The Next Console War

Every couple of years, an event of importance happens in the gaming industry. It’s such a crucial thing that every gaming company pays close attention to it. Often, the announcements made shake the very foundations of the industry. Other times, developers around the world have to learn new ways of coding. I’m talking of course about the introduction of new consoles.

Right now the gaming industry is ruled by 3 consoles. Those are the Xbox 360 from Microsoft, the Wii from Nintendo, and the PlayStation 3 from Sony. They are the benchmarks, the 3 players in a billion dollar industry, and they are the backbones of most games out there. All 3 are the latest generation of consoles that follow a long line before them, and each brought innovations that were unique to them. But what will the next generation look like?

Processing / Graphics power: For now there’s no question the Wii is the most underpowered device. When releasing it, Nintendo decided to go for innovation with the Wii Remote instead of better graphics. The PS3 and Xbox 360 however were top of the line at the time. But now, they aren’t much to look at. With a PowerPC CPU and 512MB of RAM, the 360 is much weaker than any modern gaming PC which typically features 8GB of RAM or more. For the next generation, it’s obvious they will all be much beefed up. For example, Intel right now is working hard on low-power chips. These CPUs provide a lot of performance using 8 cores or more, while producing very little heat, which will help with the notorious heating issues Microsoft had, but not sure Microsoft goes with Intel chips instead of PowerPC CPUs.  Sony adopting more easier programmable CPUs or sticking to powerful cell processor is still unknown. Instead of multiple competing architecture a consolidation on the processor architecture may help content creators and consumers, but it is unlikely to happen in the competitive console market where Sony and Microsoft trying to grab computing share in living room.

On top of that, graphics have improved as well. Right now, the latest DirectX provides amazing advances to PC gamers, and those will no doubt be replicated on a next generation console. Sony however may have a harder road ahead. Using OpenGL, it seems like support for the latest technologies, at least on the PC, is lagging behind slightly.

Controllers: Movement based controls, started with the Wii Remote, have been replicated on all consoles with Kinect and PS Move. There’s no doubt these will be integral in the next generation of consoles. Both Sony and Microsoft are spending a lot of research hours working on improving those technologies, and soon we’ll see software that can recognize a whole room, replicate it in real time in 3D, and recreate your environment, along with yourself, on the screen. That screen will support 3D as well, so it’s going to end up being very Meta. We may even see Microsoft and Sony doing what Nintendo did, and ditching the controller altogether.

Content creation: One of the major problems for game developers is making games for multiple consoles. The programming models are different, they use different hardware and APIs, and they have different capabilities. This is an area I don’t see changing at all. Even with all the talk of trying to standardize, the simple fact is that each company wants its own standard to win, since they already invested so much in them. There’s no question that unless a very powerful standard emerges, it will be just as difficult creating games for the next generation of consoles.

One caveat to that however is if these consoles provide full HTML5 support. Small games, which are typically made in XNA, Java, Flash or Silverlight now, may be done in HTML5, and work on all consoles as well as computers seamlessly.

Content consumption: The three companies are betting a lot on online services, with Xbox Live, PlayStation Network and the Wii channels. But Microsoft also focuses on a slightly different area. Since they launched Windows Phone 7, they’ve been working hard to integrate all their platforms together. Already we’re seeing games that link the Xbox, computer, and phone, and provide a seamless play among the devices, which may give them an edge over the others, although we’ve seen the others try similar things with their portable devices at least, and with Sony’s new Android based gaming platform. Whatever the next consoles are, chances are they will be highly connected, perhaps even serving as a home based Wi-Fi hot spot, to which all your gadgets talk to, and can stream anything from the web.

Content Distribution: Gone are the days of removable media. While the current consoles use DVDs, Blu-rays and HD-DVDs, there’s a high probability the next consoles will have no removable media at all, at least not integrated to the devices. All three companies are pushing their own versions of an App Store, and it’s likely to become the main way to get games from. Microsoft is even bringing their App Store to Windows 8, so you know they’re serious about it.

Look: As for what the physical consoles will look like, it’s hard to say. In all 3 cases, the shape of the devices changed a lot, so the tech giants are likely to drastically change their shapes and sizes once again. Everything seems to be going smaller, and so I wouldn’t be surprised if the next generation consoles look tiny compared with the large boxes we currently have. But in the end, another console war will benefit the players, who have been waiting impatiently for some time now, and could use a new console, just in time for when the economy picks back up.