As all three manufacturers announce new consoles for release within the next three years, what can we expect from the next generation of consoles?
How have consoles and games grown in the last generation? A wider variety of controls like Kinect, Wii Remote and multi-touch; better social tools like Steam groups, friends lists and Facebook updates; a sideways leap into movie rentals, digital comic books and television services; even smaller, indie games like Braid, Limbo and Stacking have gone from being marginal titles to some of the biggest on the download stores.
Video games are changing fast and no-one is entirely sure what the next big step will be or when it will hit us. Consoles of the future are therefore in need of flexibility and reactivity, with as few stumbling blocks to unexpected change as possible. With that in mind, I'd propose the following improvements for the next wave of hardware:
1) Better integration of peripherals
Or better yet, just box them up and ship as standard. The initial mad rush of games for the Move has started to die down with little of interest on the horizon, while noteworthy games for the Kinect have dried up almost completely. Given the price and the initial hype, it's genuinely surprising just how fast the two peripherals have dropped off the radar.
Proper, full synching between the PS4/NGP and the Wii2/3DS would be a good start, especially given the utterly wasted opportunity that was Remote Play on the PSP, as would redesigning the Move to include all buttons from the DualShock 3 and packaging it as standard (the Kinect as well, on Microsoft's part). The flexibility of the Wii Remote is one of my favourite aspects of the controller; I'd like to think that we've passed the 'ooh, shiny new toy!' stage of motion control and can hit the new generation a little bit more sensibly.
2) More flexible updates
Sony is the main offender here, because while the PS3 was made to be updated, they clearly didn't quite foresee just how essential it would be. Having to update the entire firmware to the tune of several hundred meg for even a minor fix is unforgivable, and in the present climate of open-mindedness where sites (or concepts, if you will) like Twitter can gain sudden and total popularity, creating an OS that can be instantly reactive to these changes with no disruption to the user will be key.
3) Step off the horsepower for a bit
The Kinect didn't require a whole new system; neither did downloadable film and television services, Playstation Home or the already-creepy facial feature technology of LA Noire. From a cultural perspective, friends lists and download stores don't need any more power than they already have, while from the actual gaming side of things, there isn't anything glaringly deficient about games that a gigantic leap in technological breathing space is going to fix.
Video games have their problems, to be sure, but they lie in the realms of structure, characterisation and dialogue, not the complexity or quantity of objects we can render on-screen at once. New engine technologies like deferred rendering (for less pop-in and better detail) and tessellation (better real-time deformation, including skin details) will go a long way towards making games that much more real, but what of the gameplay itself? What bold new concepts have been proposed, what ideas and philosophies to challenge our very notions of the medium have we got to look forward to that current consoles can't achieve? Well... Absolutely none, that I can think of. This point is, again, probably for Sony more than others: giving devs more breathing room to sculpt their vision is no bad thing, but there's simply no need to burden them with too much. Enough extra power to ease current limitations is enough for now, hopefully pairing with lower launch prices this time around.
4) Bring in the third-party stores
All-digital downloads aren't quite with us yet, but while there have been hints of Microsoft allowing trades of second-hand Live titles between users with a cut of the profits going to them, the elephant in the room that is *whisper it* competition hasn't been addressed yet.
Gabe Newell has jammed a finger through Sony's iron curtain and lodged it in the PS3 pie, but there doesn't seem to be any hint of Steam being offered as a rival to the Playstation Store, on Sony's own console no less. But if the future is going digital, with full-size games like Mass Effect 2 sitting next to cheaper yet entirely profitable downloads like Castle Crashers, then all three console makers are going to have to suck it in and give other outlets an opening, whether they do it themselves or get forcibly dragged there by monopoly laws.
In closing...
It's been a time of enormous transition for video games as a culture, and while home consoles have done their best to keep up, none of their creators can have seen the explosive rate at which gaming has begun to change. Better engines and graphical updates have been among the least important developments this generation, and the next wave of consoles need to be purpose-built for the extra functionality they've sprouted, so we aren't lumped with endless firmware updates and peripherals with varying and flaky amounts of support.
These are all fairly expansive proposals, with plenty of leeway for interpretation and development, and with Nintendo confirming an LCD screen on their next controller, I'd say that all bets are off in regards to the specifics of the next gen. But whatever the outcome, whatever mind-blowing wonders we'll have seen by 2014, I'd ask all of the big three to heed my advice: there's fuck-all coming up that is in dire need of extra horsepower, so don't go crazy on upping the specs, repackage all your shit into one tightly integrated bundle and flog it for a touch less than £425 this time.
How have consoles and games grown in the last generation? A wider variety of controls like Kinect, Wii Remote and multi-touch; better social tools like Steam groups, friends lists and Facebook updates; a sideways leap into movie rentals, digital comic books and television services; even smaller, indie games like Braid, Limbo and Stacking have gone from being marginal titles to some of the biggest on the download stores.
Video games are changing fast and no-one is entirely sure what the next big step will be or when it will hit us. Consoles of the future are therefore in need of flexibility and reactivity, with as few stumbling blocks to unexpected change as possible. With that in mind, I'd propose the following improvements for the next wave of hardware:
1) Better integration of peripherals
Or better yet, just box them up and ship as standard. The initial mad rush of games for the Move has started to die down with little of interest on the horizon, while noteworthy games for the Kinect have dried up almost completely. Given the price and the initial hype, it's genuinely surprising just how fast the two peripherals have dropped off the radar.
Proper, full synching between the PS4/NGP and the Wii2/3DS would be a good start, especially given the utterly wasted opportunity that was Remote Play on the PSP, as would redesigning the Move to include all buttons from the DualShock 3 and packaging it as standard (the Kinect as well, on Microsoft's part). The flexibility of the Wii Remote is one of my favourite aspects of the controller; I'd like to think that we've passed the 'ooh, shiny new toy!' stage of motion control and can hit the new generation a little bit more sensibly.
2) More flexible updates
Sony is the main offender here, because while the PS3 was made to be updated, they clearly didn't quite foresee just how essential it would be. Having to update the entire firmware to the tune of several hundred meg for even a minor fix is unforgivable, and in the present climate of open-mindedness where sites (or concepts, if you will) like Twitter can gain sudden and total popularity, creating an OS that can be instantly reactive to these changes with no disruption to the user will be key.
3) Step off the horsepower for a bit
The Kinect didn't require a whole new system; neither did downloadable film and television services, Playstation Home or the already-creepy facial feature technology of LA Noire. From a cultural perspective, friends lists and download stores don't need any more power than they already have, while from the actual gaming side of things, there isn't anything glaringly deficient about games that a gigantic leap in technological breathing space is going to fix.
Video games have their problems, to be sure, but they lie in the realms of structure, characterisation and dialogue, not the complexity or quantity of objects we can render on-screen at once. New engine technologies like deferred rendering (for less pop-in and better detail) and tessellation (better real-time deformation, including skin details) will go a long way towards making games that much more real, but what of the gameplay itself? What bold new concepts have been proposed, what ideas and philosophies to challenge our very notions of the medium have we got to look forward to that current consoles can't achieve? Well... Absolutely none, that I can think of. This point is, again, probably for Sony more than others: giving devs more breathing room to sculpt their vision is no bad thing, but there's simply no need to burden them with too much. Enough extra power to ease current limitations is enough for now, hopefully pairing with lower launch prices this time around.
4) Bring in the third-party stores
All-digital downloads aren't quite with us yet, but while there have been hints of Microsoft allowing trades of second-hand Live titles between users with a cut of the profits going to them, the elephant in the room that is *whisper it* competition hasn't been addressed yet.
Gabe Newell has jammed a finger through Sony's iron curtain and lodged it in the PS3 pie, but there doesn't seem to be any hint of Steam being offered as a rival to the Playstation Store, on Sony's own console no less. But if the future is going digital, with full-size games like Mass Effect 2 sitting next to cheaper yet entirely profitable downloads like Castle Crashers, then all three console makers are going to have to suck it in and give other outlets an opening, whether they do it themselves or get forcibly dragged there by monopoly laws.
In closing...
It's been a time of enormous transition for video games as a culture, and while home consoles have done their best to keep up, none of their creators can have seen the explosive rate at which gaming has begun to change. Better engines and graphical updates have been among the least important developments this generation, and the next wave of consoles need to be purpose-built for the extra functionality they've sprouted, so we aren't lumped with endless firmware updates and peripherals with varying and flaky amounts of support.
These are all fairly expansive proposals, with plenty of leeway for interpretation and development, and with Nintendo confirming an LCD screen on their next controller, I'd say that all bets are off in regards to the specifics of the next gen. But whatever the outcome, whatever mind-blowing wonders we'll have seen by 2014, I'd ask all of the big three to heed my advice: there's fuck-all coming up that is in dire need of extra horsepower, so don't go crazy on upping the specs, repackage all your shit into one tightly integrated bundle and flog it for a touch less than £425 this time.
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