This is part 2 of a 2-part series on the future of games consoles.
Part 1 is available here and looks at the basic hardware you're likely to find inside the machines, such as the CPU and the GPU. This part looks at some of the features that may play a pivotal role, such as Backwards Compatibility and Cloud Storage, plus a look at some other bits and pieces. Enjoy!
Backwards compatibility
When the last generation first came about, this was a pretty hotly debated topic. Microsoft announced "some" compatibility with select Xbox1 games while Sony proclaimed that 99% of PS2 games would run on the PS3. In an amusing and Ironic twist, many Playstation fans blasted 360 fans for their "half-hearted" Backwards compatibility, only for Sony to remove half of the PS2 components from the PS3, dropping compatibility by some degree. Eventually the remaining RSX chip was removed and backwards compatibility was shelved altogether on the PS3, never to return again. Microsoft made a similar move, originally they released regular updates that increased compatibility with more Xbox1 games, but these were eventually stopped and the last update was several years ago. Nintendo made the biggest effort, not only does the Wii play Gamecube games out of the box, they also ported a lot of their older console's games to the Wii as well. In fact, they ported a lot of other console's games, too, making the Wii the most legitimately backwards compatible console to date. So what's going to happen with the next generation?
Well, one thing to keep in mind is what was different about this generation compared to the last - online purchases. Xbox Live, PSN and even the Wii Store have really boomed, allowing people to buy all sorts of content, themes, arcade games, even full games, without ever having to leave their house. What's going to happen to all that content come the next generation?
Both Microsoft and Sony allow you to transfer this content to another console. Nintendo seems less open to this, stating that the content is locked to that system rather than the person who bought it.
Not even the 3DS, Nintendo's latest handheld console, allows any kind of content transfer. Nintendo seems to have made their bed, then - all the content you bought for your Wii seems destined to stay there. I doubt that Nintendo cares any more about your collection of Wii games and since the Wii's design is essentially based on the Gamecubes, they may very well feel that it's a bit long in the tooth and jump to an entirely different console design, throwing any kind of compatibility out of the window.
Technically, nothing is stopping Microsoft or Sony from doing the same, but they've invested quite a lot of time into their online components and things like Trophies and Achievements are deigned to keep you playing on their systems, no matter what happens. If you have a sizeable gamerscore, you're likely to feel that you've invested a lot into it and will want that to continue on long into the future. Not to mention that the big three have already spent a lot of time and money expanding their various stores, they're unlikely to just drop them all in favour of a new console. This is why I believe that the next generation consoles will be pretty compattible with most, if not all, of the current generation's software. In Nintendo's case, a lot of their virtual console offerings use emulators, which can easily be ported to another console (this is why the 3DS has Virtual Console Support), however most of Sony and Microsoft's content don't rely on emulators, meaning they can either try to emulate the current generation (not easy and can be expensive), or ensure that the next generation is somewhat compatible.
Controllers
As you may have realised, I don't think Kinect or Move are going anywhere any time soon. You'll probably see updated versions of them for the next generation, to take advantage of the extra bandwidth and processing power on tap, but they'll definitely be there in some form. So what about the humble Gamepad? Will it be ditched in favour of the motion controllers? In a word - no. Motion controls are great and all, but it's no substitute for a good controller and both Microsoft and Sony knows this. Even Nintendo eventually figured it out, which is why even some first-party Wii games, such as Mario Kart, let you use a Gamepad
without having to use motion controls. So Gamepads aren't going anywhere, but what will the next batch look like?
There's really no reason why Sony can't stick with the Dualshock 3. The design of the pad itself hasn't really changed since the PS1 days, instead more has been added and improved upon. First came analogue sticks, then vibration, then every button was analogue, then it was wireless and had SIXAXIS at the expense of vibration and finally Vibration came back. Where can Sony go from here? The famous "banana" controller that Sony originally intended to use caused a mass outcry, even though it likely went through all sorts of usability and ergonomic testing and was
probably a better design overall.
Sony eventually pandered to the masses and went back to the trusty "dual shock" design. It would seem unlikely for Sony to change this tactic and you may very well find that the PS4's controller is quite literally the same controller you're using for your PS3.
Microsoft originally had a bit of a dud with their original Xbox controller. Many found it to be too big and clunkly, so it was quickly replaced with the "Xbox S" controller. Luckily, Microsoft knew that their controller would be too big for Japanese hands, so had the "S" design on hand. It was just a matter of releasing it in the west. Then the 360 came and the controller got another bit of a redesign, this time it was much more critically acclaimed, some even claiming that it was one of the
best designed controllers ever made. It wasn't without its faults, though. By far the most commonly complained about aspect was the uninspired D-Pad, causing a few guides on
how to improve it to pop up. Still, even during this generation, Microsoft has made a few attempts to improve it, the first notable being the
special edition that came with certain games - the one improvement? The D-pad. Many thought this pad would eventually become the "standard" pad, but it never happened and now we know why - Microsoft had
another design in mind, which has only just been released recently. Now ask yourself this - why would Microsoft still be revising the design of its controller when its pushing "controller-less gaming" so much? Particularly as we're on the eve of another console generation. I'm putting my money on Microsoft testing the waters for their next console. I wouldn't be surprised if the latest special edition pad was the standard pad for the next one. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if you were able to use your existing 360 pads with their next console. They know the design is solid, there's really no reason to change it, much in the same way Sony has no real reason to change the design of the DS3 - it's not broke, so don't fix it.
Storage
The Original Xbox was praised for its inclusion of a Hard Drive as standard. Finally, developers could create vast levels and not worry too much about running out of memory. Loading times could be reduced thanks to caching and all was well. Then Microsoft made a bit of an odd decision - they nixed the HDD in the basic versions of the Xbox 360. Suddenly, the Hard drive wasn't standard any more and developers had to work around it, meanwhile Sony took a page from Microsoft's book and made sure every single PS3 had one. So what gives? According to Peter Moore,
the Hard Drive was one of the reasons Microsoft abandoned the original Xbox so quickly. The problem with Hard Drives is that they have a base cost that never really goes down. Unlike the CPU and the GPU, Hard drives don't benefit from better manufacturing techniques, die shrinks and so on. This essentially means that as time goes on, the hard drive eventually becomes the most expensive part of the console. Both Microsoft and Sony deal with this in a similar way, every now and then they bump up the size of the HDD in their Console lineups, in order to maximise on cost. It gives them an excuse to refresh the lineup and keep them at a similar price. Still, as problematic as the hard drive might be, it's pretty evident that the next generation is going to need some dedicated storage as there will be a continued large focus on purchasing and storing content, nevermind that developers have been craving it for some time. Luckily, there's been a clear advancement in this field since the current generation of consoles were released - Solid State Drives.
Solid State Drives (SSD's) are essentially hard drives made of flash memory. They have no moving or mechanical components and performance blows regular hard drives out of the water. They're currently pretty expensive and don't offer anywhere near the capacity of Mechanical drives, but that's ok because as time goes on, this cost will drop dramatically as they benefit from all the same advancements as other electrical components. Plus, when you're a company as big as Sony or Microsoft, you can afford to buy in vast quantities and make deals to continue buying them provided the cost drops over time. This is perfect, as it falls in line with production roadmaps to reduce the cost of the console over time. People might be somewhat disjointed by the idea of going from a 250Gb current-generation machine to a new generation machine with only 40 or 80Gb of storage, but there's really nothing stopping future consoles from using a mixture of both technologies. It's plausible that Microsoft, for example, could ensure all Xbox 720's have a built in SSD for performance and then sell a regular HDD addon for extra storage at the usual inflated price. They may even let you use any USB HDD as external storage, similar to how they allow any USB pen drive to be used as a memory card today. Other possibilities include having dedicated internal flash memory that's reserved purely for caching reasons. This wouldn't have to be that big, 10 or 20GB would be more than enough for developers to take advantage of. All of this applies to Sony as well.
I wouldn't expect Nintendo to do anything like this, in fact I would be surprised if Nintendo's next console has a hard drive of any description. Nintendo seems happy enough with the likes of SD cards, but they could well take a leap from Microsoft's book and use USB drives for storage, letting the user deal with it.
Beyond Gaming
It used to be that a games console was, well, for playing Games. But as time went on, they started doing other things as well. The Dreamcast let you browse the web, albeit from a pretty slow modem, the PS2 let you watch DVDs and hackers have been making all kinds of computers, not just games consoles, do stuff they're not supposed to for quite some time (most notably being the Xbox1, which created the fantastic
XBMC). Sony seems to have taken this to heart, the PS3's slogan of "It only does everything" isn't far off. Aside from gaming, you've got a Blu-ray player, web browser, media centre and much more. Even the PSP was upgraded to make Skype Calls.
Microsoft have added a lot of features to the Xbox 360 as well, such as Twitter and Facebook apps, various film and TV streaming services, last.fm and so on. Despite the fact that we buy these machines mainly to play games on, we take a lot of notice of this "added value" and you can bet that we'll see more of that.
Sony seems to have a great relationship with Google. Their smartphones are pretty much all Android based, they've created the Xperia Play to help launch gaming on the platform, have released
TV's with GoogleTV built in and are rumored to be
bringing it to the PS3. This would be Huge, as Google TV allows you to download and run Android Apps, which would certainly be a hell of a killer feature to be contended with.
Microsoft, on the other hand, has a similar possibility. We already know of the XNA/Indie Games and XNA is also the same platform that Windows Phone 7 uses for development. Microsoft has done a lot to try and integrate Xbox Live into Windows Phone 7, so I would expect this to go both ways as well. In the future, the Xbox720 may well have an XNA Indie Games section
and an XNA Apps section, with Microsoft encouraging WP7 developers to port their apps to the system.
Online Connectivity
It's pretty obvious that the next-gen consoles will come with a mixture of Ethernet and Wireless technologies. There's just far too much demand for both options for one or the other to be dropped. Microsoft seems to have finally given in and made Wireless a standard feature on the Xbox 360, much like the PS3. The biggest change here is that Wireless-N has been standardised and if your console is going to have Wireless, this is what it'll be. There's also no reason to have anything less than gigabit Ethernet as standard, too, much as the PS3 has enjoyed since launch. 10G Ethernet is slowly starting to make an appearance, but there's hardly a reason to put this on a games console, particularly as gigabit Ethernet is still missing on a lot of home routers.
I've seen people speculate that the next generation of consoles will feature an "always-on" connection, via a built-in 3G Modem. Before this rumour gets out of hand, I think it should be dispelled. Yes, it wouldn't be the first time a home console has a built in 3G Modem, but the
Zeebo was designed for a very different market where broadband connections aren't that prevalent. 3G wouldn't be able to handle all the downloading that's bound to happen on future consoles, either - most mobile network providers restrict people to about 1Gb a month usage, if that - hardly enough to download even a single Arcade Game, let alone a 40Gb blockbuster hit from the future.
I'm sure you've heard all of the hubub about
IPv4 addresses running out, so don't be surprised to see future consoles have native support for IPv6 as well, although that wont really benefit gamers much, rather it will just increase the lifespan of the console. You may even see today's consoles updated to support it at some point, depending on how long your console overlords plan to support them.
The Cloud
This is probably the biggest new feature you should expect to see on future consoles. Everyone is going mad for "The cloud" these days, it's probably the biggest internet buzz word since "Web 2.0" and "Social networking" took off a few years ago. We're sort of seeing a migration towards it now, with both PSN and Valve's Steam launching their own Cloud services, allowing you to store your save games on their servers, letting you take them anywhere you want. Microsoft has yet to announce anything like this, but you can bet they're working on it, possibly as an update for the Xbox360, but almost certainly something you'd find in the Xbox 720.
Some people have suggested that the next generation consoles themselves will be entirely cloud based, much like gaming service
OnLive. I'm reasonably sure that this is the way things are heading, however I don't think we're quite there yet. OnLive is very particular about your internet connection, as well as how far away from their servers you are. I'm sure most of us know how frustrating a game of COD can be when there's a lot of lag, how would you feel if every game, even single-player games, were fraught with it? In order for it to be a real success, Microsoft and Sony would have to plant servers all over the world with enough capacity to feed millions of hungry gamers. Can you imagine what a midnight launch for a game like COD or Halo would be like? Any avid MMO fan knows what "expansion days" feel like and it's not pretty. I'm sure Both Microsoft and Sony will begin rolling such services out, but it will be a slow roll out, done region-by-region as demand grows.
Microsoft, however, potentially has something up their sleeve.
Halo 2's PC launch was much overshadowed by the fact that it was a "Vista exclusive" for no real reason other than Microsoft seemingly trying to push people to upgrade, even though the game was 3 years old and, frankly, a bit long in the tooth. It did, however, have one interesting feature - you could play it
while it was installing. Now why is that significant? Well, we all know how big games are these days - 10s of gigabytes, with future generations this is only going to increase. Downloading 50Gb before playing you game is a bit much to ask and a far cry from the "instant-on" gaming we've all been promised that the future will bring. But what if you only had to download a few gigabytes before you could start playing? Then, as you play on, the game continues downloading in the background. That would be a perfect balance between OnLive's instant gaming and having to do the full download. Microsoft has the technology, streaming over your internet connection isn't all that different than streaming from a DVD, just slower and our internet connections get faster every year. Such technology can apply much further. Go over to your friends house and just sign in with your gamertag to have all your content available right there - all your purchased games and DLC, no need to cart a clunky hard drive everywhere and would certainly go some way towards validating the
rising cost of your Xbox Live Subscription.
And make no mistake, Sony will be aiming to offer a very similar experience. In fact, they've already half done it with the Remote Play feature of the PSP. If the PS3 and PSP can do that together, imagine the possibilities of an NGP/PS4 combination.
Once again, I don't think Nintendo will bother with "cloud gaming" any time soon. They've so far made very little effort to connect their DS line to the Wii in any meaningful way, they're happy for people to just re-buy content again and again with each console and they don't even make it easy to "friend" people online, still choosing to use the unintuitive "friend code" system.
Conclusion and Final Musings
In much the same way that the current generation seemed like an evolution of the graphics technology brought about by the previous Generation, with online gaming being "the next big thing", I believe the next generation will be an evolution of that online aspect, with Cloud Gaming being "The next big thing".
Personally, I'm very wary of what this might bring. I'm not a big fan of the current "DLC-on-the-disk" system that many publishers seem to be going for. I think 90% of DLC is overpriced and a lot of it feels like it should have been in the final game in the first place. It never gets cheaper, except as part of a temporary sale and there's no such thing as "used" DLC. As consoles move more and more towards online connectivity and away from retail stores, the opportunity to gouge customers will be even greater. In an ideal world, Microsoft and Sony would allow companies like Amazon and Best Buy set up their own "Storefronts" within Xbox Live/PSN, creating a bit of competition and helping to keep prices down for us gamers, but this will probably never happen. Still, despite this I am looking forward to the next generation. Even if it turns out to be more expensive, the games will be compelling enough to lure us all in and rack up as many gamerpoints or trophies as we can manage. I know when E3 comes around and during the run up to it, I'll be sat up into the early hours refreshing my browser looking for every last tidbit of information on what's coming next and if you've read this whole thing, then I'm guessing you will be, too.
-Kushan
