New generation gaming consoles: what can we expect from them?
Note: All technical specifications and other information about next-gen consoles from Sony and Microsoft are unofficial information, as these companies have not yet announced their devices, and consist of leaks and guesswork.
About 7 years have passed since the launch of the first current-gen (then next-gen) gaming platform Microsoft Xbox 360, and by 2012 this generation still dominates the global gaming market. Indeed, why would he not dominate, if the successors are not something that did not come out, but not yet announced? 7 years seem to be quite a long time for a gaming platform, but this is not a PC that requires constant replacement of components.
So, after 7 years, the Xbox 360 dominates online, Sony with its Playstation 3 is bombarded by the gaming community with powerful exclusives, and Nintendo quietly releases casual projects and prepares its next-gen Wii U console for launch, but at the same time Wii sales outperform Sony devices and Microsoft almost taken together. During these 7 years, the console community managed to multiply as never before, heaps of memes appeared about all these things (Drake, 2300 and others), the PC managed to bury and resurrect twice as a gaming platform, and everyone was amazed at the power of devices released in 2005- 2006, enough to handle modern graphics? So it turned out that not enough.
At the beginning of the new console cycle, many games on the consoles looked no worse, and often even better than on the "personal computers" (the most vivid example in my memory is the Xbox 360 version of NFS Most Wanted). But by 2010-2011, many eminent game developers began to officially declare that the resources of current-gen consoles are almost exhausted. They had to make tricks and concessions so that the console audience could evaluate their projects: lowering permissions, pressing textures, rejecting various graphical effects. The last straw was the statements from DICE and id Software that their latest offspring - Battlefield 3 and RAGE, respectively - squeezed out of the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 all the juices that remained in them after other high-profile projects of recent years. And if in RAGE basically only 1 feature of the id Tech 5 engine was to blame (if someone doesn’t know: the textures are not superimposed on separate objects, but the whole game world is one huge texture) and huge spaces, while the game version itself did not undergo significant changes, then Battlefield 3 was less fortunate. Even long before its release, everyone was talking about the enormous potential of the Frostbite 2 engine. Indeed, the level of graphic performance is still striking. With one caveat - strikes on the PC. After all, there are available settings Ultra, Full HD resolution and other pleasures of life. And on consoles, a 720p resolution is cut (not much cut, but still) and settings that are close to Medium, if we take it from the “computer” version of the game. Naturally, this caused discontent of the console players, because in addition to the games that were cut in graphical terms, they also received PC players' ridicule. And from here begins the main topic of the article.
')
Sony
Indirect rumors about the new console from this company began to go even after Phil Harrison left the post of head of SCE Worldwide Studios in February 2008. This was associated with the start of the development of a new console, and Harrison wanted something new. In February 2010, Executive Director Jack Tretton said in an interview that the Playstation 4 will be released only when something appears that can not reproduce the Playstation 3. Kaz Hirai in 2011 generally stated that the estimated PS3 life cycle is about 10 years. As a result, from all this we can conclude that Sony relied on the long and happy life of its console, was completely confident in its technical excellence and had not planned to release any PS3 successor before 2015-2016. Moreover, to warm up the interest in the console (mainly for dragging casuals from the Nintendo camp), an “innovative” Playstation Move controller was released, consisting of a similarly oblong controller with a glowing sphere at the end, a second controller for motion control (optional) and a Playstation Eye camera . Unlike the Kinect for Xbox 360, which is a fundamentally new (at least for home systems) device, Move was just a development of the Wii Remote, more technically advanced. Indeed, the level of accuracy in motion tracking is amazing due to the camera's help in reading the coordinates of the LEDs in the sphere at the end of the controller. The release of Move entailed not only the release of a bunch of casual projects and the massive transition of Wii fans to the Sony camp, but also the inclusion of support for this feature in serious games (Killzone 3). But as if the bosses of the Japanese company did not want to believe in the steadfastness and unrestrained power of their offspring, the developers' statements about the end of the “iron” reserves of the current-gen consoles could not be ignored.
And now, at the end of March 2012, information appears that the new Sony console has the code name Orbis , the first technical characteristics and the approximate release date are published - winter 2013. It also becomes known that Sony plans to release its device before the analog from Microsoft. The announcement is expected at E3 2012.
Information on the technical characteristics of the PlayStation 4, which appeared at the end of March 2012, added to the list of already known facts:
1) the console will not be backward compatible with games for the PlayStation 3;
2) the graphics solution will be built on the basis of AMD's Southern Islands GPU family (later it will be clarified that this will be a Radeon HD 7670 GPU: DirectX 11 video card with a clock frequency of 1 GHz, supporting up to 1 GB of dedicated VRAM memory with support for Native OpenGL);
3) the processor is based on the AMD X64 family (later it will be specified that it will be AMD A8-3850 APU: a four-core processor with a clock frequency of 2.9 GHz and integrated graphics);
4) in the console there will be protection from reuse of games purchased from hands (analysts are not sure that the launch of games purchased on the secondary market will be banned completely, since such a restriction would greatly reduce the attractiveness of purchasing a new set-top box). Later information appeared that such games would be launched with some restrictions, possibly in demo mode. For a small additional fee, carried out through PSN, the game can be translated into full-featured mode. The industry reacted with restraint to this news, as there are both advantages and disadvantages in such a decision. Personal opinion of the Executive Director of Sony Jack Tretton, voiced in May 2012, is that blocking games purchased in the secondary market would alienate users. Tretton separately stressed that this is his personal opinion, as a person, and not as a representative of the company, so it should not be considered as an official statement of Sony.
As you can see, Sony has changed not only the supplier of processors, but also the graphics. Now AMD will be responsible for image processing, not NVIDIA, exactly as for the CPU. According to the statements, in technical terms, the PS4 will be 10 times more powerful than its predecessor. Well, as they say - wait and see.
Microsoft
In the company from Redmond, apparently, people with more realistic world views are working, for this I personally do not recall any loud statements about the 10-year life cycle of the Xbox 360 and other marketing moves. If Sony started its “orbital exclusive bombardment” of its users from about 2008, flooding them with powerful exclusive projects with elaborate gameplay and amazing (at that time) imagination graphics, then Microsoft relied on online. No wonder Xbox Live is still considered the best console online service, even despite the fact that there is nothing to do there without paid Gold status. Starting with Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the company reported some unrealistic figures online. Then the service stopped being just a game and began to develop in the social direction, there even appeared some television channels (mainly in the USA). Simultaneously with the above mentioned Playstation Move, Kinect for Xbox 360 was released. This device is an elongated box with two cameras that can read the movements of one or several people who are in direct view of the device. Unlike Move, Kinect did not require any additional controllers, but at the same time it had a much worse accuracy of tracking movements, which did not allow to introduce the technology, for example, in serious shooters, but it was quite enough for casual projects, as well as, for example, sports simulators. So Microsoft also managed to snatch his piece from the Nintendo audience.
About the "iron stuffing" of the new Xbox (codenamed Durango ) is known about as much as in the case of the Sony console, but the problem is that all sources have different information and there are only a few matches. Among them:
1) 6-core processor from a still unknown manufacturer. It is also known that 1 core will be allocated for Kinect, and another 1 - for the needs of the operating system.
2) It is rumored that NVIDIA could become a manufacturer of graphics accelerators for the new set-top box, but most sources agree that 2 independent AMD graphics processors will be installed in the console at once, roughly equivalent to the Radeon HD 7700-7800 series cards.
3) Kinect 2.0 will be installed directly into the console case and will undergo a number of improvements. More accurate recognition of movements and voices, its own information processing unit and recognition of up to 4 people are among them.
4) Blu-ray drive. Yes, Microsoft lost the battle of formats, and rumors about a full transition to digital delivery of games have not been confirmed. So installing such a drive is a less expensive and more reliable option than developing your own media.
5) And finally, the final and not the most pleasant news - most likely, the new Xbox will require a permanent connection to the network. This is done to limit piracy. There will also be some kind of partial ban on the resale of games - an analogue of the one I mentioned in the story about the new Sony console.
Among the different characteristics - the possibility of replacing hardware modules (as for me - one of the most delusional applications), the touch screen on the controller, the amount of RAM (according to various sources vary from 2GB to 8GB), the presence of some glasses of augmented reality Kinect Glasses (Fortaleza) . The release of the console itself was scheduled for about September 2013, but according to rumors, there were some problems with the processor, so release is expected in the winter of 2013 - in the spring of 2014.
PS I did not mention the Playstation 3 Slim / Super Slim and Xbox 360 Slim in this article due to the absence of any major changes in the hardware of the devices, as well as the absence of reasons affecting the gameplay.
Nintendo
In my view, the products of this company are called nothing less than the pre-next-gen, because, no matter how they are tried to be compared with the main hardcore consoles, this is not very good. GameCub was deprived of a full DVD-drive, which is not very beneficial impact on its sales compared with the Playstation 2 and Xbox. Although the Wii had a revolutionary controller at that time, the technical part was far behind the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, which limited its lifespan - the shift comes in the fall - winter 2012. And this shift is called the Wii U. This doesn’t mean that it’s time to throw out the existing prefix, just Nintendo wants to attract not only casuals to its camp, but also to snatch away the hacky audience that has settled on Sony and Microsoft consoles. On the one hand, the release of the new Nintendo console much earlier than the two main competitors will most likely benefit sales, but on the other hand, Sony and Microsoft will have a better chance to prepare for the release of their consoles, so the Wii U will have a catching performance will affect the amount of hardcore audience. The Wii U rumor warning does not apply, since the console has already been shown more than once.
Specifications:
1) IBM PowerPC trinuclear, executed on 45nm-technoprocess.
2) AMD Radeon HD 6770 video adapter.
3) 2GB of RAM
4) Blu-ray drive without the ability to play your own (non-gaming) discs. Again, it is not clear why they did it, only the audience is scared away.
5) The amount of flash-memory varies depending on the console delivery set - 8GB and 32GB for Basic and Premium, respectively.
6) Support for external USB-drives up to 1 TB.
Nintendo has also reintroduced a new controller. Not as revolutionary as the Wii Remote turned out to be, but also quite unusual (I said “not as revolutionary” because Sony has already implemented a similar approach using PSP and PS Vita as a controller for the PS3). It has a touch 6.2 ”Display with a 16: 9 aspect ratio. Fortunately, the mechanical buttons and sticks known to all of us did not suffer from this. In addition to the entire gamepad equipped with an accelerometer, gyroscope, speakers, camera and stylus. Thanks to this controller, it became possible to play even with the TV turned off.
Conclusion
This is the end of our short course on familiarization with the impending next-gen. Before the arrival of the main forces in the face of the new Playstation and Xbox is even more than a year, but if you don’t have the strength and desire to wait, then you can start exploring the new generation with the Wii U, whose sales in Europe will start on November 30, and also indulge with the next-gen portable Ohm from Sony - PS Vita. In any case, we are waiting for new facts (or at least rumors) and interesting details about the devices we are interested in. Until new meetings, habrovchane.
About 7 years have passed since the launch of the first current-gen (then next-gen) gaming platform Microsoft Xbox 360, and by 2012 this generation still dominates the global gaming market. Indeed, why would he not dominate, if the successors are not something that did not come out, but not yet announced? 7 years seem to be quite a long time for a gaming platform, but this is not a PC that requires constant replacement of components.
So, after 7 years, the Xbox 360 dominates online, Sony with its Playstation 3 is bombarded by the gaming community with powerful exclusives, and Nintendo quietly releases casual projects and prepares its next-gen Wii U console for launch, but at the same time Wii sales outperform Sony devices and Microsoft almost taken together. During these 7 years, the console community managed to multiply as never before, heaps of memes appeared about all these things (Drake, 2300 and others), the PC managed to bury and resurrect twice as a gaming platform, and everyone was amazed at the power of devices released in 2005- 2006, enough to handle modern graphics? So it turned out that not enough.
At the beginning of the new console cycle, many games on the consoles looked no worse, and often even better than on the "personal computers" (the most vivid example in my memory is the Xbox 360 version of NFS Most Wanted). But by 2010-2011, many eminent game developers began to officially declare that the resources of current-gen consoles are almost exhausted. They had to make tricks and concessions so that the console audience could evaluate their projects: lowering permissions, pressing textures, rejecting various graphical effects. The last straw was the statements from DICE and id Software that their latest offspring - Battlefield 3 and RAGE, respectively - squeezed out of the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 all the juices that remained in them after other high-profile projects of recent years. And if in RAGE basically only 1 feature of the id Tech 5 engine was to blame (if someone doesn’t know: the textures are not superimposed on separate objects, but the whole game world is one huge texture) and huge spaces, while the game version itself did not undergo significant changes, then Battlefield 3 was less fortunate. Even long before its release, everyone was talking about the enormous potential of the Frostbite 2 engine. Indeed, the level of graphic performance is still striking. With one caveat - strikes on the PC. After all, there are available settings Ultra, Full HD resolution and other pleasures of life. And on consoles, a 720p resolution is cut (not much cut, but still) and settings that are close to Medium, if we take it from the “computer” version of the game. Naturally, this caused discontent of the console players, because in addition to the games that were cut in graphical terms, they also received PC players' ridicule. And from here begins the main topic of the article.
')
Sony
Indirect rumors about the new console from this company began to go even after Phil Harrison left the post of head of SCE Worldwide Studios in February 2008. This was associated with the start of the development of a new console, and Harrison wanted something new. In February 2010, Executive Director Jack Tretton said in an interview that the Playstation 4 will be released only when something appears that can not reproduce the Playstation 3. Kaz Hirai in 2011 generally stated that the estimated PS3 life cycle is about 10 years. As a result, from all this we can conclude that Sony relied on the long and happy life of its console, was completely confident in its technical excellence and had not planned to release any PS3 successor before 2015-2016. Moreover, to warm up the interest in the console (mainly for dragging casuals from the Nintendo camp), an “innovative” Playstation Move controller was released, consisting of a similarly oblong controller with a glowing sphere at the end, a second controller for motion control (optional) and a Playstation Eye camera . Unlike the Kinect for Xbox 360, which is a fundamentally new (at least for home systems) device, Move was just a development of the Wii Remote, more technically advanced. Indeed, the level of accuracy in motion tracking is amazing due to the camera's help in reading the coordinates of the LEDs in the sphere at the end of the controller. The release of Move entailed not only the release of a bunch of casual projects and the massive transition of Wii fans to the Sony camp, but also the inclusion of support for this feature in serious games (Killzone 3). But as if the bosses of the Japanese company did not want to believe in the steadfastness and unrestrained power of their offspring, the developers' statements about the end of the “iron” reserves of the current-gen consoles could not be ignored.
And now, at the end of March 2012, information appears that the new Sony console has the code name Orbis , the first technical characteristics and the approximate release date are published - winter 2013. It also becomes known that Sony plans to release its device before the analog from Microsoft. The announcement is expected at E3 2012.
Information on the technical characteristics of the PlayStation 4, which appeared at the end of March 2012, added to the list of already known facts:
1) the console will not be backward compatible with games for the PlayStation 3;
2) the graphics solution will be built on the basis of AMD's Southern Islands GPU family (later it will be clarified that this will be a Radeon HD 7670 GPU: DirectX 11 video card with a clock frequency of 1 GHz, supporting up to 1 GB of dedicated VRAM memory with support for Native OpenGL);
3) the processor is based on the AMD X64 family (later it will be specified that it will be AMD A8-3850 APU: a four-core processor with a clock frequency of 2.9 GHz and integrated graphics);
4) in the console there will be protection from reuse of games purchased from hands (analysts are not sure that the launch of games purchased on the secondary market will be banned completely, since such a restriction would greatly reduce the attractiveness of purchasing a new set-top box). Later information appeared that such games would be launched with some restrictions, possibly in demo mode. For a small additional fee, carried out through PSN, the game can be translated into full-featured mode. The industry reacted with restraint to this news, as there are both advantages and disadvantages in such a decision. Personal opinion of the Executive Director of Sony Jack Tretton, voiced in May 2012, is that blocking games purchased in the secondary market would alienate users. Tretton separately stressed that this is his personal opinion, as a person, and not as a representative of the company, so it should not be considered as an official statement of Sony.
As you can see, Sony has changed not only the supplier of processors, but also the graphics. Now AMD will be responsible for image processing, not NVIDIA, exactly as for the CPU. According to the statements, in technical terms, the PS4 will be 10 times more powerful than its predecessor. Well, as they say - wait and see.
Microsoft
In the company from Redmond, apparently, people with more realistic world views are working, for this I personally do not recall any loud statements about the 10-year life cycle of the Xbox 360 and other marketing moves. If Sony started its “orbital exclusive bombardment” of its users from about 2008, flooding them with powerful exclusive projects with elaborate gameplay and amazing (at that time) imagination graphics, then Microsoft relied on online. No wonder Xbox Live is still considered the best console online service, even despite the fact that there is nothing to do there without paid Gold status. Starting with Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the company reported some unrealistic figures online. Then the service stopped being just a game and began to develop in the social direction, there even appeared some television channels (mainly in the USA). Simultaneously with the above mentioned Playstation Move, Kinect for Xbox 360 was released. This device is an elongated box with two cameras that can read the movements of one or several people who are in direct view of the device. Unlike Move, Kinect did not require any additional controllers, but at the same time it had a much worse accuracy of tracking movements, which did not allow to introduce the technology, for example, in serious shooters, but it was quite enough for casual projects, as well as, for example, sports simulators. So Microsoft also managed to snatch his piece from the Nintendo audience.
About the "iron stuffing" of the new Xbox (codenamed Durango ) is known about as much as in the case of the Sony console, but the problem is that all sources have different information and there are only a few matches. Among them:
1) 6-core processor from a still unknown manufacturer. It is also known that 1 core will be allocated for Kinect, and another 1 - for the needs of the operating system.
2) It is rumored that NVIDIA could become a manufacturer of graphics accelerators for the new set-top box, but most sources agree that 2 independent AMD graphics processors will be installed in the console at once, roughly equivalent to the Radeon HD 7700-7800 series cards.
3) Kinect 2.0 will be installed directly into the console case and will undergo a number of improvements. More accurate recognition of movements and voices, its own information processing unit and recognition of up to 4 people are among them.
4) Blu-ray drive. Yes, Microsoft lost the battle of formats, and rumors about a full transition to digital delivery of games have not been confirmed. So installing such a drive is a less expensive and more reliable option than developing your own media.
5) And finally, the final and not the most pleasant news - most likely, the new Xbox will require a permanent connection to the network. This is done to limit piracy. There will also be some kind of partial ban on the resale of games - an analogue of the one I mentioned in the story about the new Sony console.
Among the different characteristics - the possibility of replacing hardware modules (as for me - one of the most delusional applications), the touch screen on the controller, the amount of RAM (according to various sources vary from 2GB to 8GB), the presence of some glasses of augmented reality Kinect Glasses (Fortaleza) . The release of the console itself was scheduled for about September 2013, but according to rumors, there were some problems with the processor, so release is expected in the winter of 2013 - in the spring of 2014.
PS I did not mention the Playstation 3 Slim / Super Slim and Xbox 360 Slim in this article due to the absence of any major changes in the hardware of the devices, as well as the absence of reasons affecting the gameplay.
Nintendo
In my view, the products of this company are called nothing less than the pre-next-gen, because, no matter how they are tried to be compared with the main hardcore consoles, this is not very good. GameCub was deprived of a full DVD-drive, which is not very beneficial impact on its sales compared with the Playstation 2 and Xbox. Although the Wii had a revolutionary controller at that time, the technical part was far behind the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, which limited its lifespan - the shift comes in the fall - winter 2012. And this shift is called the Wii U. This doesn’t mean that it’s time to throw out the existing prefix, just Nintendo wants to attract not only casuals to its camp, but also to snatch away the hacky audience that has settled on Sony and Microsoft consoles. On the one hand, the release of the new Nintendo console much earlier than the two main competitors will most likely benefit sales, but on the other hand, Sony and Microsoft will have a better chance to prepare for the release of their consoles, so the Wii U will have a catching performance will affect the amount of hardcore audience. The Wii U rumor warning does not apply, since the console has already been shown more than once.
Specifications:
1) IBM PowerPC trinuclear, executed on 45nm-technoprocess.
2) AMD Radeon HD 6770 video adapter.
3) 2GB of RAM
4) Blu-ray drive without the ability to play your own (non-gaming) discs. Again, it is not clear why they did it, only the audience is scared away.
5) The amount of flash-memory varies depending on the console delivery set - 8GB and 32GB for Basic and Premium, respectively.
6) Support for external USB-drives up to 1 TB.
Nintendo has also reintroduced a new controller. Not as revolutionary as the Wii Remote turned out to be, but also quite unusual (I said “not as revolutionary” because Sony has already implemented a similar approach using PSP and PS Vita as a controller for the PS3). It has a touch 6.2 ”Display with a 16: 9 aspect ratio. Fortunately, the mechanical buttons and sticks known to all of us did not suffer from this. In addition to the entire gamepad equipped with an accelerometer, gyroscope, speakers, camera and stylus. Thanks to this controller, it became possible to play even with the TV turned off.
Conclusion
This is the end of our short course on familiarization with the impending next-gen. Before the arrival of the main forces in the face of the new Playstation and Xbox is even more than a year, but if you don’t have the strength and desire to wait, then you can start exploring the new generation with the Wii U, whose sales in Europe will start on November 30, and also indulge with the next-gen portable Ohm from Sony - PS Vita. In any case, we are waiting for new facts (or at least rumors) and interesting details about the devices we are interested in. Until new meetings, habrovchane.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/153221/
All Articles