No 'next gen' consoles until 2013, analyst claims
But HD Wii may land next year
Anyone unimpressed by the capabilities of the PlayStation 3 or the Xbox 360 may have to wait another four years before a superior generation of consoles hits the market, an analyst has forecast.
Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Morgan, recently said in an industry newsletter how “the ‘next’ generation [of games consoles] will begin after 2013”.
His view is based on the belief that game publishers will “resist” introduction of any new console hardware requiring a software refresh until such time, because they’ve “yet to capitalise on the immense investments made in being competitive in the current cycle”.
But Pachter, who’s previously lent his opinion on everything console cost-related, has also predicted the introduction of an HD Wii next year.
His forecast may not be too far wide of the mark. Gaming sources have already claimed that Nintendo will introduce an HD-capable Wii – thought to feature more powerful core hardware and on-board storage – before 2011. ®
COMMENTS
The Playstation 4 will be released quite soon
I am confident that the Playstation 4 will be released quite soon. However, it will not be a next generation console. Instead its reason for existance will be to cut Sony's manufacturing costs. The cost saving will be achieved through the use of at least 512 Mb of cheap DDR2 memory in place of the slightly faster but very expensive 256 Mb of general purpose memory in the Playstation 3.
The reason for my certainty is that the only new document to appear in the whole of 2008 in the IBM Cell Processor web site was:
http://www-01.ibm.com/chips/techlib/techlib.nsf/techdocs/1741C509C5F64B3300257460006FD68D
This document includes helpful bars which show what has changed since the previous version. Pretty much the only change is to add an on-chip DDR2 memory interface to the Cell processor.
What I am also hoping is that the yield of the Cell processor chip is now so good that the number of Synergistic Processor Elements avalable for game writers or linux programmers will be increased from 7 to 8 in the Playstation 4.
From talking to a Sony employee I think that Sony once had plans to greatly increase the number of SPEs in the Playstation 4. However, a lack of funds has forced the Playstation 4 to be redefined as a cheaper to manufacture Playstation 3.
A problem that developers currently have in porting games from the XBOX 360 to the Playstation 3 is that XBOX 360 games are written to use the full 512 Mb of general purpose memory in the XBOX 360. It will be easier to port games from the XBOX 360 to the Playstation 4 because of the Playstation 4's increased general purpose memory capacity.
I dunno
It might not be far off the mark. If Microsoft wanted to bring something else to the market in the next two years I am sure they would have mentioned it by now. And Sony are committed to their 10 year project.
Paris? I am sure that she will hawk her booty on the market again before then.
HD or not....
I don't like pushing tiny buttons on bulky xbox/ ps3 controllers or exhausting my energies on a wii, a PC is on the otherhand offers perfect sized most natural controls, crisp graphics and the best games so I am in no rush to buy any consoles nextgen HD or not
