The end of the next gen is so far off but not really

If we can expect a similar console lifespan or longer, the next time we are looking are looking at the new boxes will be like 7 years from now and Vinny's kid will be old enough to be playing games of his own. This makes me scared just thinking about it. In that time, I might meet a girl and get married, study a second degree and start working for real, move many times or even scarier do none of those things.

Guys, think about life almost a decade from now... what do you think you will be doing? will we all still be here(at this site)? Will Jeff be part robot? Drew a fighter jet pilot/survival expert?

In seven years I'll still probably be a sad lonely man.

Drew is already a fighter jet pilot/survival expert.

7 years from I'm either doing really well or doing really poorly. Or playing Dota 2.

And Jeff is already part robot.

Daily Dota 3 stream

Im hoping this next gen crashes and burns and we get new consoles in 2 to 3 years.

Fuck 7.

Not to rain on your parade but they still need time for R&D^^ they don't just fart these things out. Even if all of their current proposals go up in flames.

Also they would spend time to rescue the device rather then scrap it. Imagine the outcry if a company just abandoned a console super early.. cough..sega..cough. I am sure Sony or Microsoft would never want to be that company.

@super2j: there was only 4 years between original Xbox and 360, three years isn't too far of a stretch especially when they are just optimised pc's.

Sounds like a good job interview question. "Where do you see yourself at the end of this video gaming console generation?"

These will be the last consoles. In 6-8 years streaming technology will be powerful enough to let us play our games completely through the cloud.

i dont know, does North America have the infrastructure to handle this? does europe? Australia? By making it streaming, you now reduce the potential base of users. users have to have connections that can support high quality streaming with no lag that matches what a gaming computer can do in a couple years? I can see why the companies would want to force this( automatic drm) but the people may not be as able to respond in the numbers that are profitable.

I got married during this generation of consoles. Good times!

If this gen lasts as long as the one that is ending it will be 2021 when we get new consoles. That thought is maddening. I hope it scales down to something more akin to every 4 or 5 for consoles. Every year Apple style is too much, the hardware won't substantially change year to year and that fragmented user base would probably tear video gaming as a hobby apart and drive it towards another collapse. 5 years maybe 4 with moderate leaps and a legitimately fair price. Instead of coming out with a half dozen skus and hardware revisions just release new hardware.

That being said this can only work with across the board compatibility with older software. I have been championing this forever it seems. Video games need to have a back catalog ala movies. I can buy a film on a variety of formats from years ago, essentially any film ever made, and it will play. I cannot do that with a video game unless its something the powers that be deem to rerelease (or in Nintendo's case re-re-re-release). It sucks I can't just go to a classic games aisle at best buy and pick up something from fifteen years ago. Or buy a brand spanking new SNES and a bunch of new carts of amazing games and have the same experience I would have had in the early nineties.

Well talking purely about my personal experience with internet speeds I now have a 50/10 connection in my apartment. Two years ago that was 20/10, two years before that it was 10/5 and so on and the price of my connection has gone down during this period. I doubt that the situation is hugely different in other developed nations. Also, I think that it was in this interview by Adam Sessler that a Microsoft employee himself suggested that this might be the last console you'll ever buy. I see developers slowly moving the load off of the console over to the cloud through the life of this console. Eventually when the limits of the console are reached added performance can only be achieved through the cloud.

Also, during this console generation I'll finish my studies and will probably be an actual adult with an actual job and actual monotony in my life.

Better yet think about where you were at the beginning of this console generation. It was a simpler time.

Well original Xbox launched really late and 360 launched super early. It was a bit of an edge case.