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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.
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
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.
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