Won't consoles eventually be nearly identical?

[ManBearPig]

Even as soon as the next generation of consoles, won't they pretty much have the same stuff in them? Basically exclusives will be all that differentiate consoles (with even those getting rarer)...right?

 

[Anubis]

hopefully
and that is a good thing

 

[zerocool84]

It's all speculation at this point. There is nothing confirmed.

 

[Veliko]

To be honest the hardware inside a console is not something I care about.

It isn't the PowerPC CPU in the Xbox that makes me enjoy Halo Reach and it isn't the Cell CPU that makes me think Uncharted is bland and boring.

 

[BrightCandle]

It makes sense for them to choose an architecture close to what is current available from the PC space. Its dramatically cheaper, it'll perform better than an out and out custom build and the current software can be ported to it relatively quickly.

Both MS and Sony are likely to put some custom tweaks in there like with the last round, but I doubt they'll want to stray too far from the mainstream commodity hardware. Fancy attempts to get better performance like cell didn't really work out as an advantage. They may well stick with ARM/PowerPC instruction sets however as they cheaper to licence and manufacturer.

 

[purbeast0]

ps3 and 360 are kind of already like that from a graphical/game point of view.

the things that differentiate them are things big time (IMO) are the controls as well as the online experience. and xbox360 beats ps3 in this department by a long shot. any game available on both consoles i don't even consider purchasing on ps3, except if i want it on both consoles.j

additionally, i use my ps3 to watch media over my 360, because i find the quality there better on ps3 than the 360.

 

[Anteaus]

As it stands now, the 720 and PS4 will be virtually indistinguishable from a performance standpoint. It will ultimately be software, polish and various design decisions that will be judged. I think gamers can expect fewer exclusives with the exception of games that are published by the console developers themselves.

 

[BrightCandle]

If the 720 really does have 16 cores worth of processing in it there is a decent chance we'll start seeing CPUs with more cores as well. But I think after the debacle that was the PS3 and its cell processor architecture I think its unlikely they will go that way, making the machine only perform well with great programming aptitude is not a great way to win the market.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

I wouldn't think so. There's always going to be similarity between the consoles; the Genesis and SNES were remarkably similar, as were the PS2 and Xbox or PS3 and 360. But you're always going to have the "different" console like Neo-Geo or Jaguar or N64 or Wii which offers a different experience than what the other guys have. The graphics may not be as good, the controls will be strange, but they'll have a variety of games that just can't be done on the other systems. Ultimately, they probably won't be as good because of technical limitations, but they'll probably have that one killer app that hardcore gamers won't be able to get anywhere else.

 

[exdeath]

I wouldn't think so. There's always going to be similarity between the consoles; the Genesis and SNES were remarkably similar, as were the PS2 and Xbox or PS3 and 360.

No, they weren't. Lol.

SNES and Genesis were NOTHING alike. Sound sound chip in the SNES alone would kick a Genesis up and down the block. Put Street Fighter 2 or Mortal Kombat side by side and tell me the Genesis version didn't look like an Atari 2600 game or sound like a cat dying in a tin can behind a fan blade compared to the SNES. Hardware differences in those days were very clear cut, unlike today.

XBox was a PC and had a better graphics processor than PS2. XBox was a x86 CPU and GeForce GPU with unified memory while the PS2 was MIPS, custom vector units with their own memory and instruction sets and pack/unpack hardware, ridiculously powerful DMA controller and bus bandwidth centric architecture, etc. When I was into home brew I went with PS2 specifically to have fun with something new and unique because it was nothing like a PC, having "grown up" on x86 already.

360 and PS3 might be able to produce similar looking games when they are programmed lowest common denominator via a multi platform dev environment, thats about it; the two consoles are nothing alike under the hood. We aren't just talking CPU architecture, but the whole system. Once again the 360 is a multi core generic CPU with equal direct universal access to a shared universal memory, while the PS3 is once again a "packet streaming" DMA centric system with distributed memory blocks, etc. On the 360 you program a CPU in the usual PC fashion. On the PS3 the heart of the system is the DMA controller and ring bus, and the SPU cores are merely resourses to keep busy.

 

[Todd33]

They might be related internally more than ever, it all started this gen with the 360 CPU and the PS3 PPU. they will still differ enough that it could be interesting. Of course the 1st party games are what will set them apart. Nintendo and their crap, MS and Fable/Halo/Forza and Sony and their franchises.

 

[fr]

Nintendo will always have the worst performing one with the most shovelware.

 

[lamedude]

Wouldn't be a bad idea for MS to go the 3DO route with the Xbox eventually. Set the hardware, let everyone else build it and make $ off of XBL.

 

[viivo]

I look forward to the day Sony abandons the standalone console in favor of integrating them into their televisions. It really is the next logical step in the trend toward downsizing and simplification.

 

[Sulaco]

I look forward to the day Sony abandons the standalone console in favor of integrating them into their televisions. It really is the next logical step in the trend toward downsizing and simplification.

...and if you don't want to play on a Sony-branded television?

 

[viivo]

...and if you don't want to play on a Sony-branded television?

Too bad! Death to the unholy Samsung.

 

[mmntech]

I wouldn't think so. There's always going to be similarity between the consoles; the Genesis and SNES were remarkably similar,

The Genesis and the SNES were two entirely different animals. The idea behind the Genesis was to bring the arcade experience home. Thus it was based on the Sega System 16, a popular arcade board released in 1985. The same platform that gave us Golden Axe, Shinobi, and Altered Beast.

Technically, the Genesis hardware was already three years old when it launched, and five years old when the SNES launched. The SNES had more powerful hardware. That and it wasn't designed to replicate older arcade platforms like other systems of its era were.

 

[rayfieldclement]

I don't think the Gensis was behind the SNES in sound or graphics except some games I did not note. Try playing Sonic on a composite moniter with sound like I did. It is fantastic... Certain games will possibly go towards the SNES and some towards the Genesis.

 

[Doppel]

Probably rarer. I can only imagine that Halo on xbox and games like uncharted on pS3 are missing literally tens of millions of dollars in revenue they could get if they were allowed on the other console.

The best crop games right now have such huge budgets because they sell on multiple units.

Nintendo, if it remains substantially unable to play the same games as PC, xbox, ps, will keep getting sloppy seconds with its game budgets as well because the market is that much smaller than what it could be.

 

[wirednuts]

i dunno, everyone thought bluray players would be in every household but that couldnt be further from the truth- for any person that doesnt own a bluray player they do have some type of streaming service hooked up.

and i think thats where consoles are going. tune into channel 99 on your cable tv system and you pick what game you want to play. either $1 an hour or $49.99 to buy the game outright for unlimited play. nothing to install, just use your wireless game controller provided to you by the cable company that connects through your cable box.

i know we already have onlive, and im sure they will be around too... especially 10 years from now when most people have gigabit internet to their home.

it all just makes too much sense. people want features but they dont want extra hardware.

 

[Pr0d1gy]

I honestly think there won't be anymore consoles within a decade or so.

 

[reallyscrued]

Wouldn't be a bad idea for MS to go the 3DO route with the Xbox eventually. Set the hardware, let everyone else build it and make $ off of XBL.

You mean...a PC?

Jeez, it'd be insanely ironic if they end up doing that, they could've just not gone into the console business at all and invested that time and effort into keeping PC gaming from not sucking the the last decade.

They would just kind of made a 360.

 

[reallyscrued]

...and if you don't want to play on a Sony-branded television?

...you don't need a sony t.v. to play playstation games...

 

[Sulaco]

...you don't need a sony t.v. to play playstation games...

Read the post I was responding to.

 

[MrDuma]

i do think so and this is a good news just because we will have games on all of them for sure regardless of the release!