Next generation to arrive in 2012
polycounter lvl 17
http://www.next-gen.biz/news/next-generation-arrive-2012
Ubisoft Montreal has next-gen Xbox devkits; a Sony studio has shifted focus to PS4.
The next gen starts in 2012.
Guess they don't want Nintendo to be first out of the gate this time around.
Does this mean more price cuts for current gen consoles after the holidays i wonder.
Ubisoft Montreal has next-gen Xbox devkits; a Sony studio has shifted focus to PS4.
The next gen starts in 2012.
Guess they don't want Nintendo to be first out of the gate this time around.
Does this mean more price cuts for current gen consoles after the holidays i wonder.
Replies
Also, the "10 year plan" is in reference to how long the system is sold in stores, not how long before a successor is released.
Seriously interested what things will look like though next-gen, audiences demand better looking games so devs will have to get bigger/be allowed more time but the fundamental structure needs to change also IMO.
Im not buying any further consoles, money is going into a graphics card that will last me 5 years longer than a console.
In house studios of Sony and Microsoft will have undoubtedly started exploring the next big thing, conceptual discovery and possible future franchises. But they aren't going to make a game within a year.
Its still 2013/2014 in my opinion, only reason rumours have started now is because games take so dam long to make these days and people have started thinking about it.
Because they were done perhaps? and it's not like there's a lack of upcoming games on the current consoles (Halo 4, Auras Wrath, Twisted Metal, Darksiders 2, Mass Effect 3, Bioshock Infinite, Jourey, Starhawk, Borderlands 2, Soul Calibur V, Final Fantasy XIII-2, etc.)
Actually hasn't every indication so far been 2014? Next Unreal engine slated for around then, and just because companies are working with next gen dev kits dont mean the games are intended to be released anytime soon :thumbup:
Arriving AT RETAIL late 2012?? Oh Edge, you noobs...
MAYBE by then the economy might start turning around and a few people will be able to afford the $700 price tag. Thfffpt :P
What? I've had 3 really badass graphics cards during the period I owned one single 360, and probably like .. 4 computers during the entire xbox 360 lifetime so far!
edit: I spent almost 10 times as much on pc hardware as I did on that one console during the same period!
Well you don't HAVE to buy a new card so often, but ya, PC will def. cost you a hell of alot more. I got a nice GPU 3 years ago or so, then got a GTX570 recently, and this is good enough for me for a while. But like you said, I'd prob end up getting another GPU in 2-3 years, overall costing as much as like 3 360s.
I wonder what the selling points would be, other than processing power?
halo 4 is for 360 i highly doubt we'll see the new console till atleast late 2013 if not later
Expect absolutely nothing to change for dev time.
Oh god, my head...
A $300 xbox < $300 top graphics card at the time.
You will be able to play all released games at > xbox quality, but alot of the pc versions throw in extra features and they tend to make you feel like you aren't "maxing" it.
Although I do miss out on some of the PS3 games...ah well, too much work anyway, don't have time any more to play lots of games...and then there's Skyrim
Maybe with Halo 4 coming out and if Activision decides to play nice with online (doubt it though), they could prop up the 360 for a while.
Sony on the other hand will be mighty confused. The PS3's been snowballing - kinda sucky at launch, but the last few years it's had a lot of the best exclusives. What do they do? They're on a roll here, surely the board members are shouting DONT TOUCH ANYTHING. Maybe they could release a year or so after the 720, but try for a significantly more powerful (and easier) setup, like an extra chunk of ram of vram or something. Lose the first year of customers and make the developers happier from then on, I dunno.
What do you gain from the coming generation? Visually not a ton. Sure things look better but the difference between PS2 to PS3 will not be had going from PS3 to PS4. The big selling point of the PS4 generation will be tessellation. And honestly I dont see most consumers noticing a big enough difference to say hey yes I will buy another 400+ dollar console. It just dosnt add enough. Or at least thats how I see it.
Vertex painting is the norm depending on what studio you work for
And really its something that any studio can and should be doing to breaking up tiling. Wether its using RGB painted blend maps of Black to White vert painting.
Also more improved AI isnt really going to come just from better consoles/computers. Its more of an issue of humans inability to really create a program that can make/simulate decision making. Even if you had the most advanced super computers for your console your AI would not be vastly improved of what you have in games today.
3-core @ 3.2 ghz processor, .5 gig ram shared with gpu, 500 MHz x2 gpu
next gen should be quad core, probably 2 threads per core, 6 gigs of ram, if shared with gpu wouldn't be too overboard, at least double the clock speed on the gpu. SSD drive and bluray.
But you see this trend already in indie gaming since indies usually cannot compete with blockbusters on gfx, so they have to be original in another way.
Yet here we are today with the big studios still chasing the sexy screenshot or trailer and letting gameplay atrophy to nothing. I really wish the employees making the big decisions about a games' development were the same ones doing the actual creating rather than the ones doing the marketing.
I'm not advocating we make crappy art or halt progress. As an artist it's very exciting to push the art forward with new tech to greater heights, but shouldn't we be evolving games in more ways than just aiming for more visual realism?
Ah well, I shouldn't preach too loudly from my soapbox since I'll probably be making clones of games from the 2D stone age for the next couple of years, lol!
I fully expect any upcoming consoles to have at least 4gb of ram total, any less then that would be a huge mistake given how many years into the future they're supposed to last (and the fact that even phones are already up to 1gb). Nintendo might skimp on this with the WiiU though given their history.
No way consoles will get SSD drives unless prices come down a LOT.
I personally had enough of all the issues people have with Normal Map, not to consider the the way graphically people have to pull all the tricks in the book.
To give an example, SM2.0 and SM3.0 cards. Back when X800 and GT6800 where going head to head, I had an X800, and I could Max out most of my games with little to no issue due to me missing out on some fancy shader stuff. SM3.0 made things look better, but I had to dump down my graphical settings considerably, to the point of where they looked worse then a SM2.0 card.
Basically put, consoles have a nasty habit of jumping on 'next-gen' hardware that is the mushy middle, neither low-end nor high-end enough to test the tech and dev timeset, that developers have to throw money at to get fixed.
For example, shelled fur worked very well in certain hardware (PS2) but you don't even dare try that on consoles nowadays, unless it's in a boss-fight, in a very small room, just so you can render some extra planers with alpha.
I hate consoles...not because of what they are, but the because the people behind the tech are a bunch of pillocks. Knowing especially people from Sony, they're going to throw in DX11.1 tech behind it, which no artist will be able to take advantage of because it meets barely the needed overhead.
Plus, I'll surprised if consoles have more then 1GB of 'normal' RAM. You would think with RAM being the cheapest option, maxing out on that to atleast 3-4GB would be common sense.
It might be cheaper than an entirely new console, and 4x the ram for a low price could be a decent incentive over a $700 new console, if it could be made to work.
I understand that upgradability probably wasn't high on their list when making the ps3, but it'd be one hell of a curveball for the console market.
because you gotta add those extra 20 bucks for the extra ram 2 or 3 times to the price you wanted to sell the console, (cheap fuckers manufactor wise)
and them cheap fuckers on the consumer side will not buy the more expensive model because its to expensive "i just wanna play games man, them 500 bucks for a console is insane... blah blah"
edit: leaving a console as is with just adding more ram is biting onself in the tail.
one has to design the pcb so it can have more ram and rewrite some parts of the firmware (which costs money)
which is about the same amount of work for designing a new console
without actually having a new console
and people complain that the new console is technically the same as the old but the games are not compatible anymore
ok then.............your alright chrismaddox
True...but I would imagine that a next gen console without a major upgrade in graphics would be a tough sell to consumers. Every generation up to now has been all about better graphics (with the exception of the Wii).
There was this article a little while back on kotaku.
Also, im quite curious about consoles using ARM architecture. I wonder if thats true, and what kind of advantage that may have? Mobile consoles, maybe?
The traditional retail market has been in decline for the past few years, the only growth is in connected products (http://gamasutra.com/view/news/35174/Study_Retail_Game_Revenue_Declines_As_Digital_Sales_Increase_In_US.php).
Sony and MS won't just put out a more powerful console again, the old way of doing it is dead. Plus, consumers just don't want to spend $600 on a console.
Added to that, Apple is likely to put the app store on the TV in a really positive way, call it iTV. This will mean MS and Sony can no longer keep the long tail out of the living room. Pricing will need to be more similar to Steam (big games, medium games, variable pricing). There will also be the flood of free to play and $.99 cents games.
My bet is that the "next gen" will be a Kinect TV product from MS: around $250, guts of a 360 in it, but focused on Live and on-demand TV and Movies. A pre-emptive strike against iTV.
Why would you think that? I think heavier shaders and postprocessing will be the "selling point" nothing people can point out specifically, but I think our rendering quality will increase ALOT, we dont really need that much more polys, its the shader, lighting and postprocessing etc that is lagging behind. Playing through uncharted I barely noticed any polies, so you guys are a good example of that
And NO way the new consoles arrives in 2012.
I think you missed the fact that sony and ms with their new consoles managed to shift large portions of the pc gaming public towards consoles, they managed to bring over developers to their consoles and have them develop games that just hadn't happened on consoles before that.
I think it's enough to just look at call of duty or something more niche but yet super popular like elderscrolls to realize what kind of thing that has been achieved with the more "hardcore" console market.
Sony and microsoft will be releasing new vastly more powerful consoles, heck, sony already has with the vita, which is silly powerful.
Nintendo will keep aiming for an entirely different market again, one that ms and sony wish to have a piece of, but they know better than to release the firm grip they have of their current one, which is a market that buys many games.
Never had that experience personally, that's what I call my PC
Just read However, there is disagreement on the final release date for Microsofts next-gen system. Edge claims the console will hit retail in late 2012 Develops sources point to late 2013.
I agree with what everyone has posted 2013 or later sounds about correct.
My self i play more PC games than console these days.