Generation When?
http://www.edge-online.com/magazine/generation-when
Extracts:
Since the NES, every five years or so a distinct new wave of technology has washed across the industry, bringing with it new power and functions to a market galvanised by the promise of faster, better, more. Change was once always tantalisingly close.
The current console cycle, which began with Xbox 360 in 2005, shows little sign of ending.
Wedbush Morgan Securities’ Michael Pachter, bluntly refutes that, stating in a recent investor guidance email newsletter: “We do not expect the ‘next’ generation to begin before 2013, if at all.”
Not that it really matters what you think. As Pachter says: “The public has zero power in this.” In a landscape in which Nintendo did the unthinkable with Wii and found new audiences for videogames with console technology that didn’t even exceed the capacity of the most powerful example of the previous generation, enthusiast gamers are too small a proportion of a newly burgeoning videogame market to count.
Or, conversely, they have a lot to lose by introducing one. The need for each manufacturer to reap profit from the current generation is paramount. Sony’s financial reports in June 2008 put losses incurred by PS3 at over $3 billion and, overall, SCE is still losing money, even if it’s a little less every quarter ($612.4 million in the financial year that ended March 2009) Microsoft, meanwhile, may have finally brought Xbox’s division, Entertainment and Devices, to profitability in 2007, having lost some $4 billion producing the original Xbox, but today’s financial figures don’t include the estimated $1-billion-plus three-year warranty programme the company initiated as a result of Xbox 360’s ‘red ring of death’ and E74 error problems.
It’s important to note that Nintendo’s position is very different to that of Sony and Microsoft. Cash-rich and powerful with publishers, Nintendo can afford to build a new console. But Pachter is adamant that ‘Wii HD’ will only match the power of PS3 and 360. “They always had the plan to get some traction with Wii and then bring out Wii HD. I don’t know if it’s end 2010 or a year later, but it’s coming,” he tells us. Wii HD would be a canny business move.
Publishers and developers are increasingly comfortable releasing games for current-generation technology, having reduced costs and streamlined production processes. And with Nintendo able to build a system that’s straightforward for developers to port their 360 and PS3 games from, and to, it would be an easy sell to ensure that principal game licences like FIFA, Tiger Woods, Call Of Duty, Guitar Hero and GTA appear on it from its earliest days on sale.
Such a console can only delay any wishes from game-makers to move to a new generation. Publishers have put massive investments into producing games for today’s hardware, and the prospect of ramping up production for a new generation, and the starting-from-scratch installed base that would entail – cannot be attractive.
All the while, however, the idea of consoles as they currently exist is being eroded. It might be difficult to imagine forthcoming streaming game services like OnLive, David Perry’s Gaikai and AMD’s Otoy project practically implemented on existing broadband infrastructure, but their potential can’t be ignored
Yeah, at that point wiiHD would be effectively a new console. How do you make 50+ million people to buy another (arguably more expensive) console? While trying to retain Wii's identity? A hardware upgrade in itself. It would be suicide. Very confusing for the general public.
How many years can they wait? PS3 is really built to last with a large HD and Blu Ray and 7 core processor and what not and they can then add things like motion controllers to extend the life.
360 has a similar weaponset to draw upon. For Wii to last as long as the other consoles, without popularity fading or it feeling dreadfully outdated, it needs more expensive solutions.
Firstly they could do things like packing in motionplus as standard. Natal will be standard next spring, so Nintendo need to respond. Now they've unlocked High capacity SD cards, why not take the opportunity to get a manurfacturing deal for cheap cards and start packing in a 16g SD card with every system too?
But technologically its cheaper and easier to add in a motion controller than it is to add in new technology to make the graphics better. That would need to be a new system.
What if they made it like Apple tech? Incremental versions of existing tech. 360 has been selling for a lower price then Wii for a long time now. Surely nintendo could produce a machine with similar power at, at least the same price Wii currently is?
Call it Wii Too. Mark the new games as Wii Too only. Have it backwards compatible of course.
Wii Too?
I bet Nintendo could produce something like that, but then they would have to deal with rising developer costs. 360 is selling at 200 now because the arcade lacks a HDD and WiFi, and Wii is still at 250 because people keep buying it at 250, and because Nintendo knows they can get away with that.
I don't know if Nintendo could come up with a visual upgrade equal to the 360 without altering significantly Wii's manufacturing process, manufacturing costs and developing costs. In this sense, as far as gaming platforms go, PC's modular nature allows for a more flexible approach than consoles, which need to get by throughout the entire hardware cycle with whatever tech they can cram in there from the beginning.
All this new hardware would do is make the hardcore fans and third parties happy. Nintendo doesn't need either. Hardcore fans will bitch and moan about the lack of HD graphics, but ultimately, they'll still buy the next Zelda and/or Mario game, so why should Nintendo risk their marketshare by releasing a new console? The whole concept that more power = better games is flawed. Nintendo has proven that this gen.
I knew the next console would be called Wii Too from the start. The Wii is suppossed to say "We" and the ii's are suppossed to be little people. Wii Too is the obvious name for the sequel
Oh yeah the initial start up costs for making the machine would be large, but the actual manurfacturing price (per unit) could be managable as they tend to be very efficient and economical with their systems.
So anyway. Shane Kim says Natal is a relaunch of 360:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/kim-natal-is-a-relaunch-of-xbox-360
Microsoft bigwig Shane Kim has stated that the release of Project Natal will be "the launch of Xbox 360", and that no new console hardware will be involved.
"Absolutely. It will be that big," he told Gamasutra. "Now, the good news is that it's not a new hardware architecture; we're not forcing customers to have to go buy a new console because it will work with every existing Xbox 360 out there.
"But in terms of its importance and scale of what we're talking about, yeah, absolutely, it will be like the launch of a new Xbox."
Kim, who was omnipresent at E3, said similar things all show, citing an Xbox 360 lifecycle through to 2015, and explaining that the motion-sensing technology (that has its own processing power) is as good as a new console anyway.
And not only will Natal be "revolutionary", but Kim believes it will transcend comparisons with Nintendo and Sony, as the real goal is "unlocking the potential of the industry": reaching the millions upon millions of people with no console at all.
His comments discredit - but do not disprove - speculation that Microsoft plans to launch a new Xbox 360 console next year. Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg played down rumours of a new machine, too - as did Eurogamer's Digital Foundry blog with technical panache.
Project Natal has no release date as yet.
To ingratiate themselves to 3rd parties. Also if the other guys are keeping to this 10 year lifecycle, I really don't think that Wii can make it that far. Let's say they stick to the 5 year lifecycle, we are coming up to the 3rd year of release only now in Winter this year. That means another two years of Wii before the next console launches in November 2011. So a 2010 reveal at E3 for the next console? Zelda to be a dual Wii/Wii Too title
Sounds okay right? But what if there was nothing till 2016??? No, it wouldn't work.
I disagree. It might not work for the hardcore, but the casual audiance cares not for HD graphics. All Nintendo needs to do to keep the Wii going until 2016, is continue doing what it's been doing for the last three years: Make exciting new games and fun perpherials that everyone can play.
They cant do a wii sports or wii fit every year. I mean, it's hard to create a driver for mass sales and media coverage, year on year. Despite Wii Music and animal crossing selling 2 and 3 million respectively they are widely seen as failures in 2008 to do what Wii fit and Sports did.
Motionplus may give Sports resort a giant boost. It may be this years Wii Play. I suppose. But you know its hard to create this mass market drivers year on year. Look at the feeble showing at E3 of the vitality sensor.