Well the onset of a new era is among us, and three contenders have so far set foot upon the path of digital evolution. We have the Wii U, an interesting concept in theory, but in execution it has so far been a failure. I think we all will agree that its biggest issue is that its just not that capable of an console. They seek to replicate the performance of the Wii, and the fact that even though it was severally under-powered, it still sold like hotcakes. Can Nintendo strike gold twice, and extend their control of the market with yet another under-powered console. Facts say no.
Sadly and unfortunately for Nintendo, times have changed. When the Wii was used it was novel and the HD era was not fully upon us let, so it was able to get a grip into the market among casuals based on its motion controls, and the lack of power wasn't a huge sigificent because HD television had not let really gained a massive foothold, and the industry wasn't quite graphics driven. Now things are different, every console has some slight small gimmick to it, and the HD revolution is here and with it, the expected draw towards high-end graphical presentations and physic engines. A console that is just barely more powerful than current consoles is not going to be successful any longer,and I think we can all see that. Further more with devs pushing forward on developing vastly expensive high-end graphic engines, there really will be little wiggle room moving forward for Nintendo to capitalize on here.
Sony has seemly learnt from its pass mistakes, and instead of pushing forward with the CELL or investing into another exotic and ultimately unwieldy architecture, have became pragmatic and have wisely listened to devs and went with a more conventional architecture. This is good in theory, but there is one caveat here. It is being rumored that both the PS4 and the new next generation Xbox share the same architecture. This is a really nice turn for the Developers, it means if true we will see total parity across the board on ports and the quality of exclusives, but it also means we will see little differences between the two game wise. This fact is already self evident just by looking at what we know of each so far game wise, both the PS4 and 720 are releasing with the usual spread of racers, FPS, and a token third person game. Pretty ho hum.
The divergence point so far it seems to be, is based on the differences in philosophy the two are taking in regards to their consoles. It seems Sony is hell bent on delivering a console that is fully integrated and based upon the social aspects of gaming, its a very mobile gaming like focus that could go in anyway. hen there is Gakai, this is going to be a huge difference maker, if Sony can deliver on it.
Then we have MS. I think we all have heard the "always connected" hubris, and the out-lash about it. Will this actually be the deathstroke some unwisely predict it to be if true. I am not so sure myself. We have been conditioned this last gen with everything from XBL Gold to Online passes to constant updates and DLC to accept such such a condition, and because of this I am just not confident that the next MS console having to always be connected will really affect it at all. To further add cred to this is the real Elephant in the room, the SteamBox. People seem overly excited about the prospects of it, let it would also be a similar positioned always connected console. Why the excitement about one but not the other? Cannot help but think a bit of console bias and fanboyism at play here. I keep hearing how steps like this will gurantee Sony leadership next gen much like they had before in the PS2 era, but that is never going to happen due to the reasons I listed. no company will ever have a position like that again.
What would hurt the new MS console though, is if the rumors that it is based around the Kinnect are correct. I think no one wants another gimmicky console, that is going to be the real stumbling block for MS if true.
Then there are the PS3 and XB360 plans for the future, contrary to what some less knowledgeable people might think, both should be here for quite some time. Sony has game plans for up until fall of 2014, and MS has a new hardware revision of the XB360 due this holiday to coincide with the release of the XB720.
