like a blast, and my purchase of it would be the first Nintendo product I’ve bought since my Super Nintendo - but I’ve got a few computer games and MAME to tide me over, and I’m playing video games less than ever really. It’s a weird feeling, but I guess I’m done.
I was about to come in here and say “the release of console generations doesn’t necessarily follow a linear relationship”. But before speaking out of my ass, I was curious about testing that statement so I went ahead and plotted the data - and was quite surprised by the results. So far, there has been an incredibly strong linear relationship between console generations and year of release, with a linear correlation coefficient of .996!
Using the data from the Wiki on console generations, I came up with these data points. Note that in several cases, the systems comprising that particular “generation” didn’t release in exactly the same year, but were close enough that I went ahead and took an approximate midpoint to define the starting year of that generation.
1st gen: 1972 - Magnavox Odyssey
2nd gen: 1976 - VES, Atari
3rd gen: 1985 - NES
4th gen: 1990 - Sega Genesis, SNES
5th gen: 1995 - Atari Jaguar, 3DO, Sega Saturn, Playstation, N64
6th gen: 2000 - Sega Dreamcast, PS2, GameCube, Xbox
7th gen: 2006 - Xbox 360, PS3, Wii
This yields us a line represented by the equation y = 5.714x + 1966.286 with r = .996.
If we plug in x = 8 for the 8th generation, the equation predicts the next generation will begin in 2012 almost on the nose. Now I’m skeptical, as there are valid reasons why the video game companies may break the trend and it won’t happen for some time longer than that. But still kind of neat to analyze the numbers.
Here’s the chart I made with the data.
I think 2010/2011 is a reasonable guess.
It will happen, but not any time soon. Your average internet connection is nowhere near fast & reliable enough for something like that to be fun.
Each pixel is 3 bytes. An HD signal is 19201080 or 2073600 pixels or 6.2208 megabytes. NTSC is 60 frames per second for 373.248 megabytes per second download. That is before compression though. I don’t know much about compression but saving a 19201080 average complexity image with lossless compression with photoshop gives me 2.53MB which is still 151.8MB per second at 60fps. Not the best way of figuring out how much compression will help. But the wiki articles on compression don’t give any estimates for savings; presumably because it would vary to much from image to image to get any reliable estimate. But i can’t imagine any form of lossless compression to get much more then that. And that’s before sound & input.
Now obviously the cable companies are able to send HD signals so obviously it’s possible. On the other hand the HD i get has clear and annoying compression artifacts. And often takes a while to change channels.
There is software that allows you to do this with your computer to other computers such as streammygame. While i haven’t tried any such software from what i’ve heard it only really works well if your on lan. And not using wireless. Or running very low resolutions.
Personally i think the first really good uses of such tech will be on handhelds.
You’re looking at a substantial lag time in giving inputs and having those inputs reflected in the actual game. So even if they manage their bandwidth and server farms so well that they effectively work as fast as a local console, you still have the issue where you hitting your right analog stick takes 20-50 milliseconds for it to get to their servers and 20-50 milliseconds for the changes in the game that your input have made to register back to you. The compression/decompression of input and video signals will take a little longer. If the compression is lossy then the image and audio quality will suffer. If there’s a hiccup in the network connection your game will stutter or glitch.
And that’s ignoring the substantial requirements their server farms will have.
I’m guessing some people won’t even notice - some monitors or TVs will have input lag in the area of 50-100 milliseconds (more for TVs? Not sure) (not response time) and somehow some people are oblivious to it.
Consoles being locked into 2005 technology (and low to mid-range stuff at that) is already pissing me off. PC hardware is already many generations ahead of that but since now nearly all games are developed for consoles and PCs simultaneously, and they have to program for the lowest common denominator, PC games aren’t taking advantage of the new hardware like they should be. It’s still better - you get way better resolution, better post processing effects, better frame rates, view distances, etc. - but games could be pushing the envelope so much more if they weren’t hampered by needing to be playable on a 2005 console. Some games (Mass Effect is a good example of this) delay the PC release a few months and take the time to code in better graphics, more content, etc, which is nice. But most are pretty much the same game.
A simple analysis of OnLive’s marketing claims. Just remember how the internet companies complain about peer to peer and streaming video. This will be worse.
But since you’re only renting and not buying games, it’s a publisher’s delight.
OnLive’s business model sounds a little too much like the Phantom Console. They’re going to run into serious obstacles in getting both developers and ISP/Cable companies on board.
I just bought my PS3 six months ago. I hope it’s not obsolete already… 
thwartme
I would also add that the ONlive system has the inherent problem of you dont actually own anything, if the company goes bankrupt… you wont even have the games you have bought already. So i can imagine it would be hard to get people to commit a great deal to the service until it is proven, and with the intail start up costs being substantial i could easily see it going bust before it has a following. The only way to get people on board would be to drop the price of the games a great deal, and without packaging etc etc that would be easy but i doubt any publisher is going to release a brand new game so cheap it kills the established console makers chances.
Which would make the game makers having to make huge commitments to the ONlive system despite existing contracts with the console makers.
I find it much more likely that Microsoft buys out ONlive… before it goes live and turns it into the new xbox live platform., assuming of course, the hardware problems and connection speed issues can be fixed.
I just bought a Wii and an Xbox 360 in 2008. I’m not buying a new console any time soon.
Although when you are willing to buy consoles doesn’t have much bearing on when the next generation of consoles hits, does it?
Me personally? Obviously not. However with the economy being the way it is combined with the fairly expensive prices of the Xbox and the PS3 there might be a possibility that sales would be poor with 2010-2011 console release. It’s possible there are a lot of people with the same attitude I have. Hell, maybe not though. I don’t have any particular insight into the game industry.
Odeiso
Sorry to be getting to this so late, but this is about games, not art, so is being moved to The Game Room forum.