A Survey of the Emerging Next-Gen Landscape: More Power and Big Changes
With E3 2012 right around the corner (June 5-7) the Internet has been buzzing with rumors, speculation and even emerging facts about the next generation of consoles. Among the more obvious and/or well-known developments (of course we know the next generation of systems will be more powerful), there are some developments that are quite surprising as well, and could have dramatic consequences for the future of the video game industry. Read on to find out.
In January, Nintendo ventured that the market is waiting for next generation consoles. Citing declining sales of the Wii, Xbox 360, and the Playstation 3, Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata indicated that our current generation of game consoles was winding down and that gamers were ready for new home consoles. Nintendo’s own sales have been on the decline, with a disappointing turnout for their first party titles. Luckily, Nintendo has plenty to offer with this year’s console.That’s right, the Wii U is planned to launch at the end of this year, probably in time for the holidays. The next generation is coming up fast. The Wii U will feature HD graphics at 1080p and its games should have comparable graphics to those of the PS3 and Xbox 360. You’ve probably seen plenty of the new controllers as well, which will feature built-in touch screens that can continue to display the game even after the TV is turned off. Nintendo always does very clever things with their peripherals, so it will be interesting to see what they do with this one.
Another notable change Nintendo has planned is an implementation of the Nintendo Network, a more robust internet service that will probably have some similarities with Xbox Live and the Playstation Network. Nintendo stressed that it will be pursuing ethical treatment of the downloadable content portion of their games, which is refreshing to hear from a company, seeing as how gamers have experienced various shenanigans with DLC over the past few years. Wii fans will also be glad to know that the Wii U will be backward compatible with Wii games and peripherals.
As for the next Playstation console, Sony announced weeks ago that it wouldn’t be making any next-gen console presentations at this year’s E3. This is not to say that Sony is dropping out of the console wars. Sony maintained very early on that they intended for the PS3 to have a 10-year lifespan, and considering the impressive life of the Playstation 2, the Playstation 3 will most likely enjoy a similar run as well. It looks as though Sony is going to kick back, keep an eye on the market, and continue promoting the Playstation 3 (both the PS3 and the 360 recently became profitable products for their respective owners). Expect Playstation 4 to come out sometime after the Wii U and Xbox 720 come to market.
Speaking of the Xbox 720, there have been some rumors circulating (many of them with some factual basis) about Microsoft’s next-gen system and its attributes. Many expect the system to be unveiled at E32012, with an actual market release of the console around 2014 or 2015. Microsoft, like Sony, is estimating a 10 year lifespan for their console. As for the hardware, it is expected that the Xbox 720 will have six times the processing power of the 360 and is going to be built around a Radeon HD 6670-like GPU, though the specifics of the hardware could change. Given Microsoft’s aggressive promotion of the Kinect peripheral and its success with casual gamers, the 720 will probably feature an increased emphasis on Kinect technology. And get this: it looks like the 720 will be using Blu-ray.
So far I’ve just been describing the rumored attributes of the next-gen systems. What about the big changes? Well there have been several developments in the video game and the tech industry in general that could indicate the directions the next-gen systems will be going in the upcoming years. Cloud storage and digital distribution have been making inroads as a new media model. Data itself is becoming increasingly trafficked and stored over the Internet. Digital distribution systems and cloud storage also give companies more control over their software for the most part, which will help against piracy, so expect the industry to move further in that direction. These changes could be really convenient. It is nice to be able to download a game right from your console and having the game ready to go without any runs to the store or having to worry about DVDs. Also it would be nice not having to worry as much about the limitations of a hard drive, as well. Your games and your save data would be up in the cloud, where you can access them wherever and whenever you want. The Xbox 720 may even run on Windows 8, for example, which would network with its Window Phone and Windows PC systems to give the gamer a unified media experience. This is all just speculation, of course; we’ll probably be dealing with physical drives and Blu-ray discs with the next generation. But again, this seems to be the direction the tech industry in general is going.
This trend could have dramatic consequences for the consumer and the retail industry as well. Sony is planning on releasing cheaper downloads of Vita games simultaneous with the game cartridges (which can become used games) and Microsoft is considering protections on their Xbox 720games to discourage or even eliminate reselling. So the used video game market as we know it could be eliminated. This places more control of prices and distribution in the hands of companies like Sony and Microsoft. Of course, the downloadable games will be cheaper, but will they depreciate as fast as used games? And gamers won’t be able to sell their games to get used ones. In a weak economy, this could actually hurt the video game industry itself as several commenters have explained (with some well articulated and strongly worded opinion pieces no less). It is not apparent what Microsoft will do, as taking measures against used games could provoke a strong backlash. But as suggested above, this is the direction the industry is going in anyways.
So most of these changes concern infrastructure and video game delivery and storage. What about the games themselves? Will the changes in gameplay be as dramatic as the changes of the last generation? It is safe to say that this will be the case. With upgraded computing power we will see incredible graphics, highly dense and interactive worlds, better story-telling and character expressions and more. Developers everywhere most likely have all sorts of gameplay ideas that can’t be implemented until they have more hardware power to work with. It is hard to tell for sure what the next generation of games will look and like; just expect great things. We’ll be exploring these issues in depth when E3 comes around this year.
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