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News Chipworks publishes PS4 chip die analysis

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Gareth Halfacree, 21 Nov 2013.

  1. Corky42

    Corky42 Where's walle?

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    It could be argued there wont be a PS5, or any more consoles after this generation.
     
  2. Cei

    Cei pew pew pew

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    Why? The gaming industry is full of money - in fact, it was one of Sony's few divisions to make a profit recently. I can't exactly foresee people not playing games in another 7 years, just that our definition of a console may shift slightly.
     
  3. bawjaws

    bawjaws Multimodder

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    How would that argument go, exactly?
     
  4. rollo

    rollo Modder

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    Depends where the game industry heads and if the sales keep up. If niether of the xbox and ps4 sell 50mil + units then you might be right. Personally think they will sell above that.

    The whole cloud computing is not really ready for most of the world. Once internet is fast and available everywhere that whole thing might take off. Till that time I have my douts.

    Nvidias Stream thing has hardly set the world alight I dont personally know anyone who brought nvidia shield.

    If the Casual gaming is the whole future then the Ipad already has that market with facebook and we can all go home already.
     
  5. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    Playing devil's advocate, it could be argued thusly:

    This generation of consoles is the most PC-like[1], with two of the three using near off-the-shelf PC components running the AMD64 x86 instruction set with only minor customisation. Both AMD64 consoles are, arguably, interchangeable[2] and vary only in their performance. Further, they will be receiving competition in the near future from Valve's Steam Boxes as well as the competition they have always faced from traditional PCs.

    Why have Sony and Microsoft opted to build what are, basically, compact PCs with locked-down operating systems? Because there won't be any more consoles: after this, both the Xbox and PlayStation brands will exist only as a shell over commodity hardware. The next generation of consoles will actually be just the OS, divorced from the hardware entirely - with the move to sharing an instruction set with commodity PCs being the first step on that path.

    Why would they do this? Designing and building a console is hard, it's expensive, and you make the barest of profit on the hardware. Publishing software, that's where the money is. Imagine a world where instead of buying a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Two, you download the PlayStation OS or Xbox OS. Just like Valve plans to release SteamOS as well as using it as the basis for its Steam Box consoles, there's the argument for a future where Sony and Microsoft release their own operating systems for gaming systems - or, in Microsoft's case, build it into a Windows 12 Gaming Edition OS.

    They wouldn't do that, would they? Well, why not? It'd save 'em a tonne of money, and they've already made moves in this direction: Sony allows third parties to label their Android devices as PlayStation Compatible, and both companies have second-screen apps for smart devices. Coupled with the move to hardware entirely compatible with an off-the-shelf PC, and you've got a path to the death of physical consoles for the next generation.

    [1] Of the recent generations, anyway. Historically, it's not a new trend: the Commodore 64GS is the most obvious example here. Built by Commodore as a means of targeting the console market, it was a Commodore 64 minus the keyboard and most of the ports, and could only be used with expensive cartridge games. With the C64 also being able to play said cartridge games in addition to far cheaper tape games, including a keyboard, and having far greater expansion and educational capabilities while costing less than the 64GS, it was not a success. Popular with collectors these days, mind.

    [2] Are too. Sure, the PS4 has slightly more powerful graphics and GDDR5 instead of DDR3 memory - but they're both locked-down PCs with AMD eight-core APUs, 8GB of RAM and SATA storage.

    Disclaimer: do I think that's likely? Nah. Companies love having a shiny box to show off at the launch. Imagine people queuing at midnight at their local Game in order to take home a DVD containing the latest Xbox OS - not quite the same experience, is it?
     
  6. Corky42

    Corky42 Where's walle?

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    It would go that in the next 5-6 years tablets and possibly phones will become ever more powerful, so why would you want a console sitting around when tablets may be powerful enough to run games and stream the content to a TV.

    Lots of company's are now demonstrating streaming games from the device to a TV (Shield, Steam OS) why have a box tied to a TV for games when it maybe possible in 5-6 years to have a tablet powerful enough to stream games to any TV you happen to be near, along with wireless controller.

    EDIT: posted before i read Gareth's post :duh:
    No it isn't, but Microsoft have talked about one OS for everything, they have the Surface and the phones. Who knows maybe tablets and phone will have enough processing and GPU power to run proper games, so people wouldn't be buying an Xbox OS but instead buying the latest's Microsoft tablet that can be used for everything including connecting up to a TV to play games on.
     
    Last edited: 22 Nov 2013
  7. mattbailey

    mattbailey What's a Dremel?

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    Dont worry; I'll bet your house for you!
     

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