Next Gen Advent Calendar III: Five Years to Go

[Neon Ignition]

Yes, your eyes do not decieve you. We're going all in this time with a full on countdown to what is now the next-generation. We won't be returniing to this thread regularly, instead taking an annual review as we march to the next line of consoles though will take a detour whenever Nintendo decides to drop its true successor to the Switch. The release of new machines is almost precise at this point meaning we start the timer on the march to:


Nintendo Generation 8
Estimated 2024

XBox Generation 5
PlayStation 6
Mid-November 2028


From slim revisions, to mid-gen refreshes, to cloud gaming and more; the evolution of gaming technology and trends continues as the new current gen arrives and appears in a largely similar mould as the machines that arrived seven years prior. Over the coming seven years we will see two very similar machines pursue two different visions of how they feel the gaming market will evolve over the coming years.

At the seven years out marker we're going to ask the most interesting question to come back to in 2027:
What is you honest prediction for the outcome of the current generation, the form that the next Xbox and PS6 will take, the state of the gaming market and where you will be in your own life at the next major console launch period?

[wakka]

No. No no no no no no no.

[CMcK]

I’m looking forward to the systems that will finally deliver 4k 120 Hz HDR gaming.

[Neon Ignition]

At a time when everyone complains that the systems aren't properly supporting 8K 240hz
Nintendo might have adopted 4K support by then though!

I'm going to try and think on this one because I'm going to try and give the answer I think will be the absolute most accurate guess I can muster.

[nonny]

Lol... start the cyberpunk one already... its coming

[teddymeow]

[MENTION=345]Neon Ignition[/MENTION]

Go and have a lay down man. Take the day off.

[QualityChimp]

I would probably still be playing my Xbox 360 if my wife hadn't got me a PS4 for my birthday.

So many games still to play, plus the prices are going to drop now they're "last gen".

The end of this generation will see that the erosion of customer rights will have been completed.
Games will only come as digital-only. CEX will become a trader of electric cars after the games, films and music reselling dries up.
Not a single game will be sold complete, but as minimal viable product and everything else purchasable later as DLC and lootboxes.

Post-Brexit, the price to ship to the UK, paired with the reduced purchases of luxury goods (like £70 games) after the inevitable recession, means that some games won't physically reach here.

The next PlayStation will be called the PlayStation 6.
The next Xbox will be called The One Xbox Series X S Excess Box,
with a slightly cheaper model called The One Xbox Series S X Essex Box.
Many will be confused.
Both will be digital-only with reduced rates if you use their 5G data plans.
Many will think they will be able to walk into a shoppe and buy one on launch day. They will be wrong.
Neither will actually play games, just stream them from cloud server farms.

Nintendo will release a new console called the Origami, because of its unique foldable screen.
This will inevitably be a major design flaw, needing endless repairs and they will remove the folding feature on a hardware refresh, but call it the Origami Lite, even though it no longer folds and is heavier.

Only two types of games will remain:
- basic games playable on a mobile, but riddled with lootboxes
- Triple-A titles made by either EA or Ubisoft, but riddled with lootboxes.

Personally, I will have been made redundant after the world realises the UK makes nothing worth paying the higher import/export taxes for. I will have to train myself to hunt for rats and small mammals to feed my family who are turning feral.

A new Duke Nukem will be announced.

[Neon Ignition]

*insert Joker Here We Go gif*


Nintendo
At this point I'm somewhat mindful that the endless speculation about 4K, more powerful Switch tech might be less about about a Switch Pro and instead be more about a backwards compatible Switch 2 such is how long the talk has gone on and also how largely irrelevant to the systems success a Pro would prove to be compared to Nintendo being able to present a meaningful and easy to transition to successor to Switch. But, it's also hard to imagine they won't refresh the line up again either so I lean more to us seeing at some point a 'New Nintendo Switch' with better battery, bezel etc before a Switch successor lands. At this point I'm highly doubtful that the Switch will ever consistently see the release of top tier Nintendo titles it should do rather than always leaning on the crutch of ports etc and fairly cheap to make update titles.

The successor I feel will land - if I have to draw a line in the sand - sometime in 2024. I think Nintendo will see that the other two companies are able to release in 7 year cycles and will not see a compelling reason to walk away from the Switch in a faster cycle than that. The new system should see downgraded ports become even more easy but I'm very, very doubtful that the successor won't have a worse line up than this gen as their pipeline remains blocked and the well of ports dries up.
Prediction for Success - Switch lifetime sales circa 120m, Switch 2 to be successful at a slower pace


PlayStation
PS5 will end up north of 100m if not recreating the same success levels of PS2/PS4, the disc version will always be the higher selling unit. I don't think there will be much in terms of waves from Sony's approach as there doesn't seem to be much of a need for one. I'm this close to predicting that Sony will never release a PSVR2 as well, it's an immense investment from a hardware, marketing and software perspective for very little return and without a massive increase in resources the momentum is ebbing away from it. There will be a PS5 Slim, presumably around 2023/2024, I'm not sure if they will bother with a Pro given the small proportion of sales it generated especially if they're able to further revise the main system later in the gen. In 2027 PlayStation 6 will launch and once again it will defy expectations by prominently offering a disc model, digital sales will have continued to grow till that point but plateau due to the costs and world markets realities.
Prediction for Success - PS5 lifetime sales circa 110m

Microsoft
Xbox Series S/X will be successful but I think over time sales will heavily lean towards Series S meaning a strong growth and revenue for MS but cementing them further as an option side dish option to the other companies. As much as Game Pass will grow and Xbox will become more profitable to Microsoft as a result I don't believe the huge expansion via cloud gaming, PC, mobiles etc will ever emerge for Game Pass and at some point the service will reach a limit very much defined largely by the number of Xbox consoles that are sold. I think Microsoft will do mid-gen refreshes but more so as part of them moving away from generational consoles. This will allow for a much better Series S and a high end Series X replacement but in doing so there will be a huge loss of PR that will mean MS never again catches the next-gen hype machine again.
Prediction for Success - Circa 60m Series S/X sales by generations end, declining irreversible momentum as the generation continues and leading into the next-gen

[Neon Ignition]

Unbelievably we're around a week away from the 1 year anniversary of the Xbox Series S/X's launch and then not long behind it that of the PS5. Both systems that you could argue are still in the process of launching such is the slow progression to next-gen software and the protracted supply restraints both systems have faced all year.

On the first anniversary:
One year on what is your thought on both systems so far, the games they've offered and the year ahead?

[112]

I think for me, the most impressive thing about the PS5 so far, that has made me think ‘wow, this is progress’ is the haptic feedback controller… I’ve never experienced anything like it before in a game, and the mind boggles at what type of immersion they can have with future games of different genres…

I’m easily pleased…

112

[Cassius_Smoke]

Xbox: It's kind of just flopped out into the market and then not done anything for a year. 2022 should be a better year for it, but it's a shame it didn't come out swinging. MS have made some growth to GP and Cloud gaming, but its nothing it couldn't have done without the SeriesX being around. As a bit of tech I think it's fantastically built, the construction of it is brilliant.

PS5: OK it's had some exclusives out. Nothing I would say is a system seller though. I'm very surprised Sony haven't done more with PS plus Collection this year. The PS plus offerings generally have gradually declined through the year too.
I think Sony have done 'enough' but not much more. As its been said, the controller is the big selling point.

[wakka]

For me this generation transition has been, more than any other, like buying a new phone, computer or TV.

Everything's faster, slicker, and better - but it's fundamentally a fairly mildly upgraded version of what we had before.

That's not to say I'm not happy with the improvements PS5 has provided me. I am. And at £450 for what will be a solid 5+ years of releases, in terms of value it was easily worth it to buy one at launch. But at this point consoles have stabilised and matured to the point where they have become somewhat appliance-like. There's less experimentation and the new features are bells and whistles rather than anything truly groundbreaking.

So. Good consoles, great consoles even. The best consoles we've ever had. But a little bit boring.

[QualityChimp]

Fingers crossed, by the time the next gen comes around, they might have some more PS5 consoles back in stock.

[dataDave]

Fingers crossed, by the time the next gen comes around, they might have some more PS5 consoles back in stock.

With hopefully enough games worth buying one for, as well.

[fishbowlhead]

With hopefully enough games worth buying one for, as well.

Waves hand, these aren’t the fun games your looking for, back to tweaking your Skyrim graphics settings you 🙂