What can new consoles offer that we don't already have?

I know graphics and memory will get a boost and obviously new games but what else is there?

New infrastructure with focus on downloads instead of retail perhaps? I'd quite like to download my games before release date and play them as soon they are released.

@Morningstar said:

New infrastructure with focus on downloads instead of retail perhaps?

How about all the features that have been bolted onto both services being built into both systems?

I am actually very interested to see how Sony will go forward with their PS+ service and if and how their recent purchase of Gaikai come into play.

A lot of new things were introduced this generation, especially things that have to do with the internet. I feel like that's what next generation is going to focus on - the internet.

Anyway, people seem to always think that the only thing more power can bring is better graphics and then some whine "...but graphics don't matter to me!" Maybe so, but more power means that developers can introduce more systems, more things going on, more enemies, smoother gameplay, better AI (both from enemies and teammates), better and more believable animations, a far longer draw distance, and way more.

Vitality sensors.

I would really like more cross-platform integration from Microsoft. It's a in a good position to unify its Live services in PC and Xbox in a way that they can interact with each other, if only at a basic level (multiplayer matches, for example). That would make investing in that ecosystem a lot more appealing for me.

@mordukai said:

I am actually very interested to see how Sony will go forward with their PS+ service and if and how their recent purchase of Gaikai come into play.

Same. Don't have anything to add other than that.

@GunstarRed said:

Vitality sensors.

Heh.

I'm actually a little worried by what they will offer, controller-wise anyway. I still play PC mostly, and prefer a controller I can sit and play with, whether it's a gamepad or a mouse and keyboard. This next generation, if the simple gamepad is thrown out in favor of sixaxis-like experimentation, coud really leave me behind. I may just be a dinosaur though, as the likes of motion control and Kinect never caught on with me.

@BabyChooChoo said:

@mordukai said:

I am actually very interested to see how Sony will go forward with their PS+ service and if and how their recent purchase of Gaikai come into play.

Same. Don't have anything to add other than that.

Do you see them offering it as part of their PS+ service or as a separated service?

Sorry for being dismissive, but what else do you want from your console other than playing better games better ? Seems like an unreasonable expectation that every console now has to revolutionize gaming. I don't know how many new PCs and consoles I've bought but it's never been for any other reason than "now I can play this great game and it doesn't perfom like crap".

On a more positive note though, I'd agree with others that full download support would be great, but it's not something I can't live without. I think consoles have just become too much like PCs at this point, so there isn't any major features to catch up on (like online or 3D). I guess there's possibly still multitasking, but that sorta goes against the philosophy of consoles.

More powerful engines allowing games to blur the lines between genres. I really liked how Sleeping Dogs had a good fighting mechanic next to the open world stuff. Games should branch out some more, more horsepower allows for that.

For the first couple of months the next-gen consoles won't offer us much more than a few "ooo's" and "aww's." Once developers begin to feel out the new hardware I think we'll see a rise in the intellice of AI, more objects on screen, and the normal graphical boost. I expect a lot of this movement non-sense (move & kinect) that will most likely flop and leave both companies desperate for Nintendo's next iteration.

new motion controls that don't work as well as they should and so no one uses them. Hopefully there will be better pc and xbox communication. The rumour of the new xbox using Skype would be great so that I could play my pc games and still be in an xbox live party.

You get much more than graphics out of more memory and processing power.

The AI, systems and mechanics going on in the background all use system resources.

Obviously as mentioned the games/engines are going to get better. Better graphics, AI, animations, physics, sound design, draw distances, objects on screen.

Whether you're into it or not, more social media intertwined into everything as well as being able to multitask no matter if you're in game or watching movies in the snap of a finger.

If ya ever read Bill Gates book "The Road Ahead" he dreamed of a all in one media box and since hearing about cable/dvr functionality I think that dream is becoming more of a reality.

The option of all digital games will probably be there of course considering all the hoopla we've been hearing about industry retail wars.

And if the next Xbox can make it look like it's snowing in my room that'd be cool too...

; )

Edit: Always excited to hear about the stuff that isn't obvious or we don't know/haven't thought of yet too.

More powerful hardware means games can do stuff we didn't think was possible. I remember the first time I saw Dead Rising. That game alone justified the (at the time) leap to Next Gen hardware with huge levels populated with hundreds of enemies at once. It was the first time new consoles made sense to me since I could see what new kinds of gameplay and genres could be opened up with new hardware.

I fully expect the same thing to happen again. I'll see a game that does something incredible (like Dead Rising did) and I'll say "Yeah, that's why we need new consoles."

@Oldirtybearon said:

More powerful hardware means games can do stuff we didn't think was possible. I remember the first time I saw Dead Rising. That game alone justified the (at the time) leap to Next Gen hardware with huge levels populated with hundreds of enemies at once. It was the first time new consoles made sense to me since I could see what new kinds of gameplay and genres could be opened up with new hardware.

I fully expect the same thing to happen again. I'll see a game that does something incredible (like Dead Rising did) and I'll say "Yeah, that's why we need new consoles."

Yeah this totally. People always think power just equals prettier but there are gameplay implications. Dead Rising was a great example of that last gen. No game before really felt like a zombie movie.

Think about how the Hitman series is basically the only games to actually do crowds justice. It'd be awesome if more games, with added power, did actual crowds.

I would love more games to have Natural Motion-esque animation like Rockstar uses.

You can also have more and better AI, larger areas with more going on in them, destructible environments, all kinds of stuff. I'm looking forward to that.

SSD drives, faster loading etc.

Pandora\Spotify\Xbox Music to be incorporated into custom playlists in sports\racing games.

Inbuilt game capture, so it's always recording the last 5 minutes or something on the fly but also have the option to turn it off as well.

Live tiles for Xbox dashboard, so on your main page you can have, Live Sports Scores, Weather, News with notification updates to be customized

better graphics. hopefully better AI made in games.

@mordukai said:

@BabyChooChoo said:

@mordukai said:

I am actually very interested to see how Sony will go forward with their PS+ service and if and how their recent purchase of Gaikai come into play.

Same. Don't have anything to add other than that.

Do you see them offering it as part of their PS+ service or as a separated service?

I could see them offering some additional benefits of the service as part of PS+, but I think it's in their best interest to make it available for everyone in it's basic form at the very least.

The new consoles are going to be even more focused on social media integration than they are now. This may be tiresome, or provide something genuinely useful that improves the experience.

I think, either way there will be a lot of talk about it.

Hopefully, better games.

The new consoles will provide the master race of gamers in the world something better... Better PC ports. The new consoles are going to be more closely related to consumer PC hardware which should mean the PC will be the best platform. Bow down to PC gamers, console peasants.

More RAM and processing power to render more expansive world and potentially smarter A.I.

If the rumours of 8 GB RAM of system memory total will turn out to be true, that's going to have a significant impact on what can be done in games. Pretty much all games, even on high end PCs, use up to 1,5 GB RAM and up to 2 GB of VRAM for a total memory footprint of 3,5 GBs (the vast majority of games is built far less taxing) - if next gen consoles will roughly double that, the gaming industry is going to blow minds, despite how a majority believes otherwise.

Other than that? I suspect that Sony and Microsoft will fully embrace the free 2 play business model. There's a lot of money to be made with microtransaction driven games, as games like League of Legends show. They'd be insane to ignore that. I'd be surprised if games like Planetside 2 don't lauch alongside the Playstation Omni.

Also - streaming. OnLive and Gaikai have been a proof of concept, and I'm certain that streaming content will be a big bulletpoint feature in the next generation's online services. I can even imagine that they'll let us stream local content from our consoles to handhelds, like iOS and Android devices, as well as the VITA and Microsoft's Surface tablets. Imagine playing a full Playstation Omni game on your 3G VITA on the go... heartbreakingly awesome!

@Seppli said:

If the rumours of 8 GB RAM of system memory total will turn out to be true, that's going to have a significant impact on what can be done in games. Pretty much all games, even on high end PCs, use up to 1,5 GB RAM and up to 2 GB of VRAM for a total memory footprint of 3,5 GBs (the vast majority of games is built far less taxing) - if next gen consoles will roughly double that, the gaming industry is going to blow minds, despite how a majority believes otherwise.

Other than that? I suspect that Sony and Microsoft will fully embrace the free 2 play business model. There's a lot of money to be made with microtransaction driven games, as games like League of Legends show. They'd be insane to ignore that. I'd be surprised if games like Planetside 2 don't lauch alongside the Playstation Omni.

Also - streaming. OnLive and Gaikai have been a proof of concept, and I'm certain that streaming content will be a big bulletpoint feature in the next generation's online services. I can even imagine that they'll let us stream local content from our consoles to handhelds, like iOS and Android devices, as well as the VITA and Microsoft's Surface tablets. Imagine playing a full Playstation Omni game on your 3G VITA on the go... heartbreakingly awesome!

The internet isn't fast enough for that, or at least most people don't have fast enough internet to do such a thing. Maybe you'll be able to stream gameplay to your Vita at home, but even then I can see some serious lag issues coming in. Also, OnLive failed pretty hard - it doesn't seem like something that anyone really wants. I know I don't, and I know I'm not alone in that.

It means less stunted console ports on the PC :)

A game like Assassin's Creed would not have been possible on the previous consoles. Similarly, I imagine the extra-large jump in hardware will allow for things that we can't even think of yet.

Thanks everyone. You've definitely given me a lot to think about when the next generation of consoles get here.

@manicraider: Better graphics, worse games for at least 2-3 years. Maybe like a really huge hard drive or something? Graphics won't be that much of an uptick I'd imagine (Witcher 2 will probably still be the best looking game for a few years) so the appeal is minor at best. It's good that people are stupid enough to buy launch consoles though, helps the industry out.

30% of the money you pay going to Sony/Microsoft instead of the devs

Less patches because they cost 10.000$ each for the dev

And of course the wonders to being forced to buy from "approved" retailers and all the other advantages that come with a closed OS installed on closed hardware

After reading that articlethat Patrick linked to I'm pretty excited for next gen. I'll most likely be getting the next Playstation first because the next Xbox is going to be setting a side a lot of processing power exclusively for unannounced stuff. My guess is that those things will be the next Kinect and whatever new gimmick they have in mind like the illumiroom thing which I don't care about. PS4 and PC will be all I need for a good bit, but even then I'll probably wait for the first price cut because my PC will still be strong for a while after looking at those specs.

In the end though PC will be getting the most benefits here, the architectures in both systems are a lot simpler and closer to PC which will allow better ports to be made more easily.

More DRM.

@Seppli said:

If the rumours of 8 GB RAM of system memory total will turn out to be true, that's going to have a significant impact on what can be done in games. Pretty much all games, even on high end PCs, use up to 1,5 GB RAM and up to 2 GB of VRAM for a total memory footprint of 3,5 GBs (the vast majority of games is built far less taxing) - if next gen consoles will roughly double that, the gaming industry is going to blow minds, despite how a majority believes otherwise.

Other than that? I suspect that Sony and Microsoft will fully embrace the free 2 play business model. There's a lot of money to be made with microtransaction driven games, as games like League of Legends show. They'd be insane to ignore that. I'd be surprised if games like Planetside 2 don't lauch alongside the Playstation Omni.

Also - streaming. OnLive and Gaikai have been a proof of concept, and I'm certain that streaming content will be a big bulletpoint feature in the next generation's online services. I can even imagine that they'll let us stream local content from our consoles to handhelds, like iOS and Android devices, as well as the VITA and Microsoft's Surface tablets. Imagine playing a full Playstation Omni game on your 3G VITA on the go... heartbreakingly awesome!

Looks like PS4 is going with 4 and the next Xbox is going with 8 but it's locking away 3 gigs of that of that for the system. Sony is using GDDR5 and Xbox is going with DDR3. Either way it's still somewhat good and finally gives a lot of room.

Is there some unofficial - official Orbis (PS4) and Durango (Xbox 8) specs rumor thread here on the forums? According to the the latest post CES rumors Orbis has an 8 core AMD Jaguar CPU @ 1.6 GHz, 7970M GPU @ 800 MHz with 18 compute units, 4GB GDDR5 RAM with 192GB/s bandwidth, and some extra special sauce module that no one so far really knows the function of. With respect to memory, 512 MB will be reserved for OS and the rest is for games. For reference, the current PS3 OS uses 50MB of memory.

There is currently not enough detailed information for Durango but all rumors are suggesting that it will somewhat less of a graphics powerhouse compared to Orbis. Durango has the same CPU (8 core Jaguar @ 1.6 GHz), 8GB of DDR3 RAM with 68GB/s bandwidth, and also some extra special sauce (possibly extra ESRAM with 102GB/s bandwidth). GPU is rumored to be a slightly weaker version of Orbis' 7970M with 12 compute units. The craziest rumor about Durango is it having 3GB of RAM reserved for the OS alone.

Overall these are monsters compared to current gen systems and when they come to the market the whole bar will be raised in the type of games that are possible. Improvement in horsepower means a lot more than just having nicer looking games. Additionally, we don't yet know about new types of interfaces that these machines will bring. Kinect 2.0 might be able to fulfill the promise of easy controller free game playing that Kinect 1.0 failed to achieve. And Sony currently is experimenting with touch screen controllers for PS4.

More

@K9: Here

That's about as solid as rumors can get.

The Orbis will be the tech powerhouse for the next gen, the next Xbox would have been a lot closer if it wasn't sealing a way a lot of power for it's own systems and unannounced apps (my guess is Kinect 2 and whatever else they got up their sleeve, maybe illumiroom)

Hopefully hardware video encoding to mirror out to smart glass or what have you, so you can seemlessly carry on playing when the significant other wants the main tv, like the best feature on the Wii U.

Biometric controllers might be introduced to the PS4 since their have been rumors about Sony dropping Dualshock controllers

Right now I feel like I'm making a compromise when I buy a console game because I like sitting on the couch to play, but I know the game would be cheaper and run better on PC.

So I'm happy with just a more powerful machine hooked up to the TV. I'm good with things looking better and running faster.

Of course I want creative, unique games instead of the same old, but I feel like we already have that... just not in the AAA space. We'll still have those games with a new console, and hopefully they'll run smoother.

Just a better experience overall, the PS3 is great but loading apps like the Store is a chore. So I guess the things I want out of the next consoles are better graphics, better A.I, better physics and quick load times in games and apps.

better multiplayer hopefully we can have an increase in the amount of players.

and hopefully better Ai but im not holding my breath

@DG991 said:

The new consoles will provide the master race of gamers in the world something better... Better PC ports. The new consoles are going to be more closely related to consumer PC hardware which should mean the PC will be the best platform. Bow down to PC gamers, console peasants.

I sometimes doubt that people are taking this whole "PC Master Race" joke as a joke (which, granted, was never that hilarious as some think).

Hopefully one day, Consoles will embrace the modding aspect of PC games. Designers all over the world populating and supporting games with new maps, items, trinkets, etc. That will be a glorious day if given the go. If no one else, I'll for sure do it one day.

I also had an idea of adding a multidisk changer into a system.... Cause I used to be lazy with having to switch out disks......Used to be. But imagine if all inserted disks were running simultaneously and you could switch between them on the fly. I would have loved something like that as a kid playing lots of multiplayer games.

• Graphics
• Processing power
• Games
• New infrastructure
• Faster loading
• Memory

All this adds up for better consoles with better games.

A chance to drool and spend money we already don't have :-P

@Colourful_Hippie said:

Looks like PS4 is going with 4 and the next Xbox is going with 8 but it's locking away 3 gigs of that of that for the system. Sony is using DDR5 and Xbox is going with DDR3. Either way it's still somewhat good and finally gives a lot of room.

Sony will do the same with its RAM though.

Initially the PS3 used approximately half of its 256MB of ram to run the OS. They have reduced that over time though.

And DDR5 Ram, Have you gotten a bit confused there? DDR4 has only just been nailed down and won't be commercially available til later this year or next year, DDR5 has probably literally just started being designed and that won't be out for at least 4 years. Now you could mean GDDR5 Ram, but 4GB of that is a bit of overkill for a Graphics Card, not to mention Sony have financial issues as it is.

8GB of DDR3, I can buy that because for one it is an actual component that exists. But 3GB of RAM for the OS, Windows 8 has been run on under 512mb and its fair to guess thats the base they will build their OS on and not being a PC a console theoretically has a lot less to do on the OS side of things unless of course they are gunning for a Media Center. Kinect won't come into it, originally Kinect had its own hardware built in but cost was a serious issue so they stripped it down the for 360 and had the 360 do the work. This time around they don't have the same issues, Kinect will likely be driven by its own hardware. I still can't buy the 3GB figure, its either future proofing or they literally stuck Vista on that thing.

The main problem of the PS3 was RAM, simple as. Cross Chat never happened because of it, its taken so long to get Skyrim in a reasonable state because of it. The last thing Sony want to do is screw up on RAM again.

Do I really need to explain that more power means more than fucking shaders to everyone? Literally everything that a game does except for content creation will be improved by additional power. Not only does that mean better textures and more shaders, but it means more advanced physics and AI, bigger more expansive worlds, and more densely packed experience.

IT'S ALL DONE ON THE BOX DUDE, IF THE BOX IS BETTER, THEN THE GAME HAS THE POTENTIAL TO BE BETTER.

Plus, they can work on a more modern infrastructure for digital distribution, major reinvention of the core software, stuff like that.

New media means more content in games.

I'll be happy if we get a loadless Fallout 4 though. That would honestly be enough for me.

nothing really