Motion Control To Lengthen Console Hardware Cycles

With the recent E3 demonstrations of new motion-based control for consoles — Microsoft's Natal, Sony's Motion Controller, and Ubisoft's camera-based system for the Wii — analysts now expect the current console generation to last longer than normal. Microsoft exec Shane Kim said he expects the Xbox 360 to last until around 2015, in part due to Natal and new services available through Xbox Live. Signal Hill's Todd Greenwald thinks this cycle may not need to end at all: "Microsoft and Sony have invested so much in their current hardware line, as have third party publishers, that we don't think any party is seriously interested in throwing away these investments and starting over from scratch. For all of these reasons, we think this cycle will last longer than those in the past, and don't see new hardware coming until 2011 at the earliest, and 2012 to 2013 more likely (if at all — if new services like OnLive take off, or if Xbox Live and PlayStation Network become more and more robust, there may not be a need for another console cycle).'"

Comments

Re:Good enough is?

[hattig]

Both Microsoft and Sony can create faster variants of their existing hardware, but mandate that new games are backward compatible.

I.e., they can release a PS3.5 as the PS4 that can handle 1080p60* gaming (possibly in 3D with a 3D monitor) based around the same hardware, just running faster or with more resourced. Games detect the console, run in 720p on the PS3 without some fancy graphical effects (assuming physics runs on the SPU in Cell and the new one has ~30SPUs compared with 7 in the current PS3), lower resolution textures (due to less RAM), etc.

Sony always make a console last 10 years anyway, but they also release the new high end 5 or 6 years into that lifespan whilst the previous model mops up the low end of the market and new poor markets around the world. I think it would be suicide to not build upon the hardware base in the PS3 - going with a new architecture would be a folly given their financial situation.

* I know that the PS3 can do this, but most games are in 720p, if that.

Re:Blu-Ray...

[EdZ]

The major failing of current motion control systems (wiimote, Natal, whatever the PS3 system is called) is that there's no feedback. You're waving about, and simply hope that the game gets it right. By removing the layer of abstraction the controller provides, you're making things LESS immersive by starkly revealing that the game cannot respond to you in ways other than the visual or the audio.
Until cheap, reliable haptic control systems emerge (not a for about half a decade if things like the Falcon, and the cost of more flexiable systems, is anything to go by), motion control will be limited in usefulness to a few casual games that don't require fast and accurate responses.

Re:Longer console lifecycle will kill them

[Sockatume]

I'm not convinced that the "waning interest of consumers" actually exists outside of a niche. Console manufacturers make the most money during the tail-end of the cycle, when the console is affordable by the massmarket and is being produced at a profit or at least a significantly smaller loss. The manufacturers actually don't make a whole lot of money during the period in which it's being sold to "gamers [...] constantly looking for the latest and greatest". Those customers are a necessary part of getting the word out, but the people that Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo are really keen to please are the people who grab the system and a half-dozen three-year-old games for $300 at Walmart.