what do you think game consoles will have next gen? i belive graphics will be pc today graphics but they will dubble as a settop box i think its possible for a ps4 to run on android and all consoles will have a touch screen on controller but not the same tablet thing as nintendo wii-u what do you think they will have? and how cool would a unity game console be like where it is made for unity games and it could be called “The Unity Unit” i think that would blow everything away. 
I think next thing will be hair… y’know, lots of stuff with hair! Ladies with long hair, animals with hair and fur, grass, etc.
Also fluids, but that’ll still be a little limited. We probably wont see large areas with fluids, because as we all know cpu usage for fluids is area^3.
Probably fluids we are going to see will be things like fire, smoke… and liquids only in small quantities.
I guess we’ll also see new controllers types to go along with the classic stuff! Maybe a little mobile device ↔ console integration, who knows!
But realistically they’ll keep one foot on some new experimental tech, and other foot on the classic stuff, because as we all know, in spite of all the fancy food, people will always want more pizza! d:-)
What about real-time ray tracing?!
Graphics-card and RAM upgrades and integrated/bundled motion sensor peripherals. Probably a heavier focus on digital distribution, although not a total focus since I hear ~50% of gamers never download a XBLA/PSN game or play online.
Also I would speculate that they may add some kind of barcode/QR code reader into the console or controller to replace user typed codes now that DLC codes and online pass codes are a mainstay.
Not gonna happen. Not even nowdays high end pcs at 3000 bucks pull that off and the next gen consoles will not be anywhere as powerfull as those monsters as they are otherwise unsellable
It’s already here guys! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLte5f34ya8 But meh I would much rather prefer proper alpha sorting for hair and some SSS (even if limited) for my characters.
~t
Theres some research about streaming. Some vets say the future is streaming just the video output while users sends back inputs.
So no one gonna need powerful hardware, just a video player device with a input system, than players will just interacting with a mega cloud server where the game is running in truth. That can turn “moderate” real-time raytracing possible because such clusters can do that in real time and send the video output to player’s terminal.
All people will need is a sweet internet connection, still not possible nowadays to stream video so fast.
Its not here. Thats a trivial scene, no game that needs the SPEs for physics. Also it requires 3+ CELL cpus which is more power than the next gen will get actually from the pure number crunching pov (CELLs are still insanely expensive compared to anything used in other devices including Tegra3 kalel or the up to 16 core ARMs in work).
Chances actually are that the next gen consoles might indeed use something along those ARM lines in work at the time due to the energy efficiency and the small size they would offer without a need for a power fan box like the original ps3 and that while still being easily as fast as the cpu used in the ps3 and xbox. A small little 2-4 core 2ghz ARM makes a x360 3x2thread core look like a joke and the CELL, well it was never optimal for consoles if we are fair due to the ‘not as high number stream load’ as sony expected when they designed it. (its a great thing naturally and has surely its uses but for a console a more general purpose cpu just beats it thats why the x360 can keep up in the end although it has less numeric power but 6 real threads not 1 thread and 7 minimalistic number crunchers)
Question is if the GPU would end up to be an SGX543MP16 (would flatten a ps3 without the slightest problem, already the MP4 versions in the PS Vita make it look so last gen for a tv console ;)) or if it would be an NVIDIA / ATI desktop derivate like in the past … I personally have some doubts that ATI and NVIDIA will get a foot into the next gen consoles anymore in general as their high performance number crunchers have a craptastic performance / watt compared to the SGX and especially powervr 6 coming in 2012. That is unless Microsoft decides to make it X360 backward compatible. (sony for sure won’t they gave no crap about it in the past)
There’s no plans to advance tech to a stunning degree because it won’t actually boost console sales. Thats the key here. Already, the xbox360 is 7 years old, and still as popular as it ever was. Sony and MS are wisely waiting for the other to make a move. They both have enough exclusive titles to ensure brand loyalty.
All they need to do is milk it as long as they can. PC desktop gaming is largely finished for AAA titles. You might be passionate about the PC but it’s doomed and they get more money on mobiles than they do on desktops. Bizarre but often true. Expect to see even more console exclusive titles.
Can you get dark souls on PC? how about gears 2,3 and unchartered series. How about god of war, final fantasy, and the latest halos? nope not happening.
Are they in a rush to make a next gen console? nope. And if they do, it will likely just have whatever 100 dollar card you can buy right now. In fact going “custom” internally is probably the key as they’ve learned now, ie direct access to the gpu <> cpu rather than outstanding tech. The key is normal tech that lasts a long time.
Industry pundits have commented that the future of console gaming (this means any gaming since the PC doesn’t count) are mobiles, and mobiles that work on the big screen or wherever you are via cloud gaming.
Breathe dreamora, twas a joke… hardie har har… -_-
~t
hehe
Oh well I didn’t take it personally or anything like that nor even offending. But such posts tend to create hopes and expectations which I personally just don’t see happen.
by the way it would have been more believable if you had used the GTX400 realtime fake raytracing movie from NVIDIA cause that might actually be a thing ‘much more in range’ 
@hippocoder: do you event want those titles on pc? I personally not cause either they just aren’t up to offer enough when you aren’t punished with half arsed controls to be slow (halo) or just not suited for pc controls at all
I disagree that its over for AAA on PC (cause the console titles just aren’t AAA. Graphics from 2008 and loading times from 2005 just don’t cut it as an AAA any longer, it only makes them an AA at AAA budgets) but it will change for AA+, thats for sure, the future games will no longer look and work as the old ones. BF3 and MW3s move into social aspects and user base binding as wells as EAs origin concept show that pretty well that the market is gonna change. Even GameStop realized that thus they bought the impulse platform and a streaming game service in 2010
You guys think that everything will kind of collapse into a single device??
Maybe in the future you can have a cellphone that works as a remote control for your tv which can also have access to internet which can be used to watch movies, play online games, browse the interweb, etc!
I don’t think so at least not in this way.
It might be reduced to less more broadly used devices but the war will get larger, much larger, cause once that happens companies like TV makers or Netflix are in the fight too, not just sony, ms and nintendo
Hmm well they are going to have to push the tech or people will have mobile phones that will be faster than they are in a year or two!
Skip that they should just bring out mobile phones as the next consoles! ;o)
I really like the idea of OnLIVE. I think it’d be neat if someone like microsoft bought them and used their resources to do whatever it needs to be successful and regarded as a legitimate thing.
@hippo, I could mad-lib a bunch of exclusive n64 and playstation 1 game titles into your statement there, and it’d be the same exact statement I heard in '99.
I think we’ll see more of the same pattern technologically. Except not as extreme.
If took next year’s best consumer graphics card tech, made a few tweaks, and integrated it into the board, it will probably be enough to last for quite a while. I wouldn’t be surprised to see multiple GPUs. One powerful one, and one weaker one. With the weaker one relegated to perform linear tasks quickly, but not burdened with calculating much of the graphics workload.
Then of course, there’s the multicore CPUs that are pretty much guaranteed to be in there. A quad-core 2 Ghz CPU would probably be more than enough. Hell, maybe we’ll even see a smaller additional CPU dedicated to just running the OS.
What I’m really hoping for is a significant increase in RAM so that we can get some high quality textures in full HD scenes. Would 4 GB be going overboard if they intend for the console to last a decade?
OnLIVE is the worst thing ever actually.
I’m out of the gaming business should that ever become the main thing, because neutring the customer completely and become it the most stupid idiot on earth is just no acceptable business practice especially when you have to pay for games as on onlive.
that model is fine if you pay a subscription and can play all games for the time of the subscription, but when I pay fullprice for a title I expect to get something and that something has to be more than the hope that onlive does not decide that its not worth hosting it any longer in 3 months or alike … Game leasing but requesting the full price is really like trying to get the chicken and the egg. either you lease the game and have a monthly lease fee for the timeframe of leasing it or you sell it and offer lifetime presence guarantee.
but even then, the requirement of ultra low latency connections to even use the games I pay for just doesn’t cut it, thats worse than Ubisoft perma online DRM and thats already a thing for which I hope they lose several hundred millions to learn it
Well dreamora, the hardware never, ever dictates if a game is AAA or not. The production quality does. It matters how much development goes into it, not the hardware platform itself. The iPhone for example, is capable of AAA quality games.
Trying to argue hardware = AAA is really silly, because then you might as well say that there are no AAA games on the PC because the majority run it on medium quality settings.
I know
But the problem is that the Console has to do the visual comparision with the PC one if it is AAA or not and when the visual look - and we know that the visuals is what cost the majority of the budget, not the programmers getting life in that static stuff - is just years behind the PC yet console titles cost $130 vs $80-$100 for PC it is getting into a situation where the term AAA becomes a bit troublesome as its clear that its not the same budget went in to create it for all platforms, yet the consoles don’t reflect this fact by dropping the game prices accordingly.
Thats what I was after, that the price expectations on consoles are just higher for the publishers etc than for PC yet what you get is weaker than on the PC, recently more and more often even artificially capped on some ends to get ‘platform deltas’
I’m not saying that they don’t have a big effort, but the effort going into PC is larger and that didn’t get reflected a single time during the recent years, the prices for the past 2-3 years were near stable. If it continues like that the next gen consoles will have game prices as back in NES days where they were in the range of $150-$180 and will within 6 months if not less lack behind the desktop again.
And whats worse: digital distribution was meant to address this, it was for a long time one of the official main reasons for digital distribution, that by removing the share the whole physical distribution and creation of media more would end on the developers end. Yet we all know that the only thing it changed is the raise of even more greed and artificial fragmentation into areas even for digital platforms to keep up the 70-100% price delta from USA to europe
If it goes on like this, piracy will soon become our only hope for fair and competitive pricing instead of silent price agreement between the major publishers raising the prices constantly
well, if I was to follow the pattern, I’d say consoles would make some new innovation and have graphics comparable, if not better, than modern day top-end pc graphics. but I think the pc graphics part is growing rapidly to where consoles cannot catch up without sacrificing the low costs that make consoles so attractive.
tbh, if I had to buy a console for $1,000, I’d just go out and buy a bunch of computer parts and build a computer. even if it’s not -quite- as good as the console, it will run things really well (much better than any I’ve ever had before), and I can use it for more than gaming.