8th generation console will not be coming out 2010, 2011, 2012 or even 2013…
None of the major players (Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony) have any reason to release a new console at the moment).
Nintendo:
Currently the Wii is the dominate console of the 7th generation. Announce a new console now, will cause their system sales and game sales to tail off as people will start to wait for the next generation console instead of buying the current one.
Nintendo does have a huge hardware problem. The hardware in the Wii is essentially upgrade hardware from the Nintendo Game Cube, which mean a lot of it is rather old now. The Wii’s CPU clocks in at 729MHZ (while the PS3, and Xbox 360, both clock in at 3200MHZ). The Wii has 24MB internal Video Ram, and 64MB of external Video Ram. While the PS3, and Xbox360 both have 512MB of Video ram. The Wii also does not have the online connectivity that the Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 has.
While I think Nintendo would love to have the Wii last 10 years before they have to put a new console out there, the fact that their hardware is ancient kind of prevent that from happening. I expect Nintendo will announce the Wii2 (or what ever they call it) in 2011, and ship it out in 2013.
Microsoft:
Microsoft and Nintendo released their 7th generation console a year after the Sony PlayStation 2 and they both got owned. (PS2 sold 138 million units, Xbox sold 24, and Game Cube 22). This lead Microsoft to release their Xbox 360 as early as they could (a mere 3 years after the original Xbox came out).
Microsoft is in a unique position, the future of gaming is online and Microsoft capsized on that early with Xbox Live, Sony is still playing catchup to Microsoft, and Nintendo hasn’t even made an attempted. Microsoft is working on their next generation console, but will not release it until someone else make an announcement first (most likely Nintendo).
The Xbox 1080 (or what ever they call the replacement) will probably have similar hardware to the Xbox 360. With an large Internal Hard drive and a Blu-Ray player. I expect Microsoft to make an announcement in 2012 with a release date of 2014.
Sony:
Sony has major problems. Sony cannibalize their the PlayStation 3 to push Blu-ray on the masses. They took huge huge losses on pushing the system out, with the assumption that they will remain the dominate player no matter what…. And that didn’t happen. Sony went from being able to demand thing from game studios to looking like the drunk homeless guy on the corner of the street telling you your going to hell..
Sony has no reason to let out a new console until Microsoft and Nintendo announce theirs. They will try to beat Microsoft launch date, and price. Hardware wise I don’t except much, I expect pretty much the exact same new hardware with a new name. I expect Sony to make the announcement the same week as Microsoft with a similar start date.
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I don’t see a problem with postponing the next wave of consoles a few years. I mean, in the mid/late 90s we had new consoles every year or so and it was ridiculous. Now consoles cost about 3x as much as they used to and no one wants to upgrade.
Something to remember about Sony is that actually they aren’t doing too badly. Firstly, the PS2 still sells really well and people forget that plus the PS3 is doing a lot better now. They basically used it to win the HD war so it was probably a smart move for them in the long run.
Well I think Sony is doing well. At least they started to do well by 2009. But my personal point of view is this;
Firstly, what kind of machines will we adress as “8th generation” ? I mean, is “project natal” a parameter to call a device as 8th gen ? Or Sony’s upcomming “wand” ??
I think, Microsoft and Sony will release thier “natal” and “wand” in end2010- mid.2011 and at the same time, Nintendo will announce HD Wii with motion capture add on kit apart from their wii remote + and maybe with a blue-ray added in.
If my forecast becomes real, all 3 devices will some how become equivalent so we can adress them as 8th generation ( Full body Motion capture, HD ( 1080P) , Blue ray media . Today in 7th generation era, 3 competitors have either of the 3 features partially. The console which posseses all, will be adressed as 8th generation… and it is soon…
Natal and Wand would both be part of the 7th generation because there on 7th generation hardware.
Third generation = NES
Forth Generation = Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis
Firth Generation = PS1, N64, Sega Saturn
Sixth Generation = PS2, GameCube, Xbox, Dreamcast
7th Generation = PS3, Wii, Xbox 360
New software that run on the 7th generation hardware would still be part of the 7th generation. The 8th generation would be when someone announce a new console who game can not be played on the console before it. (You can’t put a Wii game in a GameCube).
actually wii has WiFi built in, although it does suck.
Wii are working on a new crystal to make into a disk, able to store a terabyte on a normal disk, and have copyrighted it. This would make the graphics and engine much better than the other consoles, and blow Sony out of the water as far as software is concerned
I agree, Jake. And uh the guy who wrote this whole topic, uh idk if you knew, but the wii has sold about twice as much as the Xbox and the PS3…
Pc is already 9th gen!!!
@We Fly Spitfires
December 31st, 2009 at 5:02 am
When were consoles about 3x less expensive? Atari Jaguar started at 250 bucks in 1993, Sega Genesis started at $190, SNES was at $199 and the others weren´t any cheaper. 3DO even costed $699 at its launch. And US dollar isn´t what it used to be u know, so actually game consoles are cheaper to buy today than they used to be in nineties. Please, check your facts before you post nonsense, there is enough of it on the internet already.
The 8th Generation consoles will not be running the same or similar hardware that is currently on the latest consoles, that techoology is outdated 10fold now, considering AMD have just launched its first 6core processor… im not saying that these will be in the next gen consoles but, considering theyre coming out 7,8,9 years after theyre predecessor their output is gonna be considerably more than before.
And of course this writeup was in no way anti-Sony and completely unbiased [/end sarcasm]
You completely missed Sony’s aim with PS3 and Blu-Ray. There was a big war going on over the next video format, DVD-HD or Blu-Ray. Whoever won the battle would reap huge rewards.
I believe Sony’s aim right from the start was to ensure that Blu-Ray won this battle no matter what the cost. Hence their need to push out this new technology as fast as possible. They were selling the machines far cheaper than they should (the first standalone Blu-Ray player cost over a thousand pounds!). But it all paid off, Blu-Ray won out and all the film companies decided to support it.
As of today PS3 sales are not that far behind XBox. Wii trumps both of them in sales. But its the success of Blu-Ray that secured Sony’s future.
Laurence you have a point. But if your are assuming that Sony is making more money from Blu-Ray licensing than they make off of video games your wrong.
First the Blu Ray is not 100% owned by Sony, 1 or 2 other companies own a %. This means any profit sony makes off Blu Ray has to be shard. License wise Sony is only making a 50 to 100 cents per disk. If 50 million blu rays are sold and Sony make 1 buck per disk, Sony make 50 million bucks.. Remember that number.
Game consoles are sold at a loss, because they sell a license per disk to make a game for that console. Currency Sony Charges 10-15 bucks per new PS3 game. (The PS2 licenses for new games was about 5 bucks, which is why new PS3 games cost 59.99, and PS2 game 5 years ago only cost 49.99, also not Nintendo didn’t increase there fee so all Wii games still come out at 49.99). If 5 million PS3 games are sold and Sony makes 10 bucks per game… So makes 50 million bucks.
Now imagine if PS3 sold as well as the PS2 (over 120 million console sold). Over the last 2 years the average PS3 user has bought 4.4 game http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/11/xbox-360-bests-rivals-on-games-sold-per-console-metric.ars
If Sony has sold 120 million p3, and they bought 4.4 games over 2 years, sony get 10 bucks each… That 5.2 Billion in licensing fees over a 2 year period… That a huge amount of money.
For Sony to make that same amount of money per blu ray disk they would have to sell 5.2 Billion blu-ray (games/movies) over 2 years. And that assuming there getting 1 buck per disk (there probably get much much less than that).
So yes Blu-Ray won the battle. But at the cost of the Console division which make a ton more money than the blu-ray division can ever hope to make.
Um, isn’t this article contradicting another you wrote, indicating that the eighth generation was around the corner?
I agree with that statement, and all the concerns listed above cannot contradict the pressure these competitors place on each other in the race to put out the next generation and enjoy the glut of sales it generates.
Coming out first doesn’t mean coming in first, but the other companies can’t wait long to put theirs out.
The article about 8th generation console that is a year old, was before the economic melt down of 08. That completely changed everything.
First of all… Bluray HAS beat out Hd-dvd. Second of all the Wii should never EVER be mentioned in the same paragraph as the xbox 360 and the PS3. Nintendo sold out and decided to market their product to the casual gamer… Kind of like how Disney went from cartoons to real people so that they could sell sex to little children. The Wii, hardware wise, is absolutely awful. That being said, the ps3 is a much better system than the xbox 360 (believe me.. I own both). The reason that xbox 360 has sold more in the past years is not because Microsoft doesn’t offer a bluray in their console, or free online, or built in wifi… The reason thay have sold more is because the launch games for the ps3 were absolutely awful, but there much better now. So there you have it: Wii is for the sellouts, xbox 360 is for the fans of certain games, and ps3 is for the hardware freaks. The End.
Rick,the 360 is more for sellouts than wii. Some of the biggest games the 360 has to offer are Halo, Gear of War, Modern Warfare. They’re the same game with different guns and locations. Wii has opened the gaming world for any type of gamer, the fact they make lots of casual games isn’t selling out more allowing non-gamers to get in on the action. Nintendo have always been about bringing new technologies and innovative ways to play and allowing anyone of any age to play any kind of game. Instead of like Xbox and PS, just trying to out-do each other.
this debate has been on and on ever since the ps1,,,people think that just because the company is makin’ profit it means that they’re not gonna release a new system,,each and every company has competitors all over their a**,,they make profit so do their competitors,,true,the wii is makin’ a lot,,still microsoft has just announced Kinect which is the same concept of the wii’s controller but without any,,and with the Kinect having blockbuster games like Forza III comin’ on it with even a cheaper price than the wii,,it won’t stand a chance,which forces them to release a new one with better hardware..
Like Johhny said- “…Xbox and PS, just trying to out-do each other.”
The Wii is the only different console. I’m not a big fan of motion controls, but the Wii has different games. While the PS3 and 360 are at each others throats, the Wii feasts upon the casual gamer.
The only true difference between the PS3 and 360 are the features. The free PSN online is going against Live. In my opinion, Live wins. But then we have XMB versus the Dashboard. The XMB comes out on top.
As for the Wii, it’s on a different level. Nintendo is running on this console like how MicroSoft runs on Halo. But if the fans buy it, they’ll keep selling it.
All in all, it depends on preference. And for the record, they need an 8th gen console that is retro, 8-bit style.
well i think that the ps3 could have a turnaround on xbox in the few next years with its playstation move and Little Big Planet 2 and its future projects. It was always a great system it just had TERRIBLE marketing and was rushed. maybe then xbox will try a new console. nothing new for awhile now with the new 360 and kinect. i wonder how this long uprgrading war will last.
I kinda look at the 7th generation in the same light as I do Windows Vista; Built in questionable ways to try new things. I think the 8th generation will benefit from this the same way Windows did. Windows 7 capitalizes on the matured technologies of Vista, and does it ‘right’. I see the same future for the next gen consoles. The ‘upgrade war’ is, in an abstract sense of the phrase, creating hideous monstrosities (See: Vista), trying to push their products further and further, adding this and that in an attempt to beat out everyone else in everything their product can compete in. 360 and PS3 have had several revisions to their products. A little table!
360
—
Original: Core, Premium 20gb
2nd set: Arcade 256mb, Premium 60gb
3rd set: Arcade 512mb, Elite
4th set: ‘Super’ Elite, S, S 4gb
(I’m not as familiar with PS3, so I’ll just list them)
PS3
—
20gb
Premium (60gb)
40gb
80gb (2 versions)
160gb
Slim 120gb
Slim 250gb
Yes, I realize it only states the hard drive size and not any real revision in hardware for all but the slims, but that’s thanks to Sony for not giving them any real namesake indicator for an improved revision. They use the same nonsensical tactics that hard drive makers use in order to specify a better product: capacity. While anyone with experience in such things knows what makes HDD C better than HDD D, a casual person just picks up the bigger is better insinuation. Anyways!
I see the upgrade war as more than just an arms race, while that’s all it really is, it will benefit us consumers in the long run, cause companies will see what we like, and what works. And more importantly, what doesn’t work. -Cough- Power glove.