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Next Console Generation Defined By Software, Not Hardware
Fast Company recent spoke with Microsoft exec Shane Kim about Natal and the future of the Xbox 360. Kim said they're very interested in continuing to build out support for social networking and digital distribution, and he also made some interesting remarks about their long term plans. Quoting:
"It really has much more to do with ... the innovation and longevity that will be created when Project Natal is added to that mix and the value and the entertainment options that we continue to expand on Xbox Live. The 'next generation' will be defined by software and services, not hardware. In the past we would always get this question: 'Hey, there's a new console launch every five years and you're coming up on that time for Xbox, right?' That's the old treadmill way of thinking. Before you had things that were very obvious, from a hardware standpoint — pushing more pixels, the move from 2-D to 3-D, 3-D to HD, etc. We got a very powerful piece of hardware in Xbox 360. I am confident that we have more headroom available, in terms of developers and creators figuring out how to get more out of the system. So I worry less about new hardware having to enable us to move to a different level of graphics. It's much more about the experiences that you are going to deliver."
Where the console with the best hardware (PS3) is winning, and the under-specced Wii is in a distant third place.
Oh, wait.
Sounds like they're trying to turn the console into a locked-down PC.
They have finally decided to use the console's hardware to until they find it's absolute limits, I mean they usually kill of game consoles before the console really is used to it's max potential. so for once some one is thinking smart build better software instead of a console and it is a tad cheaper than hardware R&D.
R.Morton
modded quote "what's that he's talking about? Windows , Never had a problem with Windows till I tried to use it."
The fact is they don't have a device that can handle the storage needs for next generation games. Even blue ray can't handle what would qualify as next generation. The technology simply doesn't exist to create something the consumer would see as a step forward and you can dance around it and try to re-frame the issue but this guy is paid to bullshit us and should be put on a list of corporate liars.
While replacing the Wii OS with XBox 360 graphics drivers looks attractive, lets remember that Wii's hardware limits the capabilities.
I cannot add v186.18 to nVidia 8600GT card and expect to play Crysis in Full glory. (Although i can fry it )
To extent it is possible, like the brain transplant Pioneer 10 had when it approached Jupiter and the one Voyager 2 had.
But not much.
If that were true, then we'd all be running Windows Vista on 80386 chip and playing Crysis and CoH:ToV parallelly.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
The 'next generation' will be defined by software and services, not hardware.
Translation:
The bean-counters upstairs told me they weren't going to throw another NN Billion dollars at hardware that hasn't yet made a return on investment.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
The software is lagging behind hardware on every PCish platform. So now the hardware is so far ahead some developer is talking about room to develop a new experience. How sad is that. Kids use their gaming boxes to gossip with one another while their gaming, that's the only recent real development. The games aren't going anywhere because all that's being added is more dynamic detail to the same old tired story lines. Go read the epic of Gilgamesh written about 3000 or so years ago, it's the same old story a fight for love and glory. There are new paths to be found for gamers but they're going to come from creative genius that delivers a new experience from a now, nearly formed matrix nested in the mature Internet. MS doesn't do creative, not ever, never; it's not just anathema to them, it's outside their event horizon.
ideopath @ play
As we achieve a given level of sophistication in any field and make technological limits virtually go away, the limiting factor is always going to be human creativity.
Take oil painting, for instance. We've had mostly all the colors we need for hundreds and hundreds of years. Yet, new and interesting art is still being created. When the development of paints were still in the early stages I'm sure people marveled at new colors like we today marvel at ever more photo realistic graphics. But once the initial excitement wears off what we're really left with is how good the game plays, how well written the story is, etc.
Games, like books, paintings, movies and so many other things before them, will not be defined by technological achievements in the coming centuries. The best games I've played to date aren't good because of tech, but great stories and immersive and imaginative environments. Grim Fandango is still the best game I've played to date story-wise, and while the replay value of an adventure game like that is sadly very low I'm very much looking forward to playing it again with my kids once they are old enough. It is worth noting that i played Grim Fandango as an adult, so the nostalgia factor is not dimming my senses much at least... ;)
.: Max Romantschuk
It makes sense that Microsoft would take this stance. They've already invested a lot of time an money on the Xbox 360 hardware. It took them this long to get the hardware right - I'm sure we all remember the RROD and related issues that plagued the early Xbox 360's.
Those are now sunk costs. It makes little sense to throw that investment away and create a new console with the latest and greatest hardware. Heck, the PS3's hardware may or may not be superior to the Xbox 360's, but the marketplace has proven that it's the software as the deciding factor, not the hardware. Despite the astounding number of hardware issues with the Xbox 360, it remains the most popular HD console this generation. Microsoft is a software company, and they want to keep doing what they do best: making software.
maybe it was "powerful" in 2005 when it was unveiled. But for today's standards, a Xenos graphics chip is a joke. Xenos GPU was the precursor of the Radeon R600 processor, which was used up to Radeon HD 3400. You can get a Radeon HD 4650 for under 50 bucks, and will totally obliterate Xbox's graphics capabilities.
Problem is gaming companies are making many titles "console only", or their PC ports are crappy emulation (like GTA4) - that leaves gamers with no choice but buying/using a console with outdated hardware.
- Human knowledge belongs to the world
Fast hardware lost this gen to the slowest (Wii). It lost last gen to the slowest (PS2). You can argue that two gens ago, the PS1 was slower than the N64, although that's less certain. Raw speed is most certainly not the most important component of success for a console.
I wouldn't say hardware was unimportant, though. The Wii won because of its hardware, clearly. But it needs to be looked at in terms of what the hardware actually brings to the buyer. Higher res? Who cares? Faster refresh? Doesn't matter. Better AI and gameplay? Well, that might help, but it's pretty clear that the 360's and PS3's improved processors aren't being used for that.
New methods of control, new interfaces, whole new styles of gameplay? Microphones, vibrations, sensors, speakers, and so forth... now, that will catch a customer's eye. That makes playing a game something new, instead of a slightly glossier but nearly indistinguishable version of an older game. New hardware is important, but the growth needs to branch out in new directions, instead of being this one-dimensional 'better graphics' mantra that the consoles have been pushing. Improvements in graphics are mattering less and less.
Everyone seems to be jumping at the word "software" meaning games here, and slapping a big "duh" at Microsoft. Microsoft is not talking about game's here. They're talking about the software on the console. The services it provides you. They're talking about Live/PSN. They're talking about the Guide/XMB, they're talking about Netflix streaming. They're talking about Games on Demand. They're talking about Last.FM. Regardless of your opinion's on Microsoft and innovation, even though the Xbox was more or less a gigantic flop, Microsoft is the one that defined what the Playstation 3 became. Microsoft pushed many extra services into the background of the console to provide a consistent and unified system for developers and gamers to use to improve their experience with it.
Oh, wait, disregard what I wrote. I forgot, nobody on Slashdot reads the fine article.
Except for maybe nintendo, we are going to see this gen of hardware for the forseeable future, much longer then anyone thought at the start. Thats not necessarily a bad thing. The machines are all set up with their own digital money printing presses, the graphics are not THAT noticeably off from PC save for AA which can be glaring on consoles at times. I think PC game dev is significantly slowed because of this gen of consoles, with longtime PC proponents finally falling to them (Epic Games, im looking at you! No Gear of war 2 for PC is a shame
Good-bye
In the really old days, a platform was almost synonymous with its hardware: when you wrote straight assembly on the Atari VCS and directly controlled the video interface, the hardware was your game platform. What you could or couldn't do on the platform was more or less defined but what you could or couldn't get its bizarre hardware to do. (There's an excellent recent book that traces just how big an influence the Atari's odd hardware had on its game design, among other things.)
But that hasn't been true for a while. Sure, hardware is still an important part of the platform. But so are lots of other things. What's the programming model? What kind of SDK do you have? What libraries are there? How does the platform look to a programmer? What can they do with it easily and what's hard to do on it? Hardware is only one of the things from that perspective; unless you're programming on bare metal, what matters is the entire stack. The hardware could be so terrible or so great that it makes or breaks the entire stack. But I would suspect that of the things that can be an impediment to producing a good game on a particular platform, "the hardware just couldn't support what we wanted to do" is the bottleneck less and less often.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I'm not sure whether to think of this development as a good thing. The obvious benefit for gamers is that they won't need to buy a whole new console so often. But the gaming industry seems to be hitting a technological wall, in that graphics are about as good as they need to be to look shiny and realistic. Same for gameplay complexity. There's a bigger difference between an Atari 2600 level of technology (as in "Adventure") and NES-level ("The Legend of Zelda"), than there is between NES-level and oh, PS1 level. That is, once you get to a halfway-decent tech level you can get recognizable graphics and gameplay that's not all that different from modern games'. "Final Fantasy X" could've been made for the NES if it'd had more raw storage space.
I've been thinking about whether AI could be a breakthrough technology that revolutionizes gaming, but after reading about game-specific AI I'm kind of shell-shocked. The kind of AI that people want for games tends to be remarkably stupid, mostly meant to dispense quests and die entertainingly. From what I understand of that impressive-looking recent demo about the AI-driven kid, 90% of that was fake, and didn't need to be real AI to impress an audience.
So, unless developers find new gameplay styles that really push the hardware, there's little point in advancing the hardware any farther. I don't much care whether my enemies splatter with true Newtonian realism when I frag them with a plasma rifle.
Revive the Constitution.
'next generation' will be defined by software and services, not hardware
yeah, that's the ticket, online distribution with the exact same price point as physical distribution, but without that pesky "game stop" factor getting in the way.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
It is obvious that games are a selling point, without them a gaming system isn't worth anything. Hope we can put that behind us now. Additional software might be a nice bonus, but is Playstation Home or Microsofts Avatars really a deal-breaker? I find them to be added value, but not essential. Shane Kim and time might prove me wrong on this one.
Being a Wii- and PS3-owner with a group of friends where the Xbox360 is as common I don't really undestand this flaming "nextgen-war".
The success of the Wii is not only the innovative controls, the price and the broader audience. Many of its games are geared towards the more social gamer. How many PS3 or Xbox360 titles allow you to sit with your friends TOGETHER in the same room and play? Yes, they have superior on-line multiplayer, but lack in what made the previous consoles so different from the PC gaming experience (where PC have had that kind of multiplayer before the PS3/Xbox360 came into the world). The "social" games on the PS3/Xbox360 are often the "peripheral-intensive" games (Rockband/Guitar Hero, Buzz/Scene it, Singstar, etc).
When I have a group of friends I prefer to play with the Wii, actually, many of the games on the Wii is much more fun when you have company. On the other hand, when I am alone, I prefer the PS3 (or the PC) and would most likely play on a 360 if I had one. For me these consoles are not mutually exclusive and when asked to recommend one to someone, I always try to get a feel for what kind of gamer they (or their kids) are.
You keep saying that I keep readying the pussy and nothing happens. My cat is getting quite annoyed with all the brushing.
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While technically the Xbox 360 is a great console, the big problem with this console is the hardware leaves something to be desired in terms of noise and hardware reliability.
I'm hoping that within the next two years Microsoft will do a "hardware refresh" on the Xbox 360 with a new model that uses improved chip technology to lower the running temperature (hence less need for noisy cooling fans and to improve circuit board reliability) and to possibly offer Blu-ray disc support (especially now that Blu-ray technology licensing needs only one lower cost license, not multiple licenses like in the past).
I know other people think that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, and want the next generation to hurry up, but I'd submit that these people should probably have switched to PCs years ago
PCs and consoles have historically specialized in different genres of video games. PCs have more FPS and RTS because of their input method (keyboard and mouse); consoles have more single-screen multiplayer games because of their output method (larger screen that more people can see at once). So fans of console-style genres, like party games and fighting games, can't easily switch to PCs unless they want to stay in emulators all the time.
I'm more interested in what they are going to do for next-gen. It is quite obvious some sort of motion control or capture through a camera like device is going to be standard across the board. I love my Wii but its controls lack depth for certain genres that it should be absolutely destroying the PS3 and Xbox 360 on because of pure precision. I hope they find a way to fix that. Also, with all the services such as streaming movies, streaming radio, streaming tv shows, the PSN, XBLA, VC, WiiWare available this gen. Every console owner is going to expect that out of the box and then some. I am extremely excited to see what services are provided on the next-gen. I also think that whoever makes the best hybrid console/pc first is going to corner the market. Both are pushing towards a singularity Consoles are becoming more and more like PCs. And PCs are becoming less and less relevant for daily use as our cell phones and netbooks begin to replace them with mobility. I think traditional PCs will be a niche in 7 years and if you want to play PC games you will own a console that supports keyboard + mouse. The new console of the future will support email, web surfing, Office suites, etc. They are truly going to replace so many digital devices in our house hold. and anything else we want to do with computer will be done from our smart phones or netbooks that we can easily carry around. Its an exciting time to be a gamer. Never did I imagine this would happen when I was growing up with my power pad and duck hunt.
Video games started out as pretty simple things that could be created and churned out by a single programmer over the course of a few weeks (and as ET The Extraterrestrial reminds us, that same man could also destroy the entire industry). At the same time and as hardware got stronger, programming team have gotten bigger, and the game creation budgets increased ever larger, all the while game prices have never really increased considerably - while the price of top-tier games has not considerably increased. Compare 60$ for a big name game like like the latest Madden, as opposed to 50$ for Centipede in 1983 - accounting for inflation, you could say it's even gone down.
So the current situations is that games cost more and more in assets, creative team salaries and marketing than ever, while the price per unit remains stable at best. How long can the industry afford to continue spending more and more developing a single game while the returns on the investment remains pretty much the same? I'd say the industry has reached its upper limit with the current generation, and will try to diversify software offerings rather than risk imploding on a higher tech console generation that could yield another industry destroying ET.
Is it any wonder that Microsoft and Sony want to push the life cycle of their current consoles to ten years instead of upgrading at the usual five?
It used to be that I looked at a screenshot / gameplay video partly for the quality of the images used in the game. Now I use it to exclusively spot:
- cutscenes (I've noticed many games whose screenshots are ONLY cutscenes - AVOID)
- gameplay elements
- what they *don't* do (Mmm... they never bash that quite obvious object on the wall because the physics don't apply to it)
- other problems.
The problem with consoles is that people who are fanatical about them compare only graphics / sound / 3D capabilities. I don't care about that. If I pay for a game, I don't want to be paying pretty pictures - I want to be buying gameplay. As someone else pointed out, the winner of any particular "console war" is rarely the one that has technically superior statistics. The Wii is undeniably underpowered - who cares?
I *stopped* buying consoles because they were so limited in their lifetime/upgrade potential. A modular console sounds like a great seller (buy the Wii 2 now and next year, we'll make the Wii 3 board fit alongside it inside the same casing!). But in terms of hardware, the specifications of any particular device are basically irrelevant. My Palm is significantly underpowered compared to my PC. As is my GP2X. But, they fit their purpose just fine and both have *excellent* software for the job they need to do (that's still improving all the time).
Nintendo know this - their games aren't extravagant, aren't necessarily wonderful and popular and original... but they *are* playable. Very playable. Playable enough to feel like it was worth paying for console+game at the end of your first month of owning it. Not many other consoles have that.
With the way us isp are acting digital distribution is still some ways off with the caps, slow speeds in some areas, and crap that some of them do.
I highly doubt that they can pull off what has been mentioned above. Firstly, this kills off the used games market ( well...as long as you can rent games digitally it might not matter). I agree that releasing a more powerful console is not the answer. Personally, I would take the ps3 over the 360 any day. WAIT.......no fanboy comments yet. This is merely due to it serving my needs better. Lets look at the 360 first...it is a great console and the online aspect of it is awesome and is something that the ps3 can't even compare to. Lets counter this by making a note of all the foul-mouthed kids on xbox live with headsets. The ps3 doesn't have this problem as nobody ever has a headset and the online aspect for most games is tedious for the most part(except for burnout paradise). Also, the games on the ps3 appeal to me a lot more than those on the 360. The 360 does have great games but I have yet to play anything as compelling as uncharted. The sole reason I got a ps3 was because I wanted to play metal gear solid 4 and god of war 3 and thought that it would also serve as a blue-ray player. In the 16 months that I have owned the ps3 I have only bought 3 games (uncharted,MGS4, burnout). The rest just don't seem worth the money. This year and the next seems to be different as i see a few games that interest me (brutal legend, GOW 3,darksiders,fat princess,uncharted 2) People may argue that there are games like halo 3, gears of war, killzone 2, GTA IV etc but frankly I see nothing of interest in those games. Those are just generic games with violence as a hook. Now, lets look at the most underpowered of all those consoles: the DS. Every single year since 2005 I have found that the game I enjoyed the most each year has been on this handheld. Frankly, to me this is the best console ever made. Its portable and with a great battery life so whats not to like? Granted that 99% of the games released on the ds is pure unadulterated garbage....the remaining 1% makes all the difference and that is saying something.
I am on my fourth 360. I do not expect it to last another six months!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm sorry Microsoft but I don't want advancements in the software that drives your POS. I want new hardware that functions longer than a year. Speaking from personal experience and the experience of all those I have ever known that purchased a 360 the thing is bound to fail faster than any other console I have ever owned. And what really makes it even worse is their attempts to extend the warranty are overshadowed by the fact that you get a refurb back. So now my refurb has failed again and its not even 3RRoD its my optical drive which is actually someone elses optical drive. So I bought my 360 played it very seldom. Then it broke, then I got it back played it for 6 months and the optical drive fails. Optical drive not covered under extended warranty so that does me no good.
So my original 360 had almost no hours on it then I get some overused 360 back after mine breaks which probably has 4x as many play hours on it. Then what do you know the optical drive fails.
How did my PS2 last twice as long with 10x more play time on it???? Get your S**t together MS. You built a POS and now its time to make it right!! No amount of new F**king social networking software is going to fix that problem.
Whos with me on this one???
The XBOX division wrote down all the expenses related to fixing the RROD xboxs in one quarter, a massive loss, so that they could claim profitability now. My friend (and accountant) pointed that out.
To me, the thing that will hamper the 360 in the long term is the fact that they use DVDs to deliver the games. This limits the amount of content. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas offered a much larger world and a much greater variety of tasks than GTA: IV. The graphical elements of IV take up so much more room on the disk that the world has to be smaller. I appreciated the greater realism in the graphics and the engine in general, but found that I really missed fun elements like the bicycle, jetpack, and parachute.
I don't see how you can call anything "next generation" that uses a media format developed in 1993. While use of the DVD format kept costs down and helped Microsoft to win the first round or two, I can't help but wonder if PS3 will really take off as the price of BluRay players drops.
"Having 3 dual threaded in order processors is infinitely better than one single threaded in order processor with 7 crippled DSPs strapped on."
Why do people use words like "infinitely" into a sentence when they mean "marginally"? For that matter, why do people use "literally" when they mean "figuratively"?
As a representative of this group, perhaps you can enlighten me. I would be literally be infinitely in your debt.
Fighting games maybe, but I'd argue that many fighters don't really need to have graphics that max out the hardware.
But even if a game's graphics don't max out the hardware, the publisher has to release on a platform that's still around. Unlike Sony, which has done a good job of overlapping the PS2 with the PS1 and the PS3 with the PS2, Nintendo and Microsoft have a history of EOLing their console platforms soon after the new console comes out. (In the meantime, Nintendo relies on its handhelds and Microsoft on its Windows business.) Even if your fighting game has N64-level graphics, Nintendo doesn't approve new titles for N64 or even GameCube anymore. So players who want to play newly released games have to upgrade to a new platform.
Plus there are games released for PC, street fighter 4 was.
What's the PC alternative to the Super Smash Bros. series?
You mentioned that consoles generally have bigger screens, that to me seems like a cheap excuse not to port a game to the PC, since there are still people who would play it.
People != enough people. The publishers' excuse against porting party games to PCs is that the home theater PC market is still too small to justify the cost to port the title, test it on all video cards and all operating system versions, put it in the retail channel, and support it.
Mass Effect NEEDED its high-end graphics. Its opening cutscene where you character is introduced would NOT have been possible on lesser hardware where they would have either had to use amazingly low-ress animation OR a pre-rendered cut-scene. The WOW! effect was achieved because it was YOUR character in the cutscene with a seamless transition from cutscene to gameplay.
AND Mass Effect is NOT the end. It still needed pre-rendered scenes for the big space battle at the end. One day that too can be rendered in real time and feature YOUR character in it.
Take the other Bioware game set in ancient china. It had TONS of pre-rendered animations, one for each character you could play as. NONE of them showed the weapon YOU favored because that would have required even more pre-rendered scenes on the DVD.
Jade Empire never allowed you to change your outfit or alter your looks in anyway because that would have messed up the cutscenes.
More power means we can more and more go to "real" games where we are not limited by the hardware that breaks immersion.
What is rather telling is that ALL of the games you mention are sequels. Sequels that were produced for far more powerful hardware then the originals.
I wonder why that is? Where is your Diablo? Or its ancestors? Why don't you play them if graphics don't matter so much?
in a couple of years your list will be Diablo 3 and all the other little sequels.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Who says that there isn't room for hardware improvement in game consoles. Real-time raytracing would be a huge improvement that has yet to happen, but is probably reachable at game console costs in 2 more generations.
The day I say that hardware has gone far enough is when I can't see any further improvement with my eye from increased pixel counts (my eye has a fixed resolution), framerates (my brain only runs so fast), color depth (my eye has a fixed color resolution ability of around 10m colors optimal), or realistic technology (if I can't tell it from real already, then making it twice as good from that won't be any improvement to me). I can see that day arriving in the next decade or so.
In short, once technology can create a seamless realistic experience at an affordable cost then no further improvement in that area is necessary and efforts should be directed to other areas instead.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Same shit with me... everyone I know with a 360 has had to send it back to Microsoft at least once. I'm on my third console (i.e. second refurb) after 2 RRoD's, each one about a year apart.
Unfortunately, this current refurb that I got back, has a severe rattling problem with the optical drive that started a couple of weeks after I got it back from Microsoft. Its not an RRoD so my original warranty won't cover it (even though, exactly like in your case, this is actually *someone else's* optical drive that I've got, not the original one which came in my original 360 and is probably still in good working condition).
To avoid the rattling problem, I just install all my games on the hard drive. And I more or less gave up playing DVDs in it because the rattle of the drive is so noisy. (it's much louder than the normally-loud fan and drive sounds of the 360).
Oh well.. When the damn thing dies again, I will just buy another 360 at retail which will hopefully be a newer rev of the hardware and more reliable. (Or if the horror stories are still abundant, I may trade in all my games and buy a PS3 instead).
Except the success of the Wii is surely to do with the controller - "hardware", last I checked. I don't think that has anything to do with the software and services mentioned in TFS.
Game consoles are light years away from the point where we can say there's little room for improvement.
Maybe if hardware speed improved trillion-fold overnight, we could "rest" for a while.
I want to do real-time multi-spectral global-illumination rendering with volumetric effects, trillion-triangle scenes at a minimum of 1920 x 1080 60-progressive with 16x anti-aliasing.
Current games struggle to hit 1080 60-progressive, even with rasterizing GPUs, no anti-aliasing and are a far cry from anything you can do with ray-tracing.
Despite their massive artistic content, even the best-looking games still look way too "video game-y".