5 features the next console generation needs

The next console generation is right around the corner, and rumors are piling high. Now, will the next generation deliver, or be completely unprepared? Danny Luksa of ButtonMasher.tv looks at a list of five things that the next console generation needs in order to succeed.

[gypsygib]

If next gen consoles support 4k expect the games to look like 4k PS2 games.

[BtnMshrTV]

What about them?

[Gaming101]

You would need a massive tv to see the difference between 1080P and 4K, and especially 8K, this will only be pertinent for people with 60 inch plus TV's

[T900]

The author of the article is a complete moron. He has no idea how tech works.

He wants:

Multicore tech support - I agree

High density disc - I agree

4K Support- Hes delusional if he thinks 4K support is needed. He himself said its rendering at 2x of 1080p, where will the power come from?

Revised graphics- Now to point out why the author has no idea about tech. Sure you can push the GPUs to 925mhz however with the restrictive space in a console this is likely to cause a melt down. Also imagine how much power that will require. Lastly what i find most retarded, he wants to increase memory bandwidth to only 70gb/s lol, Even to run 1080p properly i would think 70GB/S should be the bare minimum. If he thinks consoles should support 4k and then only come with 70GB of memory bandwidth that will just be a joke lol, Its going to choke any game running at that res. Not to mention 1G of memory is sometimes hardly sufficient of 1080p gameplay. For 4k i would think they would atleast need 2GB of video ram.

Increased Storage - I agree

Overall the author is probably a console gamer who has little to no knowledge of how tech works. Imo he should read into PC related articles on how stuff works before making such articles.

[hakis86]

Come on, the article says 4K VIDEO support.. not 4K games.
I have hopes for 4K video support, 1080p games at 60FPS and of course they need a lot of cores to make this happen.

It will be interesting to see which GPU solution they end up with. I mean if they put in something equivalent to an i7, the CPU part is more than powerful enough, it would really depend on amount (and speed) of RAM and how many cores/how powerful the GPU part will be.

[SignifiedSix]

I'm pretty sure next gen consoles wont be able to support games in 4k. Movies, yes. Games? Hell no.
The most we'll get is 1080p at 30-60 FPS at max wich is good enough for me!

[gamingdroid]

It doesn't make sense to support anything higher than 1080p. In fact it would be idiotic to plan for anything above that.

HD alone doesn't have that high of a penetration yet, let alone anything higher.

This article is full of sh!t.

[hakis86]

@gamingdroid

I can see your point, however when they decided to support 1080p there were ZERO HDTV's out there...almost. And just look now. Millions of TV's sold every year.

So I have to disagree with you, people will buy 4K displays, just like 10million people will probably buy "the New iPad" this year, just because of higher resolution.

[tee_bag242]

Sure people will buy 4k TV's, but historically people don't upgrade their home theatre/TV at the same speed of each generation of consoles.

[sorceror171]

The article claims "The average PC gamer is running 8-cores". What CPU are they talking about? The i7-Core (pretty much top of Intel's line until Ivy Bridge comes out in a couple months) only has 4 real cores, and can 'fake' 8 with Hyperthreading. And that's on the pricey side.

A gaming PC with all the hardware the article talks about would cost well over US$2K. Even with volume and economies of scale... Sony and Microsoft would be losing hundreds of dollars, minimum, even if they introduced them at $600 again.

[QuodEratDemonstrandm]

I have four little syllables for you....

Quad-core cell phones

Google the Samsung Galaxy S3.

[sorceror171]

Smartphones are PCs now? I really *am* behind the curve, silly me.

[ThanatosDMC]

I'm getting that on April when my crappy contract is up. T-mobile better support it.

[Nicaragua]

Phones is not a single syllable.

[QuodEratDemonstrandm]

Apparently, sorceror, you haven't noticed the cell phones catching up with the desktop computers, both in terms of processing power and graphics.

Nicaragua, grab a dictionary and look up syllable before you embarrass yourself..... oh wait.

Thanatos, if T-Mobile doesn't have that specific phone, there will be a quad core by summer.

[Consoldtobots]

smartphones are a joke until they solve the battery problem. Browse the internet or watch a video and your battery is already at 50%.

and thats with single core phones, how long does a quad core last? past the startup splash screen?

[Game3s]

A smartphones might have a quad core but a very weak quad cores(arm processors), the quad core in PCs are the real deal if they were to put it in a smartphone the battery life would probable be 1/2 a hour if your lucky as well as the heat it would generate would melt the phone.

[sorceror171]

Oh, QED. It's looking like four-core phones were a fad: http://hardware.slashdot.or...

[sorceror171]

One more data point, just for fun: http://store.steampowered.c...

According to Valve, less than half of the PCs in their survey were even at 4 cores. 8 cores is almost invisible on the graph.

[QuodEratDemonstrandm]

@sorceror

Bear with me here. This is some pretty hardcore logic.
The Samsung Galaxy S3 is a quad core cell phone.
This indicates that Samsung has made a cell phone CPU with four cores.
If something has already been done, then it's a foregone conclusion that it is, in fact, possible.

OK, ready? I'm about to make a leap. It's probably a little bigger than the baby steps you're used to.

If 4 cores can be done in a cell phone, then a video game console can manage 8 cores.

Oh and here's another data point for you. 64-core processors are commercially available.
http://www.google.com/searc...

Maybe next time you'll take the time to discern what someone is saying before shooting off an irrelevant reply.

[sorceror171]

QED, you don't seem to be grasping what *I* was saying. I was pointing out that the article was incorrect when it stated that "The average PC gamer is running 8-cores". That is simply not true, given any rational definition of 'average'.

Now, an 8-core console is indeed *possible*. My *other* point was that it's not possible for it to be *cost-effective*.

[denawayne]

This article fails on so many levels

[Skynetone]

ps3/360 320gb hd This is plenty of storage for just game saves, lol

and with the average pc having 8 cores, lol

hes talking like 4k/8k is the norm

sure we will all go 4k/8k in the future but theres no way next gen consoles will be supporting these resolutions in a gaming environment, unless its pac man or something

[mamotte]

Agree. Next consoles need 16gb of ram, 10 core processors, 4 tb of disc, 2,5 gb of GPU, and a resolution of 8k in 3D. It needs to cost 250 dollars, too.

Now, to end the sarcasm, there's a thing I want in next gen consoles: stability. I dont want fo fear a RROD or a YLOD. What worries me the most, is the fact the it looks like: more power = more failure. The underpowered Wii doesnt suffer a blue line of death...

[swice]

:-o sexy

[ToonarmY]

Who wrote that garbage....

"The average PC gamer is running 8-cores"

The "average" PC gamer is not running 8 cores phahahah what nonsense, more like the absolute overclocking hardcore and very little one else

[Tonester925]

I just hope the PS4 can release with a high quality system. No "RROD" similar incidents. That would be crucial.

[tweet75]

this is key to being succesful in the next generation xbox lost many fans who will not purchase the next gen xbox no matter what it does because of the RROD fiasco this gen.

[ambientFLIER]

I honestly don't think the RROD thing will keep too many, if any, people from buying the next xbox, Gamers are very forgiving with the MS brand.

[specialguest]

Need moar RAM.

[SKUD]

2 year standard warranty.

[M_Prime]

you said it right there..

[Vickistheman]

Next gen consoles should have minimum:

2 petabyte hard drive, 8 terabyte RAM, a CPU as powerful as the one used on the starship enterprise, and a GPU as good as the one in The Matrix.

That way, we wouldn't have to live real life.

[FutureTechnologies]

Yep especially the same GPU that renders the Matrix.

[Rageanitus]

Cross platform gaming for multiplatform games

[Malice-Flare]

Multi-core processing is a given...

High-density Optical Disc Support is a given for Sony/Nintendo. rumors suggest MS is not though...

4K is the next Sony bullet point, but only for video. even the latest video cards aren't able to render games at 4K at a playable frame rate...

Revised Graphics well depends on cost. do you want $599 consoles again, or the affordable Wii-type jump? i'd want the former...

Increased storage is also a given unless the manufacturer decides the cost isn't worth it. from the rumors Nintendo and MS will be going for low capacity flash storage, who know what Sony thinks...

what i'd want: support for 3.5" HDDs, 720p@60fps, all back-catalog games on download...

[Bob570]

Hahaha! 4K! Are you joking?

[turgore]

Ok, 4k is still 10 years away. As long as it can run games that look AT LEAST as good as Samaritan at 1080p with no jaggies I'm happy.

[TABSF]

Not quite 10 years away more like 3 at best

If the
Samsumg Galaxy Tab 11.6 has a res of 2560 by 1600 260ppi (11.6" screen) (rumoured)
Apple iPad (3rd Gen) has a res of 2048 by 1536 264ppi (9.7" screen)

Expect 4096 by 2160 in 2013-2014 because at this rate the 5/6th gen iPad will have that Resolution
The Samsung Galaxy SIII is expected to have a res of 1920 by 1080 on a 4.8" screen with in the next few months.

I'm sure you get the picture :)

[MaxXAttaxX]

We're talking about TVs here. Not unrelated mobile devices.

There are still plenty of people that need to upgrade to an HDTV. 4k support is completely unnecessary. Games wouldn't look or run smoothly.
A big sacrifice for the 0 people that will own a 4k TV.

[TABSF]

These numbers in this article are way off

Console manufactures need to focus more on the GPU not the CPU.

Anything more than 10 cores is just stupid and excessive.
CPUs scale poorly and adding more cores will make them more power hungry and less efficient.

Hi density discs are good but the read/transfer speeds are just damn right awful, they need to come up with a memory option.
Just to compare, my brothers Skyrim can take over 3 minutes to load to get in game where as on PC I can load into the game in less than 30 secs

If the target is to get 4K resolutions on the next gen consoles they will need more than 3GB of RAM fact, just now with 2560 by 1600 (198% > 1080p) you need more than 1GB add on AA, fancy graphics and tessellation your looking at nearly 2GB.

Graphics on consoles need to push the boat but the only problem is the GPUs will be PC parts from yesterday year.
saying the clock speeds needs to be 925MHz tells you nothing, what you should be focusing on is how many unified shaders/Cuda cores and how many Raster operating units plus architecture.
Memory bandwidth of 70GB/s that's extremely slow considering that top GPUs today are all over 170GB/s with HD 7970 at 264GB/s.

The only point I can agree is the 1TB HDD but I'd still expect an SSD for the systems OS.

What I'd want and expect in next gen consoles

CPU = 8 cores (extremely high bandwidth to RAM and GPU)
RAM = 2GB DDR3 or XDR2 (if XDR2 its needs 64bit bus or greater)
GPU = 2048Cs 64Rs 4GB GDDR5 256/GBs Memory bandwidth(needs to support advance graphics technologies)

If the rumours are true the next Xbox and WiiU will not be able to do Unreal Samaritan demo in real-time yet PC can right now!!!

[urwifeminder]

Over the top fans.

[Kyosuke_Sanada]

1. No more Online Passes and DRM
2. DLC to be developed for at at least 6 months after release and to be added and make sure it's enough content to be a reasonably priced stand alone expansion.
3. A dramatically reduced failure rate at launch.
4. As mentioned above, Cross-platform play
5. The disappearance of the words, fail, epic, pwn, own, hardcore and noob when comes to anything gaming.

And as a gentleman's gesture, bring back the boomerang controllers.

[CommonSense]

well, that was a completely worthless read.

[CoolBeansRus]

OMG, if they made this article's console a reality it would surely cost over 1k.
It should also come with a gaspump! So you can fill up at home!

[BrianC6234]

Whatever that site is my anti-virus software just blocked it because it has malware running on it. Did anyone just get infected? If so I guess you can blame them.

[BtnMshrTV]

We have a numer of third party plugins running in the background on the site. All of which are AntiVirrus protected. Your browser likely flagged AdSense. I assure you, we're virus free.

[BrianC6234]

Bitdefender saw something though. I didn't go to the site. You should look into what it is. I won't go to any site I even get a warning like that about. Too many sites are infected.

[M_Prime]

yes, because the article writer knows better then engineers that have to stick to a budget. I mean is 4K support really necessary? i think 1080P looks great, i don't care for 3D so yeah. and even now i see a difference between 1080P on my TV (LCD LG, about 2 years old 60Hz) and my friends brand new Sharp TV (LED, 240Hz)

also for storage. The DS already has used SD cards for storage, why not use them on consoles? i mean i bought a 16GB SD card for less then $20 (costco) and it was MicroSD with an adapter. If a console manufacture mass produces them they will be cheap as DVDs and they only have to read, not write (though they could write if they really wanted to) and the read speeds would be unmatched by any optical device. this would also eliminate a lot of caching.

[LFC1EE]

No no no listen! most hardcore gamers have 60 plus inch tv's what he's saying is true i was at ces when i heard ms talking to the samsung head lol! ROMOURS who knows guys be happy for what we got lol.

[AWBrawler]

Yeah, what I got from this article was blah blah blah POWER blah blah blah Graphics blah blah blah RESOLUTION

Boy am I glad he's not the one doing the consoles. That crap don't impress me.

[Tzuno]

1.Controllers with integrated rechargeable accumulators(no more batteries)
2.one plain model(no more hdd differences)
3.1 disc games(blue Ray)
4.Backward compatibility with older games on the same platform(well duhh)
5.Less power consumption as can be.

others thing like graphic 1080P i think there is no need to speak about things that should be there from start as a standard.

[ZippyZapper]

I want my next gen console to do whatever the hell I want it to do.