Top 7 Features Of Next-Gen Game Consoles

If it goes the route of thin client then the price should be way under $200. The basic Onlive game system sells for $99 and includes one game. It may end up going the shame route has mobile phone the p[hone is free with a contract.

Never happen, (no physical discs) you cant go out and buy someone downloadable content for Christmas/Birthdays can you. Thats where a hell of a lot of the sales come from. There is no way they will reduce the client base to such a degree.If only those who own the PC can actually get the games i would think they loose at least half of the prospective sales base.

Honestly, I dont wan't any of these things (except still using disks) to happen to the next console. Onlive is only a good idea if fast enough internet is affordable and avaliable, and neither is the case here. Even if I had a suitable connection, it would always be faster to be running a game locally, theres just no way to make input lag over something like 500 miles comprable to input lag over something like 3 feet. I guess its just me, but I see zero good things about the whole cloud computing thing from the users standpoint... you have no control over your system or how it runs things, or limited control, theres always lag, you need the internet constantly, you are pretty much guaranteed a recurring fee (from my perspective, a recurring fee on a console means something like $20 a month, until I die, and that adds up to quite a hefty premium over $500 once), you don't even have direct access to whatever data you choose to save, and thats just what I could come up with in a few minutes. On the other hand, cloud computing is great for buisness, we can do the same thing, only make the users consoles behave entirely on our terms, charge the same price per game but not have to bother printing disks or boxes, establish our company as critical to the users lives if they decide to store all of their social networking stuff and personal music/movie collections on our servers (people really do like facebook, I'll never understand why...), and on top of all of this, we get to charge a montly fee...
I don't know about anyone else, but I'd rather get a game console to play games. Anything else included in a console only bloats the platform (and its price) at best, and is taking away from what could be more power for running games at worst. A game console that tries too hard to be something else just isn't going to be as effective as a console as one that only tries to play games. You can't have everything, no matter what sony and microsoft seem to think. (I guess nintendo fits here too, but while the wii is technically just a game console it doesn't fill the same role as the ps3 and 360 do, i.e. its mostly for party games and gimmicky games, not that thats all bad, but its a different type of system)
Why would I want to play any of the traditional types of games with a kinect-like system? Racing or fps with no controller, yeah, that'll work... Kinect does not target what has been known as videogames for the past 20 years. Kinect targets the same audience as the wii. party games, cheap gimmicks, and the *extremely* rare serious game. "Normal" videogames just have too many inputs happening too quickly to easily be controlled with a motion controller. Not to say that controllers will remain exactly like they are now, but no one is going to be controlling something like gran turismo or starcraft with a motion controller. lets see you sucesfully input 200 commands a minute, for several hours, with a motion controller without dying of exaustion or getting bored of repeating the same gesture over and over.
As far as integrated cpu's and gpu's go, I'll believe it when someone can combine the equivalent of a gtx 480 and an i7 on one chip without it overheating. Technically, there are performance benefits to combining the two, but it requires an entire platform redesign, not just cramming two things into what should be your processor. It might be useful on consoles though, because they can (and usually do) consist of a single, unchanging, layout, so putting *all* of the components into the same package could be doable. Trying to cram gpu functions into a processor and not provide performance that can replace the gpu entirely doesn't make sense (why not just improve the processor alone and let gpu manufacturers add to the gpu), but combining the gpu, processor, motherboard, ram, solid state memory (because its hard to integrate a hard drive with a circutboard...) and everything else onto a single, more efficient platform makes sense. Intel can go ahead and add gpu functionality to a cpu, but until both of those pieces can outperform dedicated ones, I'm not interested. Since dedicated gpu's and processors mostly just have a space advantage, why not make the combined set simply use just as much space so it can be just as powerful... I realize there are more technical issues than that, but my point is that it does not make sense without a platform redesign, which no one appears interested in doing.
Hybrid storage isnt a bad idea, really, and unlike cloud based services it's possible it won't be a burden to those who have no need for more than a reasonable amount of storage (I like to have "real" copies of my movies, but even if I didn't a console wont provide the same experience as a dedicated theatre system, and thus your movies would be dealt with there.) as far as music goes, 500gb of music is roughly 180 solid days of music, why anyone would want that much or more is beyond me. Pictures either get printed or stored on a desktop computer, not on a gaming console...
Basically, I have no reason to need more storage than what is avaliable at an affordable price right now, and, while consoles may want me to install more and more data to run games, because we just dont have the infrastrcture to do away with physical media yet this isnt likely to impact how much space one needs on a console for awhile.
Drives don't have to be disk drives, we could even possibly see companies releasing games on "cartridges" that are actually what are now cheap hdd's of relatively small capacity, that are just attached and removed like the old cartridges were. Either way, there just isn't the internet speed avaliable to not need hard copies of things sometimes, and as long as companies continue to charge for wireless internet access we aren't all going to have a constant connection and definitely don't want to pay a recurring fee to replace one-time fees for physical media. Plus, I personally like to collect games in their original packaging, and many people still buy collectors editions. Digital methods are nice, but unless someone decides that digital copies can actually be sold for less because they cost more or less nothing to reproduce and ship theres no reason for me to buy a digital copy, that I have virtually nothing to show for, over a hard copy.
Lower power consumption is kind of a given, the better technology gets the more efficient it will be, and *possibly* the cheaper it will be. To keep up with advances, consoles need to be near the top of the line when they release, and that isn't always cheap. From a marketing standpoint though, it obviously isn't a good idea to release a console for $600 to a market mainly consisting of young people, generally students, who in general won't have $600 to spend in a year, let alone on a single game console.

Long rant, I know, but the direction videogames and technology in general is taking is making me seriously worried about an industry in the future that's only good for big buisness and that as a result will lose customers and fall apart. Even worse, it seems like most people don't realize this, or just don't care, leaving people like myself to effectively have to choose between a system that is working against me or just not using technology at all, hardly an appealing future.

Wow, that was much longer than it needed to be, pity there does not appear to be an edit button for comments. Sorry for more or less posting another article as a comment... I was bored and needed to pass 15 minutes of time.

cloud computing is many many years away (5+), due to the simple fact that 99.9% of internet users are still on very slow connections (compared to the data rate you would need to run games/apps).

And as more and more companies allow streaming content the faster and faster the connection must be.

Say you live in house (like most families) with one connection and say 3 computers all accessing different streaming content (ain't going to work. suddenly your 50mb connection needs to 150mb's and so on).

Then there is the fair usage cap that most if not all ISP's slap onto connections (e.g. 60% speed reduction after 4GB at peak time).

And if Data rates become to large ISP's will simple start charging per 1Gb downloaded.

Cloud computing is a stupid idea IMO (server goes down everybody stops working)

I could spend all night listing the problems

The only thing among this list that will be there in the next gen of consoles is the keeping disc part. Seriously what this article is doing in a serious site like this one???? It only reflects the lack of knowledge of the writer. NOTHING of this makes any sense and i won t waste my time explaining why if you knew this industry at all you would never have written this article in the first place. Shame on you.

We welt it a good idea? Welt?

Followed by

NO THANKS! I love collecting games. This all would suck, I will never want to depend 100% on my internet connection for gaming. Part of the cool factor of gaming is the console itself. I for one love the amount of tech these consoles have and to think it could all be gone, replaced by some cloud gaming service would suck. I mean what if my internet drops? No games! It looks like I might be sticking with my PS3 and its Blu-rays.

Zomg plz get rid of disk media. Im so tired of the kids losing, scratching, playing frizbee, etc. They are a very archaic and sentimental, not so dissimiliar to the Flintstones jogging underneath thier car to make them go.

What i would like to see in the next generation of consoles is cross platform multiplayer. Think about people that have an xbox owning ps3 users in COD. awesome

As other have posted, cloud/onlive is a dead duck until every country has broadband setup like its electricity supply, i.e. it actually works and is supplied. But thats still only half the battle.

The US is one of the worst catered for countries for broadband infrastructure, partly due to its size, geology and lack of a centralised telecoms provider. Thats your no.1 market. So forget about it.

After seeing many developers ditch using the RSX in the PS3 and using software to do all the fancy graphics in the Cell I'd be intrigued to see if the next generation ditch having powerful GPUs in them and just use software and raw CPU power instead. I know it goes against the grain for PC users but why bother with fancy custom chips when software and grunt is all thats needed. I could see Sony trying that as they dont have any proprietry graphics APUs to stand by but MS will obviously go along with a DirectX subset.

I'd also be happy to see flash/cartridge storage make a comeback as an option for games, if it helps speed up load times.

Could be that the core of the game sits on flash and the extras all sit on BD/DVD. Would add another hurdle for piracy too.

Oh and one last thing please can we have a decent amount of ram and bandwidth between all the processing elements of the consoles. Lets not hamstring a console for 6-7 years over the cost of a $1 64MB ram chip.

Pretty good list, thanks

im all for a genral purpose standard bluerae recorder and hd in all consoles and pcs standard.enough of the sqeezing the cash out off the public on ideas they already have and hold back on.c greene edinburgh.

I don't think we'll see many of those things in the next gen consoles. The OnLive concept will only truly pick up when internet speeds increase through fiber optic, which in some countries is still a distant pipe dream. No disks places too much reliance on the web once again, thus I refer to the first point. Thinner console? Yes please, it's a tiny bit of a given though. With APU's the 360 already has the graphics chip integrated into the CPU so its half way there. Considering this, I do agree with the assertion the writer made. With motion controls/human controls, i can't say i'd be too excited about this. I love joypads, or at the very least, buttons, because it minimises the amount of effort I need to exert to interact with the console down to mere movements of my fingers and thumbs. To me personally, that's far more immersive than actually acting out whatever it is you're playing as it allows your mind to focus entirely on the screen and the experience rather than have to contend with watching the screen and moving around everywhere. If human interfacing includes the use of a NIA (neural impulse actuator) that is ergonomic and accurate then I'll consider it. The 360 and PS3 are half way there when it comes to merged entertainment systems so I expect this to be elaborated further in the next generation.

These are my views, just views.