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Microsoft Confirms Work Begun on Next Xbox
Via 1up, an interview with Chris Lewis, head of Xbox Development in Europe. Along with some interesting discussion of X06 and aiming games at European markets, Lewis confirms what most people could reasonably expect: Microsoft is already hard at work on the next Xbox system. From the 1up article: "'You can't sit back on your laurels in this business - the consumer won't let you, the developers certainly won't let us. So that's happening right now,' ... In order to remain competitive, hardware manufacturers have to start thinking about the next cycle the moment work finishes on the current one. Ideas for the following generation were likely generated during the development of Xbox 360, and you can surely bet the same situations cropped up in the R&D rooms of Sony and Nintendo while working on PlayStation 3 and Wii."
While the plural of anecdote is not data I have seen some evidence here that Microsoft may have released the 360 too soon. It's viewed (particuarly after the fact that the original Xbox was almost a non-entity in the UK market) as a generation 2.5 console no matter how innacurate that label may be.
In fact the only real 'generation 3' console as far as the UK market is concerned seems to be the PS3, the Wii being a popular choice but more viewed as a toy than a games machine (which may not be a bad thing).
The news that MS is already plotting a replacement may manage to further pigeonhole the 360 as old tech.
(Contributing factor - in the UK costs are higher so the PS3 doesn't look as outrageous, since basic goods cost about 1.6 times more than in the US. Therefore the PS3 is, as a function of purchasing parity, 1.6 times less expensive than in the US. Certainly $500 for a games console isn't a big deal for most affluant UK households who will have two incomes of approx $40,000 each.)
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
No no, let's put this in perspective. I used to have this old P90-based IBM server. I think it was combo PCI+MCA, and it had about 14 drive bays in the front. Mine came loaded with 11 2.25 GB UWSCSI disks (IBM DFHS S2W - I remember this because I had tons of them around for ages afterward.)
But the important part of this comment is that one of the pieces of hardware that it came with was an IBM mainframe card. That's right - all the key parts of one of those IBM "mainframes of old" on a single full-length microchannel card.
I ended up scrapping the system into tiny bits and throwing away everything but the hard drives, because by the time I got it, it was already an antique.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Hardware HDR. Just give us a really broad palette to work with, and handle the HDR on-chip.
Profile login on a Sim card in the controller. The Xbox 1 had the right idea, but they milked the memory card price too much. Register your controller on the network by popping in a tiny / cheap sim card.
Network Storage. My web host offers 400 GB of storage and a ridiculous amount of bandwidth for not much more than a Live Gold account. Drop the hassle of memory cards, jump to Sim cards, and store the basic game info remotely.
Pad-based controller recharging.
Game Modding and user-created content. I don't know how this would happen, but it needs to happen.
Physics co-processor. There is enough particles bouncing these days that we should have some special purpose iron to help with the load.
The ______ Agenda
Sega must have done the same when they were finishing the Dreamcast. I wonder at what stage the abandoned the plan and what they were planning to release?
"all through my house i set up traps, it seems like the rats have a map, so now i feed the rats crack" - Donald D
according to TFA the 360 wont be replaced until sometime after 2010, so NO not 3 years. more like 5 or 6
I think the thing people don't realize is that the Xbox 360 didn't come early... the Xbox 1 came late.. the 360 was pretty much right on time. The Dreamcast kicked off the last gen in 1999 and The Xbox wasn't released until more then 3 years later, Sony had planned to release the following spring but was delayed, Nintendo almost always launches late (so they can have competitive tech at a lower price). The fact that Sony is launching the same time as Nintendo shows that they're late in this genreation. The fact that MS launched the same time as Nintendo last time showed that they were late to the last generation.
Collector's Edition
But you can't generate cutscenes and CD quality audio with procedural techniques. This is why they are filling up the 25 GB. Although some of that 25 GB is due to larger textures, I would say that the majority of the space is being taken up by hi-res cutscenes and music. Look at Zelda, Ocarina of time. That game fit in 25 MB. The world was huge, and the game was great, but there were no cutscenes, and you had to read the text, not have it read to you. I'm not sure a lot of publishers are interested in creating games like this.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Makes one wonder how a departmen can rectify loosing 1.2B on a console and still try again a 3rd time.
I don't remember the numbers on the original XBox, but the 360 seems to be in the minus 1.2billion.
Sure Sony has a lot of money backing itself up too, but what company would stay competing loss after loss after loss. I guess someone REALLY wants to be a big player in the console market. I wonder how many chairs need to go flying about before they just give up...