The Next Generation

I’ve read a lot of interesting articles lately about the next generation of consoles coming out sooner then expected but it now seems that this might be incorrect.

Once such person who finds it hard to believe is Frank Giveau, the president of the EA label at gaming’s giant Electronic Arts. He says that it’s hard to imagine how Sony and Microsoft could improve on their current consoles. He also said the EA is not that interest in hurrying along the Playstation 4 or the Xbox 720.

This got me thinking – where could the next generation really go? And what changes at the moment are likely to be implemented?

Both current consoles except the Wii display their outputs in 1080p, connect to the Internet and gwet regular updates. Of course the graphics could be better or the system faster but does that warrant the prices to buy a whole new system.

If you look at some of the releases over the horizon then you might find it hard to thing how much better games can really look. The stills for games are becoming photo-realistic and their updates are now regular that it’s almost like getting new games ever few weeks or months.

The Xbox 360 for example just released Kinect and this is being used more and more for vocal inputs, small control tweaks and commands. I mean there is always room for improvement but why issue a whole new system just to boost the speed or graphics.

Microsoft already said that they plan to keep the Xbox 360 running for at least a little while longer and that doesn’t surprise me after the 360 S was released last year in conjunction with Kinect. At six years old the Xbox 360 is now really getting on it terms of console lifecycles but traditionally consoles cannot be updated via the internet and therefore we do not need fast paced hardware upgrades.

Most previous lifecycles have only lasted 5 years maximum and back in the late 80’s early 90’s these cycles only lasted 2 or 3 years.

At this standard rate all the big three console developers – Sony, Mircosoft and Nintendo – would all be releasing their next consoles around this time. Obviously Nintendo have already started their production of the WiiU which is expected to launch in 2012 but their current console is the only one of the three that is outdated. In fact it doesn’t even have high-definition video output.

It is now widely expected that the next Xbox or Playstation will not be released until 2015 which will give the current consoles as 10 year lifespan (more then any previous). At this moment in time upgrades are regular and fitting in the form of both software updates through the internet and hardware like Kinect or the PS Move.

The big reason for the extended lifecycle is the addition of the Internet in consoles as this makes upgrading and tweaking UI’s very easy. The other is that ther hardware being used is sufficiently powerful for what developers want.