The Xbox One is NOT Microsoft's last console

[TheProfosist]

The XBOX is too popular to stop, that we should all agree on. But in reality it's gonna be something like a steam box.

And so was the arcade.

[fojacko]

I think cloud gaming isn't the future. I think that the cloud will be used to verify ownership of games (see simcity always online) and MAYBE to help process physics calculations. Cloud gaming would remove the need for new consoles, no new consoles means less income for microsoft/sony/nintendo.

[Logan2012]

I'm tired of hearing this "Its not even 4k ready so it's crap" kind of stuff. Who cares at this point when you can pull the money out of your ass to buy a 2 grand tv come talk to me. Also for a kid who just wants to sit down and play Call of Duty or Forza on his had tv he doesn't care about its jaguar apu or 8 gigs of ram all he cares about is gameplay which is what these console are about.

[Wingingchase]

Many tears where shed for the console scrubs.

[mr moose]

I'm tired of hearing this "Its not even 4k ready so it's crap" kind of stuff. Who cares at this point when you can pull the money out of your ass to buy a 2 grand tv come talk to me. Also for a kid who just wants to sit down and play Call of Duty or Forza on his had tv he doesn't care about its jaguar apu or 8 gigs of ram all he cares about is gameplay which is what these console are about.

exactly.

 

Although I must admit I enjoy being a part of the pcmaster race, it is however  embarrassing when some of them run around speaking crap like a spoilt child.  As far as I can tell derogatory comments for the sake of derogatory comments means you are insecure and uneducated.

[Scionyde]

Microsoft may have claimed the xbox one would last for 10 years, but I imagine they'll release something a bit sooner and have both consoles going at the same time. I think they'll feel the need for some updated hardware sooner than last generation. That's not to say I think they'll need to be 4K-ready. Yeah, it looks like this'll be the year it starts getting affordable, but 1080p is still the most common, and I'd find it kind of weird to completely leapfrog 1440p

[DrVendetta]

well duh... its not even 4k ready, im bettering not even the best Steambox's will be Steams "Last Console"

Steambox isn't a console. It is basically an OS and a form factor as I understand. Their could be a new OS, but the "Steambox" is just a PC.

[Stefan Becker]

I think that cloud computing will only just have started gaining momentum, when these will be released... So i could see another console war coming, yes.

[Wolf_Shot97]

I don't even think that these consoles would really have the power to support something like in-home game streaming, let alone cloud gaming. I don't know what to think other than what could microsoft even do with it? Say "We now support 1080p! Buy our console, it's revolutionary!" just like they did with the One, for the smallest thing they blew it way out of proportion and made it seem like it's way better than it actually is.

[flibberdipper]

Considering how well the Xbox is doing, I don't think Microsoft will get out of the console market anytime soon.

[rashdanml]

I think cloud gaming isn't the future. I think that the cloud will be used to verify ownership of games (see simcity always online) and MAYBE to help process physics calculations. Cloud gaming would remove the need for new consoles, no new consoles means less income for microsoft/sony/nintendo.

All three make very little from console sales: their biggest source of income is always going to be game sales. Which can easily be supported through cloud services in the future.

[Matthias2556]

Yeah, and the next release might be able to push 60 FPS at 1080p resolution in games!

 

Isn't progress great?

no, that would be too far ahead of the times

 

but seriously, im really excited for steam machine and steam OS after seeing so many Companies getting behind it at CES and making their own steam box. 

as long as people will b uy them, microsoft and sony will keep making consoles.

[BallGum]

The future is probably that localised streaming around the house at this point. The thing is, the Xb1 was supposed to be the beast to power all the thin clients about the home, but... Yeah. 1080P at 30 fps isn't exactly beastly.

I think this generation of consoles will have a much smaller usage cycle compared to the last gen. This gen is based on X86 which a lot of developers are supposedly already familiar with, so we won't see that same "easing out" of every single drop of power.

[rentaspoon]

The XBOX is too popular to stop, that we should all agree on. But in reality it's gonna be something like a steam box.

Until Average Joe gets told that THAT peice of tech is the next sliced bread

Steam box is not something for the general public, where as the Xbox/playstation/ninty consoles are

That's not the mentality mate, especially since that's who the steam box is aimed at and you now have to log in, install and then play on consoles.. remind you of anything?

Microsoft stop making consoles and focus on pc.

When has Microsoft known to quit at the right time?

[old reece frost]

[Cwazywazy]

I think America's internet would need to be quite a bit better before this can really happen. There's already something called Onlive for PCs. If you haven't heard of it, it's basically a program that lets you stream games. All you need is a decent connection. I even tried Dirt 3 on my netbook and it works fine. (Works on Android too.)

[fojacko]

All three make very little from console sales: their biggest source of income is always going to be game sales. Which can easily be supported through cloud services in the future.

 

True, I completely forgot that if anything these companies make a loss on the consoles. But wouldn't general hype just die for the games after a while, think about it. Games like WatchDogs, Destiny and Titanfall have all generated so much hype because they are advertised as "Next-gen games", if they stopped making next-gen consoles, the amount of hype would completely die for these games.

 

Also you could say that PC's don't follow the same "Next and Current-gen" kinda system as the console's do, and in a way you'd be right BUT think about things like Mantle and G-Sync. Mantle is being used to advertise BF4 and Witcher (witcher is one of the games that's going to use mantle, right?), and well G-Sync hasn't been announced long enough for companies to jump on board.

[rashdanml]

True, I completely forgot that if anything these companies make a loss on the consoles. But wouldn't general hype just die for the games after a while, think about it. Games like WatchDogs, Destiny and Titanfall have all generated so much hype because they are advertised as "Next-gen games", if they stopped making next-gen consoles, the amount of hype would completely die for these games.

 

Also you could say that PC's don't follow the same "Next and Current-gen" kinda system as the console's do, and in a way you'd be right BUT think about things like Mantle and G-Sync. Mantle is being used to advertise BF4 and Witcher (witcher is one of the games that's going to use mantle, right?), and well G-Sync hasn't been announced long enough for companies to jump on board.

PCs don't have next/current gen systems, but there's still an improvement from year to year. You mentioned Mantle, which is just one example. Game Engines improve all the time too, because hardware is getting better and better. Steam sales aids game sales even further, where people specifically keep the "hype" up on a certain game and wait till it's on sale to buy it (which happens as little as 3-4 months after the game is launched). 

 

Sure, console games are marketed as "next-gen" at the turn of the generation, but that can easily be achieved without a console. If a game has visible and staggering growth over its predecessor, then it'll hype itself without the need for a console or system to be attached to it. 

 

Software advancements can give an illusion of "next-gen" without the need for a system. Look at Crysis for instance. CryEngine 2 and 3 are orders of magnitude apart, and it's visible in the associated games (Crysis 1/2 and Crysis 3). There are many other games that see amazing advancement in software (Assassin's Creed is another, Ubisoft went completely all out, bat-shit insane with naval battles in AC4, and I can only imagine what it took to achieve that, and that's merely a year after AC3, bearing in mind the 3 year development cycle for most of their AC games).

 

e: Watch Dogs is cross-platform, so is Titanfall. Neither game will really be affected by a lack of console. Destiny is also multi-platform despite not being on PC, but the possibility of a PC version still exists. The only games that will be affected by a lack of console are console-exclusives as they won't exist without the console. That is, unless the developer makes it a PC-exclusive. 

[Whiskers]

Wont supprise me if by the end of the year they have a newer, more up to date 4k ready model which will be cheaper... they did it with the 360 eventually, and given that the xbo is using a pc chip architecture it means easier upgrades... we might even get super mini model with top loading disc's and supper OTT liquid cooled models

 

Lol, what?

 

Xbox One has 4K support, it's just limited to 30Hz owing to the current limitations of HDMI. The only way they can run games at an acceptable framerate and graphical quality at 4K would be to significantly upgrade the GPU, something which can not and will not happen.

 

Having an x86 architecture and more traditional PC-like list of components doesn't make a console upgradeable. The Original Xbox had what was essentially a 700MHz or so Pentium III when it launched, and it still has a 700MHz or so Pentium III 13 years later.

[fojacko]

PCs don't have next/current gen systems, but there's still an improvement from year to year. You mentioned Mantle, which is just one example. Game Engines improve all the time too, because hardware is getting better and better. Steam sales aids game sales even further, where people specifically keep the "hype" up on a certain game and wait till it's on sale to buy it (which happens as little as 3-4 months after the game is launched). 

 

Sure, console games are marketed as "next-gen" at the turn of the generation, but that can easily be achieved without a console. If a game has visible and staggering growth over its predecessor, then it'll hype itself without the need for a console or system to be attached to it. 

 

Software advancements can give an illusion of "next-gen" without the need for a system. Look at Crysis for instance. CryEngine 2 and 3 are orders of magnitude apart, and it's visible in the associated games (Crysis 1/2 and Crysis 3). There are many other games that see amazing advancement in software (Assassin's Creed is another, Ubisoft went completely all out, bat-shit insane with naval battles in AC4, and I can only imagine what it took to achieve that, and that's merely a year after AC3, bearing in mind the 3 year development cycle for most of their AC games).

 

e: Watch Dogs is cross-platform, so is Titanfall. Neither game will really be affected by a lack of console. Destiny is also multi-platform despite not being on PC, but the possibility of a PC version still exists. The only games that will be affected by a lack of console are console-exclusives as they won't exist without the console. That is, unless the developer makes it a PC-exclusive. 

 

I know that the PC's don't have current/next gen consoles. That's the point i'm trying to make. People buy new graphics cards for performance, but let's compare the 770 and 280x. They are pretty much identicle in performance (and sadly price now, if you live in the US), but the reason people buy one over the other is for features, AMD has mantle and Nvidia has G-Sync. Depending on what games you play and if you can afford it, you will choose one over the other. If you are purely a battlefield player (like my dad for example), the 280x is going to be a better option than the 770, which also requires you to spend £400 on a new monitior (which imo, is rediculous).

 

The cloud server hosters will have to upgrade their servers to be able to keep up with the latest technology. Which aside from being expensive, it will cause days, maybe even weeks of downtime. Sure they could do it when there aren't many people on the servers, but then you fall into a different problem. Countries, alot of countries don't have great internet access, which is fixed with money, but in poorer countries they can't fix it. And it's not even poor countries, let's say you live in the USA, if you live in a place that is in between 2 servers, you're gonna get crap connection because you don't have a good server to connect to. You don't have this problem at all with physical consoles. Sure they make little-no (even a slight loss) on the consoles, but i'm fairly sure that the availability of games more than makes up for this.

[Guest]

They better go mobile, or streaming of some sort.

I don't want streaming ping in he mountains is 60ms minimum and it gets much worse

[Guest]

Lol, what?

 

Xbox One has 4K support, it's just limited to 30Hz owing to the current limitations of HDMI. The only way they can run games at an acceptable framerate and graphical quality at 4K would be to significantly upgrade the GPU, something which can not and will not happen.

 

Having an x86 architecture and more traditional PC-like list of components doesn't make a console upgradeable. The Original Xbox had what was essentially a 700MHz or so Pentium III when it launched, and it still has a 700MHz or so Pentium III 13 years later.

Even so optimization is key

[Echodamus]

well duh... its not even 4k ready, im bettering not even the best Steambox's will be Steams "Last Console"

You say that like the Steambox is a Console...

[rashdanml]

-snip-

You missed my point: despite not having a "current/next-gen" hype, PC games have no trouble keeping up the hype. If a console doesn't exist, console games won't suffer - there will be other ways to keep a game going. Think about games launched during a console's lifecycle - these games don't have the impending release of a next-gen console to hype it up, yet countless games launched during that time do sell well. 

 

The existence of a console doesn't dictate how well a game sells. The game itself does that. 

[TheProfosist]

Steambox isn't a console. It is basically an OS and a form factor as I understand. Their could be a new OS, but the "Steambox" is just a PC.

The SteamOS is whats going to basically make it a console. If it looks like a console and feels like a console, its a console. Well a console that will have whatever gmaes in the steam library that can be played on linux.

I don't even think that these consoles would really have the power to support something like in-home game streaming, let alone cloud gaming. I don't know what to think other than what could microsoft even do with it? Say "We now support 1080p! Buy our console, it's revolutionary!" just like they did with the One, for the smallest thing they blew it way out of proportion and made it seem like it's way better than it actually is.

they support in home streaming the PS4 does it, hell so does the Wii U in a way.

no, that would be too far ahead of the times

 

but seriously, im really excited for steam machine and steam OS after seeing so many Companies getting behind it at CES and making their own steam box. 

as long as people will b uy them, microsoft and sony will keep making consoles.

people will buy them but only if it can play the games they want to. I think this is currently the Steam Box's biggest hurdle.

The future is probably that localised streaming around the house at this point. The thing is, the Xb1 was supposed to be the beast to power all the thin clients about the home, but... Yeah. 1080P at 30 fps isn't exactly beastly.

I think this generation of consoles will have a much smaller usage cycle compared to the last gen. This gen is based on X86 which a lot of developers are supposedly already familiar with, so we won't see that same "easing out" of every single drop of power.

The last one lasted considerably longer than all of the others and the only one to keep the normal release cycle was Nintendo but even theirs got stretched out. My guess the was likely due to the economy in the US and the worlds in general over that time period. Also I believe they were waiting for x86 to be viable since development of hardware is really costly and wanted to do what microsoft was trying as I believe its some the whole industry wants since the change in how games are played over the last couple years.

Until Average Joe gets told that THAT peice of tech is the next sliced bread

That's not the mentality mate, especially since that's who the steam box is aimed at and you now have to log in, install and then play on consoles.. remind you of anything?

When has Microsoft known to quit at the right time?

There are also told Win8 is crap while their being sold a Win8 laptop, isnt retail sales great!

I agree with you man Steam Box is aimed at those on consoles of those people on PC that are looking for a more console like experience. The only thing not oriented at them in the streaming feature which I think they tacked on so that they have something to sell those people who are already PC gamers.

The quitting at the right time isnt so bad, its been the starting late thats been a far bigger issue.