The reason for not slapping a new gen card in is very simple. People are expecting games at launch that where designed for their shiny new console, development cycles on games are pretty long especially so called 'Blockbuster' titles. Companies are going to have to start development and testing before the console is even in existence, so the hardware must already exist and its limitations and characteristics known. Another analogue for the situation would be a modern fighter aircraft, they go out of their way to use old tech in a multi billion pound airframe. Why? Stability, better use a 10 year old tweaked CPU in your shiny new fighter and know all the limitations, sensitivity to interference, magnetic anomalies, EMP etc... Then wack an Core i7 3960x in and your whole air force gets grounded because of an overlooked bug. Think of the current Gen Microsoft consoles, wasn’t it something like 80% of the first revision died within a year, it cost them billions. So yes come Q4 2013 the 6670 will be quite old and slow and probably very hot compared to the sub 22nm silicone that will be about by then...But it will be a well know entity, its strengths and weaknesses will be apparent, and considerations can be made when developing and manufacturing the console.
Here's a thought. So the rumour is that a 6670-esque GPU would be in the 720. Now, the Llano 3870K etc have a Radeon 6550 built in. It would seem something with more oomph would be the logical step for AMD's next flagship Fusion processor. Perhaps Microsoft are working with AMD on this and we will see a Fusion-esque platform develop? It would seem to make sense. Sufficient computing power for console style gaming at HD Resolutions, exellent price to performance ratio, low power consumption, little supporting circuitry required due to the extreme integration present in the Fusion platform... etc... Yeah. I think it would make sense to develop a console around a Fusion-esque platform.
Sounds a bit lame to me. But then cost and heat are probably the biggest factors. So I understand, but it's just a bit disappointing. Consoles used to innovate, now they just stagnate. And shut up with the silly motion controllers. It aint innovation, it's retardation.
I know, right? +1. Not a fan of Kinect, either. All that dancing around as if you're a spotty teenager in a seaside amusement arcade playing DDR, and it's 1996...
Hmm how very mid-range . Taken against the example of the Sony PS3. When it was being developed it got what was at that time the latest greatest:a modified version of the 7800 chip. So this is aiming quite low for a next gen if confirmed by MS .It'd be so much better if they went at least 7000 series, when 22nm ramps up. Although the main complaints from devs about the present gen seem centered around lack of memory, of all types.
I think that's what AMD wanted to happen. As far as I know IBM is handling the CPU side of things though, unless I'm getting confused and thinking of the PS4...
That GPU looks like crap. Take that crap and throw it in the garbage. I can't imagine what they use now.
I think the real issue has been an issue of memory. Perhaps they'll stick a bunch of RAM. In my opinion using an old GPU isn't too bad seeing as it's still amazingly quicker than the current GPUs. If they are able to stick in say a HD6850 or even a GTX 460. It would be insanely faster.
Has two nice rings to it, actually. Hey, kenco, grab my coat while you're at it. There's only two things I'm worried about, really, for the next gen of consoles, and it's not the GPU chip: * RAM. * Hardware audio capabilities, if any. The pitiful amounts of RAM, by today's standards, shits me the most: it affects the actual creative side of game design. It's why we have so many claustrophobic corridor shooters, instead of wide expanses (or, if we have wide expanses, we get a ton of pop-in), as well as limited amounts of baddies on-screen. It's a big part of Invisible War Syndrome. I mean, the bloody N64 had RAM expansion. Doubled the memory. If the 720 has, say, 8GB of RAM (as Cevat Yerli wishes), it would be no problem to do up some neat little Expansion Pak - by the time such a pack is needed, an 8GB stick, bought wholesale by MS, would probably cost them a few bucks for the RAM, a few more for the packaging, and sell 'em for, say, $70US (which would be about $150 in Australia, or 70 pounds in the UK, for no good reason...) But it'd be worth it. Bundle it with a game, like Nintendo did with Perfect Dark. Plenty of people pay extra for crap that doesn't do anything for the game, so they should be happy paying for something that adds functionality. Christ, how much does Kinect cost? Sound has gone to **** in recent years, and it's gotten worse ever since that some idiots actually thought 5.1 was the zenith of positional audio ('spose that's what you get when you game in the living room...) when it's just crap for game sound. It's not even 3D. Sure, we have higher sample and bit rates, but that was just to be expected with more storage. We have fewer voice counts available than we had ten years ago...well, not technically true: with CPU-based sound, you can have near-infinite voice counts - given infinite processing power. Add any environmental effects, like reverb, and it gets even more CPU-intensive. As CPUs in consoles get more and more strained, sound is the first thing to get cut. For all DICE's talk of its l33t software engine in Bad Company 2, it was still a con, with a vast majority of sounds being 2D (ie, "canned" stereo MP3s masquerading as 3D sound - FMOD does a similar thing with its "virtual voices"). It was improved for the PC version of BF3, thank god. But few devs, if any, bother with that quality of sound design like DICE does. With dedicated hardware, I think more developers would be encouraged to make use of better sound, not having to worry about CPU overhead, and would therefore make use of environmental effects more often. I'd also like to see a dedicated HRTF and cross-talk cancellation algo for headphone surround, and full 3D sound from surround speakers, as well as those important close-in sounds. And maybe even wave tracing! I'm not too worried about the number of polys or resolution of textures; those age anyway. And, well, a lower-spec GPU means PC players don't have to fork out as much as often. Of course, all these things could probably be ameliorated, for me, if the devs actually tailored the PC edition of the game to actually PC hardware instead of just banging up an X86-compatible .exe file that uses the same resources as the console version for their game during a coffee break and calling it a- HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Sorry. Couldn't type that with a straight face.
Right, nicer everything is good, butThese are designed to appeal to the highest number of people possible, and be to affordable from day one. A dedicated sound card is completely unecessary for 95% of console game setups. People wont care or tell the difference, but it could add $30+ to the manufacturing cost. No way is that enough to justify the price increase when there are so many more things that far more people WILL notice the difference. That extra money saved could go towards a better GPU, more RAM or us it to undercut the competition if needed. The PS3 was far too expensive to manufacture at launch, Sony tried putting too much into their console and they had to keep the retail prices high to avoid losing billions (or even more billions than they were losing on it). MS know that the market is very price sensitive and they need to cut anything that cant be justified in price.
I think we'll see 1GB of RAM in the new units, possibly 2GB if they're feeling generous. Definitely not 4 or 8...
I have trouble believing that they'd put anything less than 4GB of RAM in the consoles, if they put in 8 they'd easily make up for the higher cost by being able to have a bullet point saying, "8GB RAM!" That's what helps sell all those crappy prebuilt desktops, right?
I'd say a reasonable 2GB. Owing to a relatively lightweight native OS. At any rate, if they keep the current processors and throw in a new GPU and more RAM. I honestly think that the consoles could survive a decent update.
The cynic in me wonders if developers remember how to make big, open games, or if they've started believing their own BS: "We're going for a tight, focused game that strips the gameplay back to its essence!" (Translation: the game's on-rails, and there's bugger-all to do.) I'm hoping they do implement that no-used-games system. It would certainly level the playing field, clearing out a lot of the "false customers" - people who make up the customer's "vast" demographic, yet don't contribute as much to developer's coffers as the developers and MS like. Hopefully, when people realise this, there'll be a drive back to the PC, and more developers will stop swallowing the BS that there's no profit loss on consoles.
No developers will understand and know how to make large games. I mean bethdesa does exist right? And no used games? Are you insane? That's outright lunacy to be honest.
If they completely stuff up both the next gen xbox and the next gen playstation, I will be a happy man. I went into a "game" the other day and asked... "Hey, I couldn't see the Computer games, are they through that door or something? haha." (pointing to the stock room) The guy was like... "Computer games?... Like... For PC?... I think we might have some somewhere..." So he had a quick look around the store and pointed to a section with the grand total of about ten games. I cannot wait for developers to start pushing the PC platform again.
Reminds me of that scene from Micro Men where the guy from Acorn goes into a computer shop and sees hundreds of games for the Sinclair spectrum while the BBC micro has only 2 games on the shelf. I agree. At least you can console yourself (pun) that even if the 720 and PS4 seem impressive at launch, within 2 years they will be looking very outdated.
A console is not a PC. It doesn't need 4GB, or 8GB, of RAM. The PS3 has 256MB right now, with the Vita on 512MB, with which they can accomplish a lot. Doubling it to 1GB is going to easily provide enough memory space for OS overhead and leave way more than is available currently for games. 2GB may be provided for future-proofing, but that's it. Secondly, the majority of console gamers wouldn't know what 4GB of RAM was, what it does, or why they should care. Consoles are not sold on specifications - a fact easily worked out by the fact they're not even on the box. Really? Every Game store I've been in has a complete wall rack or two of PC titles, probably holding 200+ games. Okay, some are duplicates, and there's a lot of the 2-for-£20 titles, but all the latest releases are there and a lot of the good older games.
