Kind of a strange title for this subject, but it's all i could think of at the moment.

I had a thought today while reading Gamespy's previews for the PS3, the N5, and the X-Box 2 or Y-box, whatever you want to call it. As I read this, I thought to myself... "You know... this all sounds extremely stupid". What if the game company's thought the same thing? What if all the third party company's just refused to make any games for the new systems and kept making them for the PS2, X-Box, and Gamecube.

Now I'm not saying that this is even a likely possibility for this generation of consoles... but in the future... a couple generations away... I think it is very possible, and actually hope it happens.

The console company's are getting pretty wild in their ideas and I think that these wild ideas will cause the death of mainstream gaming if they continue.

My post is pretty unorganized, but I guess comments on what you think about the subject would be good.

Well, the same thing can pretty much be said about PCs and software.


Technology keeps on getting better but one question remains : Do we REALLY need it ?

Someone's thinking way too much. That would be a nightmare!

I'm fine with what we have now. Devolopers just need to be more creative and stop making so many sequels.

In a way, technology needs to be pushed RIGHT to the limit before the developers can start thinking of needing new hardware for new ideas. Technology gets cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. If they wanted to, Nintendo could probably make NES's for about �10 now and make them the cool to have retro machine or something.

As the technology price decreases, the speed of newer technology increases and thus it becomes more plausible to mass produce new consoles.

Of course, games on the PS2 and Xbox today can still sell well. Which is why we haven't heard anything about the PS3 and the Xbox2 yet. But from what I've heard (and this is unofficial, so don't hold me to it), Sony are looking into running parallel processors for their next console. And then linking that processor power to other goods about the house, drawing more power from toasters and stuff.

Sounds crazy, but I'll see if I can dig out the source which had it.

I guess I miss the days of the 16 bit classics. Super Mario All Stars was one of my fave games of all time. However, it is nice to see character emotions, hear voices rather than read text, and feel the land around you as you walk rather than look at coloured blocks and try to imagine.

I should think that Sony et co probably speak to the gaming companies first. "Would you like a new console with more speed?" It's no good making a super console if the gaming community have to put in a lot of effort to code the game for it. There has to be some co-operation and understanding to ease production time.

Anyways, that's my view (if you can find it in there...)

Originally posted by Bahamut ZERO

Of course, games on the PS2 and Xbox today can still sell well. Which is why we haven't heard anything about the PS3 and the Xbox2 yet. But from what I've heard (and this is unofficial, so don't hold me to it), Sony are looking into running parallel processors for their next console. And then linking that processor power to other goods about the house, drawing more power from toasters and stuff.

really doubt it. ;D

right now the PS2 has something like a 300mhz chip (could be wrong, but it's something like that). it only really makes sense to go with MP power if you're on the ridge of what technology can really offer. not always the top tier, but high to it.

technology isn't the limit for the PS2's processing power, price is. they want to keep prices down as much as possible (hence all the horrible v1 PS2's). MP's are REALLY damn expensive. I wouldn't hold you breath.

... but it's not like a faster chip couldn't do what they'd be doing with MP's anyway.

Originally posted by Bahamut ZERO

Of course, games on the PS2 and Xbox today can still sell well. Which is why we haven't heard anything about the PS3 and the Xbox2 yet. But from what I've heard (and this is unofficial, so don't hold me to it), Sony are looking into running parallel processors for their next console. And then linking that processor power to other goods about the house, drawing more power from toasters and stuff.

BZ is actually mostly right on this. The PS3 is said to use multiple processors (4 i believe) and each one is about 10 times the speed of the ps2. Which makes this sucker really fuggin fast... but nobody is really sure why yet. It's called Cell processing or something.

Also, about the household appliances thing. I have read something about that, and they say don't expect it on the PS3 but they are looking into the future for making the Playstation less of a console and more of an operating system that can be installed on various household appliances...

*Imagines Sim-Toaster*

Here's the site where I read this information. (http://www.gamespy.com/articles/january04/nextgenconsoles/)

Sony and Toshiba's CELL processor is also the first 30 micrometre chip - all of today's chips are 90 micrometre, three times as big. And anyone who knows chips knows the smaller they are, the faster they are.

Although 1 CELL processor being 1000 times greater than the current Emotion Engine sounds ridiculous, it's true - I forget the exact figure, but they're measuring the speed of the new processor not in MegaHertz, but in Gigaflops. They're not comparable, as one refers to Floating Point Speed and the other refers to processing speed, but up until now, machines with FPS in the Gigaflop range are SGi supercomputers.

So the PS3 is going to have the equivelent of 4 SGi workstations in one little, linked chip... while the NeXtBox is expected to have the processing power of the 'current top of the line system'.

Since Toshiba and Sony aren't likely to sell CELL to Microsoft, and all of the other companies (Intel and AMD, most notably) are a couple of years behind in development, it'll be save to say PS3 will wipe the floor with the competition.

And with that much processing power... who knows, we might never need a new console again. But i'm sure people said that about the Atari 2600...and the NES... and the PSX.

Originally posted by Evad D'Aragon
Well, the same thing can pretty much be said about PCs and software.


Technology keeps on getting better but one question remains : Do we REALLY need it ?
of course we need technology, we need to push it to the current limit and break it, without the search and need to constantly strive to better ourselves we would fall into a de-evolution of sorts

Originally posted by The Immortal

of course we need technology, we need to push it to the current limit and break it, without the search and need to constantly strive to better ourselves we would fall into a de-evolution of sorts

DE-Evolution of sorts ? Oh, please. It's all pretty relative. You do NOT need to upgrade your PC and spend thousands of dollars every year. There's some kind of balance to respect you know. People were living fine without cell phones, too. It all depends on what "technology" you're talking about.

i'm talkin about cutting-edge technology, not camera phones or singing toasters

as far as the ps3 multiprocessing stuff is concerned i read from gamespy's newsletter that Sony wanted to have all the ps3's linked via internet and use all the processors together to create the game worlds. like a shared processing setup.

Gamespy mentioned it was possible using the CELL chip, but highly unlikely - the legal considerations alone would be astronomical.

In other interesting news, Nintendo has announced that they wouldn't be releasing a true console anytime in the near future - instead, they just plan 'add-ons' for the GameCube.

...does Loki work for Nintendo?

Yes i do ExS..

And Nintendo will show their next system at E3 2005

Yeah, I just read that >=(

Stupid Nintendo making me sound like an idiot...i'll have to kill them all...

STARTING WITH YOU, LOKI!

i want dibbs in on killing all nintendo personals.

Muwahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah ahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahah ahahahahahah*cough*ahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahah ahahahahahahahahahahah*cough*ahahahahahahahaahahah ahahahaha
*cough*ahahahahahahahaahaha*choke**cough**cough**c ough**cough**cough**cough**choke**passes out*