Ubisoft Expecting New Consoles By 2012

GamesIndustry is running a brief story about comments from Ubisoft's CEO indicating that the company is gearing up for a new generation of consoles within two to three years. "The French publisher is increasing headcount to work on future technology, with mergers also on the cards to increase development and technology resources. 'We want to take advantage of a company that could bring more technology to us, or new brands,' said CEO Yves Guillemot. 'So we have now enough to help us to grow the company for not only next year but to get ready for the coming of the next generation consoles that are probably going to happen 2011, 2012.'" Guillemot also provided some details about the release plans for some of their upcoming games.

Comments

Developing for the next generation

[Thanshin]

1 - Release a teaser of someone playing Prince of Persia Ultimate in a perfect virtual world.
2 - Accept preorders while you wait.
3 - Blame the consoles for not fulfilling expectations.
4 - ???
5 - Profit!

Fits in with the cycles, big whoop

[hattig]

Seems to make sense seeing as consoles are usually on a 5 year cycle, which means we could see the next XBox released in late 2010, but maybe Microsoft will want to get an extra year out of it instead of launching early with dodgy hardware again. The PS4 in late 2011 also seems likely. The Wii is an unknown. Surely the next version will have HD capability, but only at a certain price point and Nintendo will want to make a profit from launch. So "Wii Too" will be less powerful than its competitors, but more powerful than the PS3 or 360. 32nm process is probably going to be used, with a rapid shrink in 2013 to 22nm.

Re:Fits in with the cycles, big whoop

[aliquis]

So "Wii Too" will be less powerful than its competitors, but more powerful than the PS3 or 360.

Where do that come from? Nintendo consoles haven't always been technically inferior.

Wasn't snes faster than megadrive? I don't remember.
Gamecube is more competent than PS2, and PS2 still sold at higher prices and way more consoles.

So just because something is affordable don't mean it has to be crap.

let the fanboy wars begin!

[Deag]

Well I definitely think the xbox 720 is miles better than the nintendo poo or the playstation 4.

Sure the poo has a nifty vr helmet and the playstation 4 can simulate every atom in the universe, but the xbox 720 has Halo 5, so there!

SNES vs. Genesis

[tepples]

Wasn't snes faster than megadrive?

Super NES had a 3.6 MHz 16-bit 65C816 CPU on an 8-bit data bus that most games used in 2.7 MHz mode to be able to use cheaper ROM chips. It had no 16x16 multiply instruction. Sega Genesis had a 7.7 MHz 32-bit MC68000 CPU on a 16-bit data bus, the same as the black-and-white Macintosh computers, but the 68000 did take more cycles for each instruction. Each system had an additional CPU used to run the game's music engine.

But what the Super NES lacked in CPU it made up for in video: four times as many 16-color palettes for backgrounds and sprites, a 5-bit-per-channel video DAC (compare the Genesis's 3-bit DAC), an additional layer of tiles in the most common background mode, and a separate texture-mapped background mode called "Mode 7" that allowed rotation and scaling of each scanline. The audio was also sampled instead of FM-synthesized. Genesis wouldn't get features like these until the expensive Sega CD accessory.

Re:1080p limitation

[Hatta]

Aren't we into diminishing returns with respect to resolution already? I know I can't see the difference between 720 and 1080. I'd argue that we can get a lot better graphics by increasing polygons instead of resolution. Look at the PSX and PS2, they both output SD, but the PS2 is dramatically better looking.

Re:You are probably correct

[k_187]

People said the same things about Nintendo and Sega before the PS1 came out. I think the real thing to take away is that success in one console generation does not guarantee success in successive generations.

Re:1080p limitation

[KDR_11k]

Careful, racing games have a much easier time hitting the graphical ceiling than other games. Cars are mechanical objects that behave according to fairly simple physics. They are the best case for something to display with a computer. Compare that with a human. An organic creature with tons of details on the surface where there is no artistic freedom (people can spot a wrong face very quickly) and with material properties that are damn complex to display (a car has regular diffusion, specularity, etc, flesh has subsurface scattering and such) or simulate (steel is pretty much rigid for most purposes, flesh contains many visibly moving parts, is soft and many of the things that cause the shape are underneath the top layer and thus usually aren't part of a computer model).