News Xbox 360 celebrates fifth anniversary in UK

Could Microsoft and Sony just use a newer CPU & GPU in their current consoles (and rebrand them as new consoles) to bring them up to date with PC level of graphics quality? It's much needed as current console graphics are looking very shabby these days.

 

But missed their claimed 1080p target and to get 720p they dropped AA. I really donno how PS3 is gonna do 3D gaming. COD is only 620p how can you add 3D without killing frames? Even gran turismo wasn't fully completed due to the PS3 not being able to handle everything the developers wanted to throw at it. TBH thats as good as its gonna get, the sooner theres a refresh the better. Didn't GPU's change architecture and such features like Adding DX11 would make a huge jump in efficiency. At least making a major update means developers could produce games worthy of being played on most peoples PC's rather than the tired overused game engines of today. Thats why I love crytek for at least being innovative.

 

I would imagine a new console will be arriving once 4K resolution starts to show up in consumer televisions. So probably 4-6 years.

Also, I've always wondered why Microsoft/Sony didn't partner with a cable/satellite company like Comcast or DirecTV and incorporate a CableCard Tuner in their systems allowing you to use the gaming console as a set-top box and DVR. The console makers would benefit by becoming even more embedded in the living room, and the cable/satellite companies would help keep themselves relevant in an audience that continually moves to internet/streaming video.

 

Five years of the lowest common dominator. Rock on.

 

Fair points, but to get those working would still only require fairly minor upgrades to the hardware - but from a consumer point of view, most Xbox or PS3 users probably wouldn't notice the difference. That's the thing - while the jump from SD to HD was much touted, and carried on the back of the general HDTV bandwagon, there's nothing around at the moment (dismissing 3D as an expensive fad) to drive or persuade people that a console upgrade is required.

Look at it through the eyes of your average Game shopper, not a PC gamer who is comfortable talking about resolutions, AA, GPUs, framerates and all the rest.

 

In those terms its fairly easy to sell snow to the eskimos so to speak. How many people are being sucked in by 3D and motion controllers? The only reason they wouldn't see any improvement is if game engines stood still. Yes they're not far off 1080p atm but it isn't hard to see the difference in textures, shadows and even some AA in games between consoles and PC. With extra power under the hood all areas would increase significantly (Look at far cry 2 and fallout games multi platform) Even Halo reach bugs me cause it isn't as smoot as I've come to expect on a now with a sub £100 GPU. While, as you say, people wouldn't see under the hood whats going on, DX11, improved physics and in general game engine improvements will finally see crysis style graphics on the consoles (basing it on using todays hardware and giving a 2 year period to develop). Again using gran turismo 5 as an example A few cars on track really pushes things (haven't played the game outside of local game shop to see the full extent of this for myself) and you notice the difference between said car in garage and on track. As a few forum members have pointed out the shadows aren't 100% and even the devlopers admitted the had to sacrifice frame rate to meet their expected level of graphical output. Gran turismo 5 has to be the most optimised game on the market yet you wonder if it was on PC how far they could of taken it. Certainly the AI isn't all there yet.

 

I think the "Next Gen" would be a lot more than just 3D or true native HD for the consoles.

Just look at some of those NVIDIA demo videos etc. showing models with "Real Hair", for example.

If you think we have photo-realism now, just wait for what's to come. And if you don't think we have photo-realism now, then wait and see what is to come.

If you think you can easily tell the difference between a car on GT5 bouncing off a wall (like a toy car) compared to a real car now, in the future, it will become a lot more difficult to tell the difference.

It's not only about 3D, AA and resolutions, but textures, polygons, hardware tessellation and advanced hardware physics processing (which excites me more than 3D). Once the average gamer gets to see that next level of ultra-photo-realism and physics, they WILL want to happily upgrade their consoles again, for sure.

 

How many times have we changed our graphics card since 2005, and graphics for most games haven't really improved much since then. Its about time MS replace this then DX9 can be put out to pasture.

 

5 more years of shitty console ports...........

 

"Celebrates" ?????

How is a 5 year old, out of date, poorly designed (first generation) console that pumps the industry full of shitty game ports anything to celebrate about?!

Microsoft, I say this with the utmost sincerity - **** off and build a better console, then you'll have something to celebrate about.

Don't get me wrong, I have one and play it at least 3 times per year... but seriously, it's one of the worst examples of technological design I've ever seen and it should have been replaced long ago, not just redesigned and re-released.

 

I reckon the next consoles won't be based on 3d, the hardware will step up with pc levels in cpu and gpu, I'm thinking over clocking on the fly and better cooling. Also a big one would be an ssd, although expensive now, it would be suitably mased produced for console and then cheaper too produce. this would have the most profound effect on games because one of the ,assive bug bears atm is load screens, just imagine instant sit down and play?

 

next gen console will be based on cloud computing alot like onlive

 

Personally I see onlive as more of a threat to consoles than pc games. Next gen will probably be around the time when Onlive leaves beta but for Onlive to work it requires the broadband companies to get their fingers out and actually offer a service they tout. Their fate isn't in their own hands unfortunately. Im still skeptical about their pricing tho and If a next gen console was to drop sooner rather than later they would really be snookered with broad band currently the way it is. While it is a great concept I can't see it working for quite some time yet due to so many if's and buts.

The problems with consoles when they released was the lack of ram they could afford to put in. The idea of an SSD is a good one especially for this gen since alot of textures are pulled from it but not necessary if there was a large enough frame buffer to load everything into. No reason next gen consoles shouldn't have 8gb ram min and the GPU with 2gb+ especially if prices do continue to fall.

Out of interest is anyone on here in the UK Onlive beta?

 

I hope not !

I wouldn't touch OnLive with a barge pole.

My main issue with it is that you are expected to be paying them a monthly fee for the privilege of (renting) playing games you have already purchased.

If you decide to stop paying, and then migrate your gaming self to another cloud provider (or decide to just stop with all the cloud gaming crap), then you lose all your games.

If, for example, you have only played and bought 2 games in 3 years, those 2 games would have cost you more than the price of a console. Then if you decide that enough is enough, and you stop paying them after the 3 years, then you simply can't play your games anymore.

That games collection you built up will be just memories, and bad memories when you are occasionally reminded of how much financial investment you committed just to be given the opportunity to play the games you bought.

On top of that, there was never any guarantees in the first place that, even if you stayed with OnLive, they would continue to host your favorite games on their servers for much longer than even 1 year.

I can see many problems with OnLive. To me, it's a whole next level worse than Ubisoft's "Permanent Internet Connection Required" DRM. Resist it !

 

Bit-tech articles get proof read? I'd sack them on the spot, Forever seeing spelling errors on the site!

 

PS3 has the Play TV add-on that adds a freeview viewer/recorder.

The PS3 has already had an update to play 3D games (if you've got a 3D TV). Kill Zone 3 is in 3D.

Personally I hope the 3D fad will soon die a death. I can't see people upgrading to a 3D TV when most have only recently upgraded to a HD set. Not to mention how headache inducing the actual picture is on a 3D set.

 

MS and Sony are clearly in a bind, in that they cannot charge >$1000 for a next ,next gen console and producing console HW that offers similar performance to a modern PC with say a 580 GTX, an I7 and 6GB ram is almost impossible for any less, at least not without selling at a heavy loss for years, which they seem unlikely to be willing to do again.

Many believe consoles may actually regress to become even more casual with lower performance HW, as Wii represents.

 

Meh, 3D is a fad to get people back into cinemas. It's nice, but I don't really care about it.

Of course I'll probably be eating my words in a few years when everything is in 3D.

 

The very best looking Wii games are perfectly good looking to me, so the next HD consoles can be at least 3 years away as far as I'm concerned. Graphics don't set the world alight for me now.

 

Consoles are an insult to True Gamers, who know, verily, that Gaming is found on the PC!

Happy Birthday X-Box, may you die in a Fire of Red Rings!

Yours in PC Gamer Plasma,
Star*Dagger