Most developers and publishers have entrenched themselves in expectation of a lengthy generation, with many believing we still have another five years of Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3 to go. Capcom Europe boss David Reeves, however, is expecting the next generation a little sooner than most.
Reeves things that we'll see new consoles within "two to three years" and adds that "All the first-parties have got to be working on something," he said. "The tricky thing is when do you put a stake in the ground on technology? That's the problem. You can be waiting a few extra months to implement something, but you've got to set a date to go with a certain chip at a certain point otherwise you're going to miss the key milestones."
While it does look like this generation will be one of the longest, Reeves might not be too far off the mark. Everybody knows the benefits of being "first" of a generation, so it wouldn't be surprising for one company to try and take advantage of the current "long generation" complacency to get their machine out first. The question is, who will be Han Solo and shoot first?
Who do you reckon will officially usher us into the next generation? Nintendo, Microsoft or Sony?
Capcom: new tech is a stop-gap to next-gen consoles [GI.biz]
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Contest:
12:20 PM on 06.29.2010 | 
But I think Microsoft would make a new Xbox before Sony releases a PS4, but I also think both of them want to keep the current gen going as long as they can.
So the question is merely when and I'd guess 3 years for the HD consoles and 2 for Nintendo. It just "feels" right I guess. I've nothing to back up my claims. Just speculation.
Maybe I should get into research analysis. /sarcasm
/anguish
I think in 2 or 3 years we'll start hearing about the next wave of consoles, but I don't believe they'll be hitting the market at that time.
Especially since their new handheld is about as powerful as their home console, which is just embarrassing.
But if I were to guess, Microsoft and Nintendo within two months. Sony laughs (until they see the sales) and Sony within two years of that
Aye but they might do what they're doing with the DS / 3DS. Keep one console that's still selling like hotcakes for most people, and continue to support it. Then bring out a new console for the core gamers and support them both. So they would have:
- DS and Wii for Casual gamers/most people.
- 3DS and new console for Core Gamers.
Whether this would be a brand new console or a Wii HD is still anyones guess. If it's a Wii HD that obviously delay the launch of a full successor. So it could be wii successor in 2012 or Wii HD in 2011 and Wii Successor in 2013/2014 (alongside Sony).
Regrading Microsoft, I think we'll certainly see them bring out a new console before Sony. Whether Kinect flops or not, I still think it'll have a 2012 launch. Most likely it will have Kinect built in, the same way the xbox 360 had live built in from launch, after it was introduced on the original xbox.
Sony... I think they'll be last to the game. They've only just started making money on PS3 hardware, and apparently there's a lot of juice left in the CELL. They can't really afford to bring out a new console just yet. 2013 at the earliest.
My 2 cent.
Can't say I want a new generation though. Production costs are already too high and the quality of games hasn't risen to match which makes it hard to shell out $60. Plus i stopped caring about Nintendo years ago even this years E3 left me with meh feelings about them so nothing they do could get me excited.
M$ was losing market share to Sony. With the release of the newly remodeled 360 I think next months numbers will show a different story. In my town anyway those things are selling out everywhere. Hell I picked up an elite just cause of the $249 price tag with 2 games. Gave my son my pro model.
Is it really a benefit? Looking back at the last few generations, a lot "first of a generation" consoles ended up losing out:
6th gen - Dreamcast was a huge seller at first but burned out quickly upon the release of the PS2
5th gen - 3D0, Jaguar, and Saturn all came out before the PS1 and N64; all of them fizzled
4th gen - TurboGrafx was the first and wasn't a huge success in the US; SNES came out last and was the biggest success of all 4th gen systems
Only the current generation has bucked the trend with the Xbox 360 performing so well.
At least you're getting a big head's up; start saving. :)
I agree, the benefits of being the first of an arbitrary next generation is debatable. Much of what people believe about consoles "winning" and "losing" exists only in the minds of the consumers and the gaming media. With any product, you measure it's profitability from the entirety of it's lifespan, not because you've sold more or less units than a competitor has, especially when the launch dates are so far apart. You'll often read about the PSP dying, for example, even though it had been outselling the Xbox 360 for much of this year (prior to the 360 relaunch).
That's my best Michael Pachter impression. Now wait a couple of years for all this to be wrong.
When that is... maybe 3 years away knowing how things progress and where they are now after the release of the consumer 6 cores.
That said, prepare for much less AAA new-IP next generation. It's already prohibitively expensive for most small to medium studios to produce AAA games (or rather, games with AAA production value), and the big publishers still pretend it's 2001 with the cash they're willing to invest and the returns that developers make (unless you're one of the big dogs). Not that they can be blamed, given consumer trends to stick to a handful of franchises, or the pervasive lack of production value in most games. Really: most games are just SHIT.
Until games have the same market share as film, smaller, more 'indie' games that break out of that blockbuster formula, won't be financially viable. But until they're financially viable, small to medium developers will keep trying to take on the big dogs, keep losing cash, and keep producing half assed crap that can't compete. Of course there are exceptions, but most of the time, this holds true.
Looking forward to Call of Duty #89.
If games cost $20 instead of $100 (or whatever your national equivalent to Australian dollars is) then I think more games would sell more copies. Once a games console is as common an appliance as a DVD player, of course.
Next gen will likely be the trial by fire that only the big dogs will survive unscathed, because most developers just don't have the money to produce the level of content required to compete. I doubt corporations like Activision will be complaining, though.
What are those benefits, exactly? I've always heard that more often than not, the first to come out in a console generation is at a horrible disadvantage.
Just look at... well, almost every Sega console. As awesome as they were, Sega always operated at the disadvantage of having all of their competition outclass them in hardware in little more than a year after they launched.
PS360 looks good enough for most people. They're both getting motion controllers. People HATE spending money right now. They're going to bitch about the price of motion controllers for the consoles, as they are with games, and because the consoles are updatable via software- there isn't much incentive for someone to go with something bigger and better right now.
Nintendo is going to rock the house with 3DS, and it'll cement 3D technology as something real.
3DTVs aren't going to kick off any time soon as far as reaching real market saturation.
And Blu-Ray barely has.
By the time Blu-Ray is inexpensive enough to be the most common form of movie-media, people will have already gotten over their digital fears and everything will shift to cloud networks in which you own the content but don't have to store it yourself- you can just call it whenever you like.
3DTVs have another ten years to go before the tech is acceptable and affordable to the average consumer. Graphics technology's next leap is attempting to jump into the 3D realm, but not many people will be able to take advantage of it on PS3. Microsoft probably won't even bother going that route- they'll just watch Sony hemorrhage money trying to satisfy an audience that doesn't exist in enough capacity to make the extra effort profitable.
And 3DS will be king in the mean time.
Then what will the next home console be?
Probably something from Nintendo. That has an actual harddrive and real internet capabilities. And they'll make it when it's cheap enough to jump slightly ahead of the current generation's graphics capability while still profiting from console sales and having it affordable to the public. They're the only company that can safely do Everything they are currently doing Better with a drastic enough increase in quality to merit a new purchase.
Although, once/if Kinect and Move tank, Microsoft and Sony may still find themselves yearning to participate in the movement race- and they might realize their only chance to do it is by releasing the tech with an entirely new console that has a significantly more friendly branding.
tl;dr: I know, right?