Next Gen -- No Thanks

Over the past month or two there have been a lot of rumors and rumblings about the long-delayed “next gen” round of consoles. Lately talk has swirled of a 2012 holiday-season launch for a new Windows-driven Microsoft console. And, to be honest, it kind of makes sense. Now that the Wii has opened up the race, certainly competition cannot be far behind. I assume even gun-shy Sony will eventually get into the act.

As far as I’m concerned, this is all very disappointing news.

I realize now, only too late, that I don’t actually want a new console generation at all. In fact, I can’t think of a single thing that the current console generation should do that it currently can’t. I actually don’t really want any more graphical whizbangery — Battlefield 3 has shown me that the current gen can look too close to real as it is. Online integration is as fully featured as I need it to be. I could probably move to console-only media consumption and be happy enough, particularly once Microsoft's Live update adds even more functionality. My systems already integrate just fine with my computer and other home media. And the games for these systems are getting really, really good. Last thing I want is to go back to 3 years of developers trying to figure out how to make the tech work.

You know what, Microsoft. Keep your Xbox 3 — somehow I keep forgetting that the 360 is actually only the second MS console — I don’t want it.

I imagine being a man dying of starvation and being handed a slightly burned grilled-cheese sandwich. What kind of fiery core of desire would that spark? How the imagination of that taste would stir even as I was lifting the blackened bread and molten cheese to my mouth. I would revel in ecstasy as the charred bread scratched my soft palette, and the bubbling dairy singed my taste buds.

I can even imagine somewhere many years later half-heartedly enjoying a similar sandwich, now a thing of mediocrity, and being offered a tender, perfectly-cooked steak. “Yes, please,” I would say, already reaching hungrily for this clear upgrade. And, sure, obvious metaphor is obvious, but now in this modern age I’m already eating steak. I can no more easily imagine something better than this grade-A cut of Xbox-loin or Sony-rump-roast than I can figure out what my shadow looks like in the fourth dimension.

Hey, I know you’re eating steak, but here’s some steak with cool new salt! No thanks, bud. I’m good.

There is, of course, a hazard in throwing down this kind of gauntlet before the announcement of an announcement has even begun to form. Given that my resolve to pass on Uncharted 3 lasted for a good solid zero days, the likelihood that I will be tempted down the line is probably better than average.

That said, I have to occasionally be reminded that Nintendo has a successor to the Wii in the works. Even though I read a dozen articles on the machine when it was announced, I couldn’t tell you anything about what I read except I vaguely recall that there was a touch pad or a motion sensor or something. Maybe there are a lot of people quietly (very quietly) getting excited for this console, but what I know is that they aren’t writing much about their excitement.

“Well,” you might say, “there’s no new information to talk about, so why would anyone be writing about the …” what the hell was it called again? The Wii U or something. Sure I could have looked that up, but the point is that I would have had to look it up. Also, since when has not having anything new to say ever stopped an overenthusiastic internet from writing about stuff? Maybe there will be buzz down the line, but right now there’s more buzz in the passenger side speaker of my Camry than there is about the Nintendo Whatever That Thing Is Called.

And for that matter, the chatter for a new MS console seems almost perfunctory. I’d guess this may be the first some of you are hearing about it. Like Arbor Day, it was one of those things that we all knew was going to come around again at some point, and presumably someone was going to let us know, but really it’s not something we get particularly worked up about. I don’t remember the same kind of disengagement when whispers of a new Playstation or Xbox began to bubble some eight or so years ago.

A lot can change in a year. Or even two. What I’m hoping is that when the specifics start to come to light, I’ll get it. “Aha,” I hope to say. “It delivers medically prescribed pleasure-photons directly into my retinal-joy-receptors. Yeah, I get it.”

What I’m afraid of, though, is that all the perennial titles really digging into their prime now will be all but discontinued — except for FIFA, because FIFA releases on everything — and we’ll have a year of wondering when something we’ve heard of before will actually be released for this new brick of wires sitting in my living room. The idea of paying $500 for the pleasure of three months with nothing but six or seven launch titles to play makes me curl my lip in disgust.

Console launch mania is so 1995.

Maybe Microsonydo can convince me otherwise with some clever marketing, or even better some actually good ideas. I have my doubts.

Comments

TrashiDawa wrote:
hbi2k wrote:

We have that. It's called the PC. If what you want from a console is a PC, just buy a PC. It's what most of the folks on this forum do already, and it's a perfectly cromulent way to go.

"cromulent"

COME ON!

Larry Miller. Is that you?

Besides the N64 RAM pack, I can think of another instance where you could embiggen a console you already owned: the 32X add-on for the Genesis. Remember how well that worked out?

Hmmm, nobody has yet explicitly said they bought a console for the graphics, which brings us back to what could a new console do that a current one cannot.

Perhaps Sony/MS have put themselves in either a very good or a very bad corner by making a base design 6/7 years ago that can be upgraded with features if not with performance. Good if they just want to keep going and milk the current, bad if they want to sell something shiny and new.

On the "get a PC" front, it would be nice if they actually did more than pay PC gaming lip service, to provide aid those that want the horsepower and graphical glitz.

hbi2k wrote:

Besides the N64 RAM pack, I can think of another instance where you could embiggen a console you already owned: the 32X add-on for the Genesis. Remember how well that worked out?

And don't forget the Sega CD.

SexyBeast wrote:

I'd love a simple direct to console system, not that play the game on someones server BS, but just a system that quickly gets you games. Excellent pre loading capability with buffering so that if you want a game , you don't even have to wait an hour on a fast connection to play it, its most likely pre loaded for you and what's left will just buffer in after a few minutes of play. Kind of like TIVO for gamers. You like RPGS? well the console pre loads 50% of the top played RPG games so that if you decide to buy it you only need to wait like 10 minutes to play.

Some PC MMOs already do this. I can't recall now if it was D&D or Champions. One of those that I tried about a year or so ago. It downloads just the engine and tutorial, then while you're playing the tutorial it's downloading the starter zone in the background. And you'll be in that starter zone for several hours, so the rest of the game gets downloaded in the background after that.

And yes, as a primarily PC gamer I would agree with some of the comments that I'm tired of seeing lazy ports running on DX9 instead of DX11. And new consoles would certainly help that.

But as a Wii/PS3 owner, I'm not thrilled with the thought of transferring games, achievements, or saves to the next version. I'm almost sure things are going to be lost, and backward compatibility mucked up somehow, and I'm going to have to keep multiple systems hooked up to play all the things I want to play. Also as a late adopter (PS3 1 year ago, within a week or so), I'm certainly not done with all the system has to offer. Still have 3 games on the pile unstarted, and all 3 R&C games, Disgaea 4, and inFamous 2 on the wishlist for sales. Plenty to keep me busy for a while.

And probably 20 unplayed games on Steam in the pile. No need for a new console for a while.

Stele:

In all fairness, us late adopters probably aren't going to be buying a console at launch anyway, it's it's not like it was ever going to matter that much to us in the immediate future.

I'm kind of excited for the Wii U, but I'm probably going to buy one a year into the lifecycle when there are actual games on it to play.

I agree with Elysium on this one. No new consoles until the current gen gets it's sh*t together.

The Xbox 360 took years to get to a point where it wasn't exploding once a year.
The PS3 can't do netcode to save it's shiny, monolithic arse.
The Wii can't release a decent game that doesn't involve a 20 year old IP, and it can only do that once every year and a half.

Nintendo "upgraded" to the 3DS, and what did that do? Cost a lot of money, burns down the battery twice as fast, and has virtually nothing anyone I've met wants to play.

Seriously: Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo shouldn't get to play with hardware until they prove they can manage the hardware they curently have. Once the cost-benefit analysis for a current gen console exceeds the "worst generation ever" threshold, maybe then we can talk.

I kind of want Super Mario 3D Land, but then I'd probably have more fun finishing Galaxy or revisiting Super Mario Land 1 & 2. I can see myself holding off on next gen until I play the essential games I want to play from this gen.

doubtingthomas396:

There's actually a lot of great new IP or rethought IP on the Wii. The problem has always been lack of third party developer money on the platform, and/or the lack of gamer enthusiasm for trying out and/or enjoying new experiences that don't involve upping the resolution.

I've got over 70 Wii games at thisi point, and I've actually finished a good deal of them, which is more than what I can say for Uncharted 2, Batman AA and AC, and Rage.

hbi2k wrote:

Re: the "annual incremental upgrades a la iOS devices!" crowd:

I'm not a business expert, but I have to imagine that splitting the user base every year-- which is essentially what you're advocating, albeit with a large degree of backwards compatibility between iterations-- is a lot more acceptable when you're trying to sell a 0.99 app than a $60 game, especially when you factor in the difference in development budget between them.

One year is way, way too fast. I would hope for something more like two to four years on the refresh.

One of the problems with these things historically is that each generation is dramatically different than the prior, and developers have to learn entirely new tricks to utilize the new hardware properly. It seems to me that a smoother, more gradual transition between "generations" would only help developers, rather than hitting the reset button every 6 years (or whatever we think the new console life cycle should be).

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

Seriously: Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo shouldn't get to play with hardware until they prove they can manage the hardware they curently have. Once the cost-benefit analysis for a current gen console exceeds the "worst generation ever" threshold, maybe then we can talk.

Same goes for PC's! If I have to listen to one more podcast where they lament the sorry state games are released in because devs can't account for the variety of hardware in use, I'm going to lose it. It cracked me up listening to them lament Deus Ex and Rage when the games released just fine on the consoles, only to then go one to talk about how the PC is their preferred platform. Masochists!

Seriously, none of the consoles are as bad as you are making them out. And there is no sh*t to get together. Those consoles are how they are. If you want to see them improved, it is going to be in the next generation.

I've had a 360 and Wii throughout this gen, and both have satisfied my needs. My daughter might kick you in the shin for trying to claim the Wii doesn't have games, and we use our 360 nearly every single day.

When I do a cost-benefit analysis, consoles are ultra cheap and fun!

I know what you're saying, but there's plenty of well developed PC games as well. It's not a feature of the platform (and that's any platform) that games have faults, it's a fault of the developer.

The thing is, anyone can play the "my platform is better than yours" game all day long. I think all platforms are in a better place now than they were 5/6 years ago, but it never stops developers releasing crap.

Jayhawker wrote:
doubtingthomas396 wrote:

Seriously: Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo shouldn't get to play with hardware until they prove they can manage the hardware they curently have. Once the cost-benefit analysis for a current gen console exceeds the "worst generation ever" threshold, maybe then we can talk.

Same goes for PC's! If I have to listen to one more podcast where they lament the sorry state games are released in because devs can't account for the variety of hardware in use, I'm going to lose it. It cracked me up listening to them lament Deus Ex and Rage when the games released just fine on the consoles, only to then go one to talk about how the PC is their preferred platform. Masochists!

Seriously, none of the consoles are as bad as you are making them out. And there is no sh*t to get together. Those consoles are how they are. If you want to see them improved, it is going to be in the next generation.

I've had a 360 and Wii throughout this gen, and both have satisfied my needs. My daughter might kick you in the shin for trying to claim the Wii doesn't have games, and we use our 360 nearly every single day.

When I do a cost-benefit analysis, consoles are ultra cheap and fun!

I'm no PC gamer-- my laptop is currently more than 7 years old, and during that time my wife has had two laptops fail because the hardware development sucked like a quantum singularity on spring break. (First laptop died because the motherboard overheated because some genius slaved the cooling fan-- singular-- to the CPU instead of the GPU. Her second died after less than two years for no apparent reason-- it just stopped recognizing the power adapter.) My laptop runs like crap on stilts, but I refuse to buy a new one that's only going to last me two years until I have no choice in the matter.

So if you think that I'm giving hardware developers at PC platform houses any slack at all, you're barking so far up the wrong tree that you might as well be shouting at rocks or some other matter that has nothing to do with plants.

As far as this console generation being the worst one ever, I stand by that statement. Microsoft loses how many hojillion dollars replacing badly designed hardware, Sony gives away seventy million users worth of personal information, and Nintendo starts by not building enough units to keep up with demand, then fails to follow up with first party software and lets shovelware rule the console (when was the last time anyone on the GWJ Conference Call mentioend a Wii game? other than Zelda?) On two out of three systems you're updating and patching and downloading additional crap to fix developer oversights, and on the third you're playing launch titles.

Seriously, this console generation took the worst parts of being a PC gamer (questionable hardware quality control, bad web security, bargain title shovelware and constant patching) and brought them over to the one place that people who didn't want to deal with them could go to game. And it didn't even make up for it by taking the good things about PC gaming.

Are there good games to play on the consoles? Yes, and I'll be the first to admit it. But the headaches associated with playing them are worse than any I remember in my thirty years of being a gamer.

Yes, I'm doing what Cory would call Hyperbole Theatre, but only just.

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

Are there good games to play on the consoles? Yes, and I'll be the first to admit it. But the headaches associated with playing them are worse than any I remember in my thirty years of being a gamer.

Yes, I'm doing what Cory would call Hyperbole Theatre, but only just.

Hyperbole is the exaggeration of fact. You are stating an opinion. My 360 has been a fantastic gaming machine and I have been playing games since Pac Man as well. I consider it a real watershed momemt in my gaming life. It is right up there with building my first really capable gaming PC.

doubtingthomas396:

I second that you're stating opinion, and one that rather flies in the face of facts.

Nintendo could not have predicted the runaway hit the Wii was going to be. No one did. Third party prediction for the Wii was so dismal that there was NO planned development for it by third parties at launch; not low, not a few, NONE! You can't just order up seven factories on Amazon.

Secondly, Nintendo has not developed more software for any of their platforms as they have for the Wii. Not counting the Wiii X titles, there's more Mario on it than on any previous platform, more of various IPs (two Metroids! Sin and Punishment! Donkey Kong!), and as many Zeldas as any home console has seen.

Finally, it's not Nintendo's fault that the podcast crew doesn't like playing Wii games. Remember Muramasa? The game no one but Certis bothered to chek out seriously, and which none of the crew has yet really talked about? No? Exactly my point. Red Steel 2 was an awesome, complex, technically excellent brawler which no one on the crew liked, simply because it involved motion gaming. For that matter, not even Certis has shown any true understanding of the true depth of Wii Sports and WSR controls.

I stand by this: Nintendo did not fail gamers on the Wii. Gamers failed Nintendo. They put out excellent games and gamers failed to appreciate them properly. Third parties (who are also gamers) refused to put serious money on the system. Reveiwers (also gamers) put out such crap coverage it killed any enthusiasm I have for any gaming media since.

LarryC wrote:

I stand by this: Nintendo did not fail gamers on the Wii. Gamers failed Nintendo. They put out excellent games and gamers failed to appreciate them properly.

You're confusing your personal opinion with reality. I'm not sure why you keep presenting your enjoyment as factual support for these arguments you seem to be trying to provoke in various threads.

It's ok if the platform and some of the games haven't lit our fire like they have yours. You don't need to keep beating the same drum every time Nintendo is mentioned.

FWIW, I "beat that drum" for inFamous and Mass Effect, too.

I would for Civ Rev as well, but that game gets a lot of love here, and understandably so. It's a great game.

I think the best part about this console generation has been the maturity of Xbox Live. I waited 3 years to buy a 360, and had they had their hardware together prior to that, I would have bought one instead of the PS3 that saw a year of use followed by, well, lots of dust.

Connectivity has been the key change with this console generation, regardless of which system you bought into. To me, though, the 360 has led the charge when it comes to communicating with my friends. Just think of some of the things we've become accustomed to having over the past 5 years: cross-game party chat, streamlined game invites, nearly everyone (including the pubbies) having access to a mic, achievements, always-on connectivity, minuscule game patches, as well as DLC.

The Internet has been awesome for console gamers. It has also been awesome for developers. XBLA and PSN have been great outlets for developers, both small and large. We've got companies that have pushed out unheard of gems that we would not have gotten on earlier systems, developers like Jonathan Blow and Chair (and many, many others) that would have potentially gone unnoticed.

Sure, I'd like newer hardware — wouldn't we all? But in a system that I've only had for 3 years, it's continually pushing the bar higher. From increasingly better software updates to Kinect, it doesn't feel like the 360 needs a new push... yet.

But considering how well they've handled the past few years, the pushes in software, the small hardware updates, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't interested in what Microsoft's next console is going to be. Kinect hasn't threatened the core gamer, Live has been setting the bar continually, and XBLA has been a boon for both gamers and developers.

Whatever is next from them, they've taken care of me well enough this generation to for me to trust that they're going to make the right decision of when and how to move forward.

LarryC wrote:

FWIW, I "beat that drum" for inFamous and Mass Effect, too.

I would for Civ Rev as well, but that game gets a lot of love here, and understandably so. It's a great game.

Can we just redirect that conversation to this thread since the Wii has has been defended before?

http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/106848?page=6

DSGamer:

It's done, man. I judiciously avoided any mention of The-Console-That-Must-Not-Be-Named in my last reply, and that was primarily a side topic to the comment of "This generation sucks, let's get it right before we move on."

I find this generation of console and PC gaming to be nothing short of revolutionary - awesome in so many ways, I can't count them all offhand. It's got its pitfalls and disappointments, but the previous generation had those, too, and the previous gen wasn't nearly as ambitious as this one, being largely a graphical upgrade of the PS1 era games.

I'm specifically exccited for the Wii U because of the experiences I've had on the iPad, but I'm also interested in the evolving network and business structure of games going forward. The next gen's already started! But this time, the fight will be in cyberspace.

Fair enough. I saw something about "gamers failing the Wii" so I thought it was right to point out that we we've already done that.

Funny thing is my Wii still sees regular game time between the virtual console games and a few classics that only exist on the Wii. I would have been happy with an HD Wii, honestly.

I wouldn't have minded, either, but that just wasn't in the cards. The Wii idea was so insane, Nintendo could only hope on banking it as an alternative console (as it still is in many homes).

That said, Mr. Sands brings up an excellent point in startups. Nintendo games on Wii are so good because they don't make a point of showcasing graphical whizbangery over artistic vision. Games on the HD consoles are only just getting to the point now where art takes precedence over technology. I would not be averse to another cycle on the HD consoles just so that this trend will continue for a few more years before developers focus on the fundamental coding again.

Of course, this is not as much of a problem on PC, since PCs run the gamut of tech. PvZ's graphical attraction is purely artistic, as is the appeal of WoW's visual presentation. This is not surprising given Blizzard's mantra of making games that run on netbooks.

LarryC wrote:

That said, Mr. Sands brings up an excellent point in startups. Nintendo games on Wii are so good because they don't make a point of showcasing graphical whizbangery over artistic vision. Games on the HD consoles are only just getting to the point now where art takes precedence over technology. I would not be averse to another cycle on the HD consoles just so that this trend will continue for a few more years before developers focus on the fundamental coding again.

Indeed. That's why I just wanted an HD Wii. I think something we don't talk about enough in games is how random amazing games often get made for lower powered consoles like the PS2 or Wii precisely for this reason. I was strangely kind of bummed when I saw all the mainstream games on the Wii U. I want more random Mario or Kirby games or games like Pikmin and Little King's Story.

Well, with luck Sony and MS won't be releasing new console hardware too soon. R&C's been pretty good about prioritizing art over tech, and both Forza and GT have advanced far enough that the realistic vision is actually quite doable. Forza wins for the control experience, for me.

That said, yeah, it's rare for normal third parties to get the coding down so fast and have to deal with such competition that they need to focus on vision and experience. I think that what will come out on the Wii U (the migration of HD concept games) will show that this is developer dependent rather than console dependent.

Right now, I think the tech's about right for a stylized vision to be doable to perfection. Borderlands is nearly spot-on IMO. Gearbox's weakness is mainly level design; the graphical design in BL is one of its main selling points - an outstanding achievement.

Of course, BF3 puts the lie on all that on max settings on cutting edge PCs. It's still not the perfect game design since enemies can be hard to see, but there's nearly no Uncanny Valley effect. It's quite impressive. I think I'll be able to fully appreciate an Uncharted game made on that sort of graphical level. Next gen Uncharted in 5 years?

Filthy skinner here. My two cets on the 360's "decline" hardware-wise. MS seriously dropped the ball when they tried to port Live to the PC. Here they have all these beefy datacenters popping up to support their flagging cloud initiative, Office 365. It wold have been a minor inconvenience to throw another row of racks in there to support some centralized computing power to support the PC gamer. As Games For Windows/Live flounders and is essentially abandoned by developers they've cmpletely missed their chance to leapfrog the 360 console with a remote solution a la Steam/OnLive. I have Skrim on my desk, branded with Games For Windows on the box, and first thing it does is dial up Valve and sync with Steam. What a lost opportunity for MS. Now they MUST make their next console backwards compatible or risk losing their install base in the living rooms of gamers. It's going to be a tough transition for them.

Yes, the most annoying thing about GFWL is the missed potential.

I'd go so far as to say no gaming service on PC is really all it can be, yet. Gabe Newell has said one of the things that keeps Valve of their toes is that because the PC market is open, anyone can come in with a better service and steal their customers away, and yet no one has done that yet. The closest competitor recently (EA) still looks to be sabotaging themselves as they always do with their interfering mismanagement, which is a historical problem for a lot of their games as well.

It's almost as though the companies that gain a lot from PC, want it to go away and are embarrassed it's still around and need to do something with it.

I would hope that Microsoft goes the Nintendo route with their new console and basically reuses their OS, but just beef up the specs of the system. If they do that, backwards compatibility should be as easy as it was for the Wii.

I know that MS ran into issues wen they had to swap graphics cards from the Xbox to the 360. But at this point, it should be fairly easy to build the new console from the ground up to allow for full backwards compatibility. And I think they will lead to more early adoption if they also continue to enhance the 360's media capabilities. It would also help developers hit the ground running if they can use the same tools, but just be given more power to work with.

I really think MS is set-up to have a fantastic launch of a new console. They are in no hurry, which should help avoid the problem they faced when shoving the 360 out the door a year early to beat Sony to the punch. And the 360 has really evolved nicely over its lifespan. It's hardly the same console we saw when it debuted. A new console can take all of those feature and better integrate them into whole console experience, while plugging in a few more features.

I'm not sure I care when they get there, but I am pretty optimistic about what we will see when it gets here.

TheWanderer wrote:

Filthy skinner here. My two cets on the 360's "decline" hardware-wise. MS seriously dropped the ball when they tried to port Live to the PC. Here they have all these beefy datacenters popping up to support their flagging cloud initiative, Office 365. It wold have been a minor inconvenience to throw another row of racks in there to support some centralized computing power to support the PC gamer.

Ah, the tragedy of institutional silos.

I'm not ready for a new console now.

It feels like my 360 still has a lot of legs (RRoD notwithstanding). There are sufficient games out right now that could happily keep me gaming through the end of 2012. And no doubt next year will continue to deliver premium slices of hawtness.

And anyway, I've long passed the point of being an early adopter. I tend to wait for at least the first round of price-drops. It makes the hardware more affordable/less guilt-inducing/more easily wife-approved, and ensures that there's a reasonable software catalog to make such a purchase seem like a good fun-return on investment from the get-go.

Which means I'm not looking at a new console purchase until the end of 2013. And that's 2 years away. I can see myself being ready then.

I'm with you, Jonman. Thing is, I'm not ready to BUY a new console now, but I'm past ready for a new console ANNOUNCEMENT. Figure average time between announcement and release is at least a year, and between release and any really significant price drop is a year or two beyond that, and if you want to buy a new console in 2013, ideally we would have wanted to have heard new console announcements around E3 2010, but so far the only company we've heard from is Ninty.