Have you ever seen someone speculating in what kind of hardware that the next generation of consoles will feature? As I thought. I am the only one who makes such attempts.
These speculations are based on what I believe will be the minimum specifications of the next-gen hardware. EDIT: Please be aware of the fact that these speculations aren't based on technical knowledge. Its just an estimate based on the current gen.
Lets start at the resolution as this in many ways represents how many pixels the hardware needs to deal with at once, at maximum. Most games today on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 runs in 720p, 30 fps, no?
One of 720p resolutions can be 1280×720, so lets go with that. 1280x720 is equal to 921 600 pixels. And those pixels updates 30 times every second.
The resolution in the next-gen is most likely going be 1080p. (But with 720p support obviously). Another thing that we are going to see is a minimum of 120 fps to get a 60fps stereoscopic 3D which would be an increase of 400% on the base fps. Possible support for higher resolution for movies, but unlikely for games as the hardware required would be extremely expensive.
So with these predictions we get the following:
One of the 1080p resolutions can be 1920x1080 so lets go with that. 1920x1080 is equal to 2 083 600 pixels. Which is an increase of 125 %. Lets use that number and look at what the next gen specifications will have as a minimum.
So, both consoles have a total of 512 Mb of memory available, how it is used is another matter. But added up, it is still 512 Mb. Those 512 Mb are used to output games at 720p and 30 fps.
Now, in order to achieve the "1080p 120 fps" we have to look at what is increased the most and try to add that up. The fps has a 400 % increase. This will mean that the least total amount of memory that is going to be available should be 2048 Mb. By my reasoning, that is the lowest possible amount. Now it is not that simple.
The next generation will not come with the same graphical features as todays consoles. It will be expanded greatly with, for example, tessellation and other dx 11 features. All the new features will also increase the demands on the new hardware. So 2048 Mb is what it would be if it simply was an increase of resolution and framrate. And that is not realistic. But the next part is really hard to guess, simply it’s a matter of how well the developers use the processing power within the next gen consoles. An estimate, and what I believe is a good one, is to double that amount. So I believe that the next gen will feature 4096 Mb of total memory. Which is an increase of 800 %. And if you look back on previous increases in hardware capabilities when a new gen of consoles arrive, this is close.
But we are not done yet. Another thing that is obvious is the type of physical media that the next gen will feature. All 3 will most likely feature a Blu-ray player. To go another way would, in a business perspective, be simply retarded. Blu-ray and HD is becoming the standard, and to skip out on this would be a severe mistake. Its very hard to predict what the size of the discs will be, how much data they will be able to hold. Today a Blu-ray used in the Playstation 3 can hold up to about 50 Gb of data. There will most likely be an increase in capacity, but it doesn’t seem likely that it will be more than 100 Gb due to the fact that this is one of the most expensive parts in a console.
As for the hard-drives in the next-gen consoles; it is unlikely that they are going for a mechanical one in the SKU's. SSD's are becoming cheaper and cheaper everyday, and my bet is that we will see an SSD in the next-gen consoles. But this all depends on how expensive they are. If they choose to go with an SSD from the start, then it will be at least 160 Gb, but with a mechanical hard-drive my bet is 500 Gb.
There is one other, very interesting thing about the next Playstation that has come to my attention with the upcoming release of the NGP. Why I bring this up will soon be explained.
The NGP will feature a new physical media, some sort of card based media. And it will also feature something called PlaystationSuite. And this is where it gets interesting.
It would be very strange if Playstation 4 wasn’t PlaystationSuite enabled. The name is “PlaystationSuite” after all. And this makes it very probable that the Playstation 4 will feature a card reader that can read those cards so that you can play your NGP games through your ps4 (Those games that doesn’t have the touchpads as a must, obviously). But it is also possible that Sony would release some sort of pad for the ps4 so you could play all games of the NGP on your ps4. This seems like the only way to go, since Sony is starting to focus on making it easier for developers to develop games for multiple platforms at once.
Other obvious features are the lastest Wifi-standards, USB-ports of the latest standards, improved versions of Playstation Move/Kinect, and Blutooth for controllers.
To sum up these speculations and predictions:
Playstation 4:
Blu-Ray with the capacity of at least 100Gb
4096 Mb of total memory (Both RAM and video-memory included)
Card-reader to read NGP games
PlaystationSuite enabled
Blutooth with support for up to 7 players at once.
An improved version of Playstation Move
An improved version of the Cell-processor (!) This is if they make it compatible with PlaystationSuite.
An SSD hard-drive of at least 160 Gb or a mechanical one of at least 500 Gb
Xbox 720:
Blu-Ray drive
4096 Mb of total memory (Both RAM and video-memory included)
Improved version of Kinect
Blutooth
An SSD hard-drive of at least 160 Gb or a mechanical one of at least 500 Gb
These predictions are the only ones that seems to be possible to make from what we have today. What kind of architecture, processor-types and other, is impossible to predict.
Hope you enjoyed the reading and please comment with your thoughts on this and your own predictions, but please try to keep them realistic :)
Cheers!
The friendly folks over at Razer recently sent us their full size Kishi Ultra mobile gaming controller, and this thing didn't disappoint.
VGChartz's Mark Nielsen: "Upon finally finishing Devil May Cry 5 recently - after it spent several years on my “I’ll play that soon” list - I considered giving it a fittingly-named Late Look article. However, considering that this was indeed the final piece I was missing in the DMC puzzle, I decided to instead take this opportunity to take a look back at the entirety of this genre-defining series and rank the entries. What also made this a particularly tempting notion was that while most high-profile series have developed fairly evenly over time, with a few bumps on the road, the history of Devil May Cry has, at least in my eyes, been an absolute roller coaster, with everything from total disasters to action game gold."
Me leaving it out should be telling of my thoughts on it. Better than 2 as a DMC game.
Still a good game though.
3,1,4,5 to me, never played 2. 5 gameplay is amazing but level design was really disappointing to me, just a bunch of plain arenas, the story felt like a worse written rehash of the 3rd and the charater models looked weird ( specially the ladies ). Another problem with 5 was that there was not enough content for 3 charaters so I could never really familiarize with any of them
2.
Dmc.
4.
5.
1.
3.
God DMC2 was an awful game.
And in case this isn't obvious it goes worst to best
TSA go hands on with the beta for Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road, but how is the game transitioning to the post-stylus era?
I think it would be worth mentioning the actual online capabilities of both next-gen consoles aswell.
One thing that both Microsoft and Sony certainly must do is to make online connectability between this gen of consoles and their successors. What I mean is that we should still be able to use our same accounts on these new consoles and we should still be able to have the same online features with regards to friends-list's, etc. Most probably in the form of an icon next to a person's username saying whether they're on a PS3 or PS4.
Just an idea, but I think it is imperative that they both do this so as not to alienate the playerbase.
At this point what they put into the system isn't going to be the thing, but what they can get out and how quickly. he big problem with this gen, not that few notice or admit it, is that some things weren't possible or prohibitive. Features were removed and especially sprite based titles because they had to be high resolution.
There was also the thing with the 360 leveling out maybe too quickly because its dev tools were easy to use compared to the PS3's. Now 360 titles are struggling to look as good as early PS3 ones. Every time there's a multiplatform argument like with Crysis 2, its abut it looking than a PS3 exclusive.
ps4 = PS3 with these add features + just update the current wifi,Bluetooth,web browser and so on
-keep 8 core cell (to save money + the cell hasn't been pushed yet) if you add a new cell the cost would skyrocket
-more powerful GPU
-at least double the ram
-card reader/NGP card reader is a nice add
-PS3 and xbox are the pioneers of a OS running in a background so they both need to be optimize for running an OS while playing a game as well as true multitasking like pause a game and watch a video
-Higher capacity bluray
if sony follows this they could have the cheaper console. Wii HD is a horrible idea but Nintendo is always does BC.
the so called 720 or xbox 3 needs a new CPU and GPU and a new disk media so cost will be high in my view.
Sony took a hit this gen but champ is back next gen when they could have the cheapest console and the most powerful also the xbox3 and PS4 should launch H2H.
PS4 = $400
I so see Sony marketing a new disc for PS4, most likely the 1TB disc that has been worked on.
I do think 360 will get Bluray but mostly because Sony is going with a new disc format, because I don't think Microsoft would pay Sony to use Bluray.
It would hurt Microsoft because Sony will make some money off of each system sold.
I think we're well past the era for 1080p. Many computer monitors can easily go 1600p+ easily, sorry for lack of exact resolution.