So here we are at part two of our Future themed week. Today it’s time to move on from the current generation and look into the far-flung future. Whilst the consensus from yesterday’s discussion of the current generation’s future seemed to be that no-one is near ready for this generation to end – something I agree with – it will eventually take it’s natural course and the machine’s that we love now will switched for something more powerful with flashy new features.
So what can we expect from our new consoles? A lot of it clearly depends on the time scale’s we’re talking about, but we can make a few assumptions. The general buzz in the industry seems to be that was can expect new consoles to start hitting the scene around 2013, so for arguments sake I’m going to write with that in mind. Of course your opinion may vary with mine, but having a common reference point might make the discussion easier.
Let’s start with the key, the hardware. What will our new plastic boxes contain? The difference between optical media seems to always be touted as a bit of a sore point this generation, so I expect to see the playing field get levelled next generation. In all likelihood I see Sony keeping Blu-Ray and Microsoft adding the newer format.
Whilst I’d like to see a console adopt the Holographic Versatile Disk format, that technology seem unlikely to enter the consumer market for at least 10 years, more realistically 15. Sure the 1TB+ of storage would be pretty nice, but Blu-Ray research has 400GB disks with a firmware upgrade a strong possibility for future years, and 70GB disks an almost certainty for later this year.So, for now, let’s say that at least the NextBox and the PS4 will adopt Blu-Ray for optical media. That’s probably the first time I can recall that two generations of console will use the same storage format, but there doesn’t seem to be any new optical format that’s close to ready.
So with optical storage out of the way, what about hard-disks? Well Microsoft’s inclusion of Flash storage in newer 360’s for the NXE dashboard update and the moves they made around the time of the NXE’s release to provide all consoles with the required storage is pretty much an admission that a modern console needs to have storage on all models. What I’d like to see is a minimum of 500GB across the board, although that might require a move from 2.5″ to 3.5″ drives (not a huge change in my opinion). What’s probable is something along the lines of 250GB, on the timescale we’re talking that’d be the minimum smallest hard-drive I’d expect to see on offer.
Obviously I’m skipping over the main stuff here, the CPU and graphics processing, but that’s hard to predict. Consoles normally use custom hardware, built specifically for the job, so you can’t just apply the trends in typical computing. There are a few things that don’t seem likely right now, for example it doesn’t seem likely that the PS4 will use the Cell processor due to it’s likely discontinuation soon. Maybe it’ll use some spin off from the Cell tech but new, highly parallel processors seem likely for both Microsoft’s and Sony’s offerings. As for graphical power? Well more of it seems to be in order. Beyond that I couldn’t really speculate. Something along the lines of high end desktop PC cards, with multiple GPUs on a card, seems like a very strong possibility but there’s not much else to say beyond that.
Finally the stuff outside of the unit itself. Successors to Natal and Move seem to be almost certainties, although I expect we’ll see a situation like the Wii where more traditional controllers are still available – particular in the case of Natal. Whether or not OnLive is successful I expect to see some kind of cloud solution from all the major players, it certainly seems like a logical step with very low cost on the actual console end of things.
So do you agree? Am I completely wrong, will we see something new and different or will it just be another evolution rather than a significant revolution? Will they attempt to generate some alternative to Blu-Ray, or will everyone make a more significant move towards digital distribution? What would you like to see in a perfect world?
Thanks to billsmugs for suggesting this topic. Have your own ideas? Why not let me know?
NOTE: This is a pre-written discussion, I may not be around to comment. Sorry guys.