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Playstation 3 Development Underway
At least in the United Kingdom, developers are already being handed development hardware for Sony's next-gen platform in anticipation of its debut at E3. From the article: "Sony plans to show the next-generation PlayStation off in public for the first time at its pre-E3 conference in Los Angeles in May, where it will almost certainly debut within a few hours of the public unveilings of Nintendo's Revolution and Microsoft's next-gen Xbox."
PS2 came out in 2000, ps3 comes out in mid 2006(approx.), so that a 6 year lifespan.
Gamecube came out in 2001, revolution comes out in late 2006(approx.), so thats 5 year lifespan.
Xbox came out in 2001, xbox2 comes out in late 2005(approx), so thats a 4 year lifespan. Other than the xbox, those seem pretty good intervals.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
The 5-6 year lifespan on consoles is fairly typical, too. A brief timeline of consoles shows you have the NES at 6, SNES at 5, PS1 at 5. The trend continues, as you have noted, with the Cube and the PS2.
Of course, if you look at some of the other, "runner-up" consoles... say, Sega's... you'll find them often being released in 3-4 year increments.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
> Support for a PC monitor.
what's the point?
An HDTV costs ~5 times as much as a CRT PC monitor, or ~3 times as much as a PC LCD. HDTVs are very hard to find in Europe. Finally, they're huge, and student apartments aren't.
Never used a wavebird? I didn't notice any latency, and I'm usually pretty sensitive to it.
Hard drive prices have come down, at least where I am. Right now I can order the cheapest (30GB ATA133) for under £25. 18 months ago that would have been £50 for a similar drive. I agree about the video cards...
(I am assuming you are referring to the current console generation in general, not just the PS2.)
:D So I will be shocked if the next-gen doesn't do the same...
> HDTV support.
Done. Xbox, GC, and to a lesser extent the PS2 all support HDTV to some degree. So did the Dreamcast (via VGA). HDTV will get much better in this generation, of course. (Xbox2 will have all games support at least 720p, for example, which was something you only occasionally saw with Xbox1 games.)
> Better surround-sound.
Done. Xbox1 features ingame DTS. Good luck getting that on the PC nowadays with what happened to Soundstorm. This is an area where the PC actually needs to catch up...
> Better data caching to reduce load times.
Pretty much done. The PS2 has definite problems with load times, though many games are getting good at hiding it. But the Xbox and GC both feature very quick load times generally.
> Support for a PC monitor.
Done. Only the PS2 doesn't do this natively for most games. Consoles have done this since Dreamcast.
> Headphone jack built in.
??? Consoles used to do this (ex: Sega Genesis). I really don't see any demand for this. Unless you meant more a headphone + mic adaptor, which is standard for Xbox2 controllers (and is easily accomplished on the Xbox1 and PS2 - both Gamecube and Dreamcast also had mic adaptors).
> Wireless controller standard built in.
Supposedly that's coming. I actually really don't want this (vibration support seems to get left out, and wireless mic audio is pretty bad in my experience), but I am apparently in a minority on this. I am perfectly happy with the Xbox1's extra long cables and special 'trip-guard'.
> Standardised MP3 support for in-game audio.
Xbox1 can do this now with various MS software. I believe it transcodes the MP3 to WMA, but it is basically done. Xbox2 takes this further (games apparently have to support custom soundtracks now).
So current consoles should actually be meeting your standards pretty adequetely.
(Most of the known next-gen features are Xbox2 specific, but Sony will have to meet most of them to keep the PS3 competitive. Odds are they will even one-up MS in some areas, due to extra prep time if nothing else.)
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon