No more consoles!

[Man in a suitcase]

It's a complete no brainer really.

Not at all. Just how many iterations of black/purple/silver/orange etc disc based machines that require the user to sit in front of a TV and via the use of a controller take part in games are we going to go through?.

Things will not change until there is some kind of standard photorealistic machine which is capable to do everything.

If you look at a DVD or CD player then there is a varying level of quality as to whet you get, that's not dependant on the skills of the company making the CD/DVD.

With the PS2/xbox/GC what you get out of the format doesn't matter as to what medium you use, it matters how skilled a coder you are and what you're understanding of the machine is. This will continue until somebody turns round and goes 'you can't get better hardware than that', or it reaches a point where certain aspects are no longer recognisable to the human eye.

[rjpageuk]

The debate isnt on whether we think a single format will happen soon, more whether we want it to or not.

Burai and I, amongst others have put our support forward for a single format.

This doesnt mean we think it is going to happen tomorrow.

[Man in a suitcase]

The debate isnt on whether we think a single format will happen soon, more whether we want it to or not.

Burai and I, amongst others have put our support forward for a single format.

This doesnt mean we think it is going to happen tomorrow.

I quite like the way things are then really. Better the devil you do than the devil you don't.

[Ady]

Does anyone else not find it strange that we have two concurrent threads on the same subject?

"I think a single format is great! Yes it is!"

"No it's not"

"Yes it is!"

"No it's not"

etc etc..

But in more protraacted, essay-like form.

It's probably not my place to say, but shouldn't one of these threads be locked?

[Papercut]

nah, the single-platform thing hijacked the 'video games are dying' thread by accident.

it should really be discussed here only.

[Magnakai]

Wheee

Well, this is kinda a seperate topic, but related, so I'm going to put it here.
I think that hardware development is going to get to a point, within the new few generations, where consoles are just going to have excessive power. What I mean by this, is that a large chunk of their games are quite simply not going to do anything that was only possible on that console. We are already seeing a bit of this, with plenty of supposed next-gen games doing nothing that would seem out of place on the Dreamcast.
Once all consoles have a broadband adapter of sorts, such as an ethernet port, and have ramped up the power once or twice, I don't think that there's anywhere for consoles to go...
3D graphics can only get so good before you're needing insanely large teams to produce intricately detailed models of every little thing. I'd be more than happy to see games looking better than FF: Spirits Within, or even photorealistic, but many devcos are going to be able to afford it?

Now, at the moment you do see people wishing that their chosen console of choice was a bit more powerful, and you see games where even the more skilled developer could've used a bit of extra oomph. But I don't think we're too far away from a time when we only get a few games each year that really wow us. I'm already jaded in regards to good graphics.

I'm thinking that the direction that things are going to move in points towards a single format. There are likely to be different pieces of hardware, all compatible with that format, and every so often, there'd be a new piece of hardware that would be backwards compatible, but performing to a rigidly set standard. Quite frankly, I think it's either going to a (pretty far in the) future version of the Playstation or the XBox.

I was also thinking that this increased amount of power would lead to a more artistically influenced time of software design. Hopefully there'd be quite a bit of cheap middleware by that time, and with less time needed to perform optimisations, and stuff, they could work on more stylish games. I think we're already seeing the beginning of that, with a few of Capcom's games, like PN03, Viewtiful Joe, and Killer 7. Things like Rez, Frequency, Ico, and PC games like Uplink. Which brings me to another point, homebrew software development. I'd adore it if there was some sort of common platform (more rigid than PC) that bedroom programmers could work on. It's fairly obvious that I'm not a programmer myself, so excuse me if any of this sounds silly.

Mmmm...

[recipher]

Competition on a single format would be GREATER.

Absolutely spot on . I'm all for a single format now that hardware is about to reach maturity.

How do we know that the hardware is about to reach maturity?

[chevkoch]

I'd like to quote Sega president Hisao Oguchi from an interview Edge is doing in their "Inside Sega Japan" article in issue 129:

Edge: When is Sega going to start developing for PS3 and Xbox2?

Hisao Oguchi: Of course I have spoken to Sony and Microsoft about PS3 and Xbox2. But it is not clear if users are going to change massively to these new consoles in the near future. Concerning PS3 and Xbox2, I don't feel as if there is any new feature to trigger a similar renewal for users. So for the moment I am not really in a hurry to jump onto these new consoles. At the moment, the current platforms are more than sufficient. Until now the hardware cycle was three or four years. We had sprites with 2D then polygons with 3D then followed with complex textures and DVD. But when we talk about the next generation of consoles it's all about improving CPU speeds and it's not clear what's new in this hardware. So from the consumers' point of view, why would they want to renew their console?

The last thing I need is yet another hardware generation, and particularly another generation of 3. Look at the idiocy of multi-platform releases, a title gets developed for one system, then just slapped onto the others without utilizing their respective technical abilities.

If we are in need of a revolution in gaming, then be it software please.

[SonicMarmite]

How do we know that the hardware is about to reach maturity?

Because in the next 5-10 years there is going to be an incalculable information-electronics revolution that will totally change the face of consumer electronics as we see them today. Up until now the technology has either been too expensive, too half-hearted, or just too divided to allow the true media convergence to happen.

Just look at mobile phones. Who could have said 5 years ago that you could buy a mobile phone that would play music, videos, and games. All of this is due to digital media slowly weaving together. Because its all digital nowadays, theres no more VHS tapes not working on your record player, or LP`s making crap microwave meals. Its like when people were whinging on here about ps2 having a dvd player. "Well I don`t want a console that plays dvd`s whine bleet". Ja, but now this stuff is free cos all u need is a bit of software to tell the hardware what it wants it to do. Minimal effort for more uber features. Home electronics as we know it is going to undergo a colossal leap into the future/present very soon indeed.

The coming years are going to be shockingly exciting if you`re into all this stuff. I`m reckoning atm its going either set-top boxes or phones - probably set-top boxes in the short term with phones, or more accurately mobile media devices, coming later once homes have some kind of centralised data server. As sony predicted before PS2 was even announced.....

[Burai]

How do we know that the hardware is about to reach maturity?

It probably isn't. Technology can keep going on and on and on. But developers can't cope with it.

I remember at this point in the PSone's life that devs were really pushing for new hardware. They'd pretty much hit the ceiling of the machines capabilities and were crying out for something new. But reading interviews with them now, there just isn't this same need for new technology.

It's getting far too expensive and taking far too long to make games now. It takes ?millions over the course of 18 months to produce a load of crap, let alone something of first-party standard. Dev shops are folding all over the place, simply because they can neither afford nor have the man power to make the sort of games that really sell these days. And now with the next generation, they'll be forced to up the ante even further.

We're going into the next generation of hardware for all the wrong reasons. The manufacturers need new consoles out in 2005 to stop the others from getting a possible head start. We're not upgrading for creative reasons, we're upgrading for financial reasons. Sadly, the manufacturers haven't taken the finances of publishers, developers and consumers into account.

[Papercut]

It's getting far too expensive and taking far too long to make games now.

I agree, but look at the development of PC graphics cards.

More and more high level functions are being added.

I'd expect some of the problems with long development time to be solved with new hardware.

[chevkoch]

The manufacturers need new consoles out in 2005 to stop the others from getting a possible head start. We're not upgrading for creative reasons, we're upgrading for financial reasons.

Well said.

Up until recent years console developers pushed the systems' hardware to their limits to gain an advantage over their competition (well, I can still see this going on in some cases with the PS2).

With Xbox and Gamecube and again, multi-platform releases in particular, it looks as if the potential of a given machine doesn't matter that much anymore, for a lack of resources (e.g. time, funding) and the love of making a quick buck do oftentimes not allow to dwell on what we got - especially so when the next hardware generation already demonishly beckons.

I've always thought it to be ridiculous what's going on with PC upgrading, I mean, a new graphics card generation every friggin' couple of months? There's simply no time to be comitted to a given piece of hardware and I believe this is in fact an obstacle to technological advancement in gaming.

Alright, there's ID you could say and: "Look at Doom 3 or Valve's Half Life 2!", but they are the ones that actually set the pace for hardware standards to arrive. The whole graphics card industry orients itself after what they're creating. They are an exception. Now this wierd situation of sped up hardware rotation and all the evil it entails seems to get adopted by the console market also.

[Neon Ignition]

Single Format? Always has been a tosh of an idea and always will be. Thanks to multi-format competition this generation has run far better so far than the 32-64bit one did when it was pretty much just Sony out there on its own with the Saturn and N64 dead.

As for hardware progression speed? There's nothing wrong with it as it is. It's felt more speedy than it is thanks to the overlapping nature in which the PS1 then N64 then DC then PS2 came out meaning that there was never a large gap between platforms. This time we're looking at 2006 releases for the new systems which means another 3 years to wait and the GC and XB will be knocking 5 years old and the PS2 6 years old. Three years is a long time and I wouldn't be surprised to see the current systems being over pushed by then.

[chevkoch]

I don't know how much this is common knowledge but I just read on IGN:

No Pilot Wings this Gen?
Hey guys,
In your recent N-Query section, you mentioned that Factor 5 is developing the Pilot Wings game for Nintendo's next-gen console. Does this mean that a Pilot Wings game will not grace the GameCube?

Matt responds: Yeah. Unless another developer takes it on, there will be no Pilot Wings title for GameCube. But damn, will it look absolutely fabulous on the next system.

Link

If there's truth in that, than this is one example of a first bad sign of postponing projects to the next console generation. Solely for market positioning tactics. Pilot Wings would be great on the GC, if only Factor 5 would have the funding and time to develop it. Perhaps they've given up on the Gamecube already and are looking forward to the successor as a potentially better cash generator.

This makes me angry, and I feel myself taking another step back from the next Cube or whatever it'll be christened, because they just want to make me buy another piece of hardware by this "donkey and carrot" strategy.