gwarm01 said:
The argument you posted makes a lot of sense save for one part. Name one generational leap that didn't involve vastly improved hardware save for the Wii.
There will ALWAYS be a segment of the market that is willing to pay the costs and accept the sacrifices requires for a high end gaming machine. To think that at least one of the new consoles won't be a large leap in power is just delusional. It reeks of latching on to the latest trend of commonly accepted fact in the gaming community that has no basis in reality.
Even the Wii U is going to be "vastly improved" hardware from this generation, despite that it will be the weakest of the bunch. That doesn't change the fact that this will likely be the smallest generational leap in history, thanks to a few of the factors described.
1) Power consumption for top-end GPUs has gone off the deep end in the past half decade (instead of effeciency, nvidia and ATI have simply ramped up). We've gone from approximately 100w for the top end, to approximately 300w for the top end, give or take 50w. Now this is fine for us PC gamers, because we simply get a bigger power supply and better cooling in our massive case that's needed to house these monsters. But console manufacturers don't have that luxury.
2) 1080p is still the resolution ceiling, and will be for the next decade at the very least. With most of the top games of this generation being near-SD (with most of you apparently not noticing), this is fine. Hell, you're still going to get a ton of games going 720p/30fps next gen too. But it won't be like the past, where we've increased our resolution ceiling each succesive generation.
3) The razor blade model of selling consoles won't be as pronounced for either MS or Sony, thanks to the multi-billions they've both lost. Not to say they won't do it, just not to the same extent as indicated by their respective leaders multiple times over the past couple years.
4) Consumers have shown repulsion at prices that are anyhwere near "$599" - and none of the manufacturers will go near that figure again. Part of the reason for going that high for Sony was using immature (read: "too new") tech that was difficult for fabrication plants to produce in any kind of respectable quantity. The tech that will go into the next round of consoles won't be bleeding-edge. It will be more mature and much easier to produce, if anyone's learned their lessons.
And by the looks of the Vita, Sony has. The Vita is using a quad-core variant of a CPU that was released in 2009 (Cortex A9), instead of the more powerful 2011 version, the Cortex A15. It is also using a GPU released in 2010 (the PowerVR 5 series) instead of the brand new and more powerful PowerVR 6 series from this year. It is leveraging the cost-benefit of the booming mobile phone space, and using mature tech rather than bleeding-edge.
Before you say "but look, they're creating a handheld that's so powerful!" you have to realize that the mobile space has been accelerated in the past half decade far beyond the desktop space, where console parts come from. While desktop CPUs have gotten more effecient per watt (albeit at a slower rate than mobile), desktop GPUs have not really done that to any appreciable degree.
What I'm saying is, the PS2-PS3 type leap is just not going to happen this generation, unless you want a giant box that costs $600 again that sounds like a jet engine when you power it up.
No where in what you quoted does it even mention the PS4. They're only talking about the next Xbox. If the cell talk confused you, I believe there was a rumor that the next Xbox would use a newer version of it.
