This is going to be the FIRST gen I don't get a "next gen" console at launch

True, backward compatibility is not offered now. That doesn't mean that the generation after this one won't do it.

You state that the game manufacturers have no incentive. Well, the console manufacturers do have incentive. This has been proven because they offer slim or smaller versions in order to boost sales. (I do know they also do this to sale a cheaper to make console.) An upgraded unit would boost sales far more then just a slim box. And would offer a competitive advantage, as now the XBone is much, much faster than the PS4, or vice versa.

And the game manufacturers do have incentive. They can re-release the game with better graphics, better game play, a few tweaks, and some additional content (otherwise known as DLC). That way the game manufacturer game boost sales when they slump.

I remember a lot of people that had a DVD movie, who rebought it on Blu-ray...

(While I say this is possible, I do have serious doubts they will do it.)

 

Not going to happen .

A lot of people are already whining about how PS3 and Xbox 360 could still have lasted another couple years before a "next gen" was needed .
Do you imagine if you told them they needed to refresh every 3 years?

That is why PC gaming will keep on picking up steam (pun intended)

 

Now that they have settled on x86-64 architecture they could easily achieve backwards compatibility for a future PlayStation 5. But both Sony's bank account and the market can't sustain a new console every 5 years anymore. Absolute earliest for a possible PS5 would be 2020. At the absolute earliest.

 

They would not have to refresh. The idea is to makes also backwards compatible. So new games would play with lower graphics settings on older hardware, just like on PCs. After all, the new consoles are just PCs...

 

Then they would not be able to "optimise" games as well as they do on consoles, it already takes them long enough to squeeze the most out of a system as it is, having to code for different types of hardware would make it much harder and would be to much of a hassle for what it is worth .
And the extra investment that means for consumers would only give us more incentive to get a gaming PC

 

I am not really wowed by any of the new platforms either, though I did go in recently and trade in my wii and games, all of my ps3 games. I currently only use my ps3 as a blu ray player and use my laptop for gaming. There hasn't been any must have game for me that have come out on platforms, but I am also an avid mmo player and feel more comfortable behind a keyboard than a controller. I agree that the specs for these systems are less than spectacular but people will rush to the store to get them because they are the next best thing...

 

Anymore? It's been 8 years for Xbox 360, and 7 years for PS3, and PS2 to PS3 was almost 7 years as well.

It doesn't make sense why they couldn't do it if they use common PC tech. They'd break even or make a profit from day one. As long as it's backwards compatible they could issue a new one every year (sounds like a typical PC cycle to me!)

 

You forget that it takes a year or two to make back the marketing, research, and manufacturing budget. Consoles are quite the time sink even if your making a profit on the console day one.

Also, what do the consumers or companies gain from releasing new consoles often? Consumers don't view consoles like they do phones in which one is now an everyday commodity that they take everywhere so it's somewhat advantageous to get the latest model every year while the other is a glorified entertainment center that just has games with prettier graphics (which consumers have proved they don't really care about). Companies want to make as much profit as possible on the console and since the longer they keep the console the cheaper it is to manufacture and produce which makes it more profitable in the long run.

 

They could do a two year cycle. And a upgrade of specs doesn't take much research. In fact the closer they can match a medium spec desktop, the more they match the game manufacturers target specs. The reducing how many enviroments the game manufacturer has to develop for.

 

Really? I can't think of anyone off the top of my head who bought a Blu-Ray or an HD-DVD of a film they already owned on DVD. I'm sure some people have done it, but I question how mainstream it is. Seems costly for not a whole lot of benefit. On the other hand, I'm sure I know people who've bought a DVD or Blu-Ray to replace VHS tapes. But that has more to do with the bulk and fragility of VHS tapes, and the decreasing availability of VHS players, than anything.

Similarly, I don't think a whole lot of people are going to buy the game on a newer console just because of better graphics and slightly better content. True, some people did buy GTA4 on PC for that reason. And people will buy sequels with different storylines and such. But generally, selling the same game on a new platform at the same price point as the original is a tough sell. I wouldn't want to pay for the same game twice.

But that takes away one of the advantages of consoles, in that they last quite awhile and you only have one set of hardware to target (or at least, one per manufacturer, with exceptions like Rock Band that supported PS2 and PS3). If you own a 360, and a game says 360 on it, you know it'll run. And there's a lot of games that'll run on a 360. If there'd been an XBox 720 in 2007, 1080 in 2009, 1440 in 2011, and 1800 in 2013, there'd be a lot more fragmentation of hardware requirements.

Not that that's any more complicated than for PC games. But if you aren't into hardware, I can see where the simpler lineup might be preferred.

At any rate, I'm not very impressed with what I've read about these consoles, either. I never was the target audience, though, being a PC gamer. Not that I'll never buy a console, but at this point I'd probably buy a 360 if I were to buy one. Or maybe a used Dreamcast.

 

This is what I was thinking. Consoles put out way more performance as a function of total component power than PC's do. A great deal of that is optimization. If console hardware changes, optimization becomes harder and less-effective.

The PC gaming crowd often overlooks or forgets two major reasons why people game on consoles:

A) The system is cheap. Bang-for-buck now is already in consoles' favor, but considering that many PC gamers switch out hardware or machines 3-4 (or more) times between new console releases, system price is massively in consoles' favor.
B) Simplicity trumps performance and customizability. Sure, games can look better and perform more smoothly on PCs. Sure, you can customize many games on PC. But with a console, you put in a disk, pick up a controller, and get going. No settings to mess with. No mods to mull over. Plug and Play.

Console gaming isn't about the highest FPS, the smoothest, highest-res textures, or spending two grand every year on a new machine. It's about getting an easy-to-consume, technically-adequate gaming experience at a minimum of expense and effort. Console gamers don't want regular incremental system upgrades. They just want to play video games.

 

Game manufacturers already have to target two versions of one console. Right now you can buy the XBox360, but games are being made for the one. That is two versions. Now you might think this will only last a few months until the XBoxOne comes out. Try again, Microsoft will continue to sale the Xbox360 until sometime in 2016.

Microsoft confirms it will keep selling the Xbox 360 until 2016 | Games | Geek.com

 

That's something completely different. The end-of-life product is becoming the budget option while the new product is the premium, future-proof option. Like with the PS2 and PS3, the Xbox 360 will see a dwindling number of new game releases and concurrent releases with the XBO over the next couple years, and then it will be phased out entirely. As far as optimization goes, Xbox 360 releases will be separate from XBO releases for the same game (in terms of packaging, discs, etc), so each release will be optimized to its platform, just as games released concurrently on PS3 and Xbox 360 are separately optimized to each system. That's different from releasing a game disc that's supposed to run well on the Xbox, the Xbox Mk. II, the Xbox Mk. III, The Xbox Mk. IV, etc, where each of those versions has its own unique hardware setup, since in that case the game would have to be optimized for four different systems on one disc.

 

Eh? How is this any different from a PC or even a GPU for that matter that are updated every six months? 100% of console profit comes from the games and accessories, which could easily be compatible with future hardware, and at their price points would be profitable from day one. They could easily earn their money back in months.

They usually offer a refreshed version, slimmer, less power, etc every couple years, why not also add in some more power? What would that hurt. Games that would run at 24-30FPS can now run more smoothly at 60FPS.

Two years is way too frequently. 4-5 years if they use PC hardware shouldn't be unreasonable imho.

LOLWUT? Have you even seen the difference between DVD and Blu-Ray? I repurchased most of my favorite movies on Blu-Ray even though I had them on DVD. The fidelity difference is remarkable. It's like switching from your old tube TV to a 60" plasma. Try playing a game at 640x480 resolution lowest settings then crank it up to 1920x1080 at full detail. That's the difference in fidelity between them.

It doesn't have to be buying the same game twice. If the next gen is backwards compatible (and using x64 architecture makes that easy) then the future console gains performance. Future games could be released for the future console only or for both if they desired. It wouldn't be too difficult to have two different texture sets for each game, they make it fully scalable on PC today. You guys are making this too complicated and it really isn't PC's have done it for decades.

Not if they maintain PC hardware, then it's just scalable. Something that's been done with PC hardware for decades... wait didn't I just say that?

 

I don't think any of that is lost on anyone. It's just whether or not it's important to you.

 

Let us hope this is the last console release ever! Such an inferior gaming experience to PC gaming with inferior graphics to boot. I never bought into it and never will.

I also don't agree that one has to spend 2K dollars on hardware to keep playing modern games at full settings every year! I got my 7970M for 200 pounds nearly 2 years ago and will upgrade around it's 2 year birthday for a similar amount to the 9970M. I will then continue to play at max graphics settings for 2 further years...hardly 1K a year peeps! Works out at about $160 a year. By the time I spend even the value of the new PS4 I will be onto the next gen and into overvolting my 920xm :thumbsup:. Goodbye rubbish consoles :hi2:

Consoles are cheap no doubt about that but do we really need things to be dumbed down. Can people not install a game and download from steam. How hard can it be...besides consoles aren't so cheap for example the Nintendo wii has multiple controllers for different games that all cost a fortune to buy if you want to play certain games. While games are ridiculously expensive (about $60 or more in Japan!) You pay upfront for a PC and it simply does what it says on the tin while games are cheap to buy. If you are a serious gamer then you will easily recoup the costs of the PC in the savings on the games over a 2-3 year period.

 

It won't be the last console. The market for consoles is huge, and not only for gaming, but for Blu-ray and DVD's, as well as the services included on the console. They're cheap (buy and produce), they last several years, and they are easy to use. However, maybe one day in the future, it is possible that console gaming will be no more.

Some stats I found online:

 

But those frequently-quoted stats about the amazing growth rate of "PC gaming" include Facebook games as "PC gaming." AAA-gaming is still overwhelmingly on consoles. It's not that AAA gamers are switching from consoles to PCs; it's that a new high-volume-low-dollar genre is skewing the statistics.

 

Since when have consumers ever benefitted from less choices in the marketplace?

You're only quoting the price for the GPU, not for your entire gaming PC.

It's not that people lack the knowledge of how to buy a game off Steam; it's that people lack the knowledge to build a desktop PC themselves. The "PC gaming isn't that expensive" argument always assumes that people are building and upgrading their PCs at home, and that's an awfully big assumption for most people. To most people, this is as impossible as rebuilding the transmission in their car or framing the second-story addition to their house they've always wanted.

 

Consoles are never going to really disappear, they will just change. The funny thing is that consoles are becoming more like PC every generation. The 2020 consoles are probably going to be diskless boxes that have to be connected to the internet once to play games similar to Steam. Then the next consoles after those are just going to be cloud/streaming boxes that will upgrade themselves. It's also funny because many PC manufacturers and hardware specialists(NVidia, Asus) are trying to make PCs become more like consoles in that they are simple and small. I foresee a future where PCs are small and can be built with only a couple of parts. This is why I think that somewhere in the future PCs are going to become very popular with the hardcore gaming crowd while everyone else is playing on their closed off cloud systems.

 

Except when a game is badly ported, runs like garbage on a PC, and the publisher has no interest in supporting/fixing it.

 

Don't buy those games then. A little research can reveal which games are badly ported and therefore best to avoid. My "gaming" pc cost about 1.5x the cost of the PS4. Not even 1K even with the GPU upgrade.

I do agree that for most people upgrading is not an option. They wouldn't know where to start and fear what might go wrong.

If you are computer savvy and know how to make money off your old parts to go towards an upgrade path PC's are the way to go. If not then a dumbed down console awaits. At least choice prevails.

 

QFT.

Personally, I see nothing wrong in buying/build a gaming computer or buying a console. Arguing over what ultimately is nothing more than simple entertainment is pretty foolish in the end, imo. Kind of like arguing that Macs are better/worse than Wintels. Go with whatever works.

 

There's also nothing wrong with buying a gaming computer and a console. The two are not mutually exclusive, as the glorious PC gaming master race would like you to believe.

 

I always wince when I read/hear PC gaming master race, kids these days man .

 

Very true, but as the OP pointed out, many who have done that in the past simply won't be doing it this time around. I count myself among that group. This time around, there is simply nothing appealing about these next gen consoles. Superior Graphics? No. Better Selection of Games? Nyet. Better Multimedia Functions? Nein.

The PS3 arguably introduced the masses to blu ray. The Xbox 360 continued the online gaming revolution of the original. The Wii brought about a whole new style of gameplay. which lead to the kinect and the move. The PS4 and Xbone are fine machines, but they no longer offer any significant advantage over a PC, save for price, and that is debatable at best.

 

Agreed. I myself used to play games on both. A lot of my friends cannot afford a gaming computer to play the latest games, so, they buy a console instead. And I like to play games with friends, so...do the math. It basically comes down to preference and cost.

 

Regarding disappointment, I remember when the PS3 came out. It sounded awesome, it had this cell processor and blu-ray and all these other things. I thought, boy o boy when they figure this out it is going to be amazing.

Then games slowly trickled out for it. That was dissapointing. And even years later that games weren't that much better than the Xbox360, and some were worse. That was disappointing to. Then I heard Sony sold the cell processor to Toshiba. So I figured it wasn't as great as they hyped it.

So the PS3 sounded great, but was just average. Consoles have been disappointing for awhile.

By 2014 we should have had virtual reality. Why the rift?

 

I think the "rift" as you put it comes from what the mainstream consumer wants, most of them are perfectly happy with what they've got and wouldn't spend 1K, 2K, 3K or more on something truly groundbreaking, they are willing to spend 399$ or 499$ and they already btch and moan, of course some people would buy, I would, you probably would, but we are not the mainstream consumer, the day those consumers are willing to lay down significantly more money we will start seeing more ambitious projects/products

 

Maybe I'm too old school, but I still don't know how console vs PC even compares to this day. Two completely different experiences. I can't play games with a controller, period. There is no comparison. Playing games with your least dextrous digit never made sense to me. Over travel and slow turning abound no matter how much you play. I haven't found console games to improve on that a whole lot. Only back to the Atari 2600 have I found the controller matched the game, and I've owned every one since then, PS1, PS2, PS3, Xbox, Xbox 360, N64, Gameboy, Intellivision, and several I'm sure I forgot. I only really find driving and flying games somewhat manageable, but I don't know how people can play FPS games on consoles.

 

For racing games a controller is great. Even for some coop FPS I'll use a contoller since I'm usually hooked up in the lounge. But nothing is more satisfying than trailing someone for the headshot with a mouse.
To be honest I wish there was a better device than both for lounge room play on the big TV.

 

Batman games are easier to play with a controller imho. I also found that games like borderlands 2 and metro were easier for me with a controller as well. Trying to play TF2 with a controller was hilariously bad. Also, not sure if you're referring to our thumbs not being the most dexterous digit but that's not true anymore
The thumb tribe | Mail Online

 

oops wrong thread.

 

I'm a bit disapointed they're not more ambitious this time around, but they're still a huge upgrade, and already have games that look amazing (and doubtless in 5 years will seem primitive compared to what they're doing by then.)

I've got both preordered. Plan is I check if PS4's controller works with the battery pulled, so I don't have to worry about games not working down the line because of a stupid battery. If it does, I keep it/standardize on it. If not, I let my Xbox One preorder come, and standardize on it instead. One is kind of painful though since PS4 has a 50% better GPU :-/ It's like geez, they're charging $100 MORE and it's 50% WORSE? But oh well, I'm sure it'll still have good games.

 

You are right. They are a huge upgrade from current gen consoles though.

Beamed from my G2 Tricorder

 

... *cough*