From the business perspective, we all understand the rumored incremental hardware updates here from Microsoft and Sony; Nintendo ate everyone's lunch for 5 years with last-gen, 3-year old tech[1] that cost little to make while Microsoft and Sony hemorrhaged money until what seems like last year... not to mention the huge technical hurdle for devs and middleware companies trying to reach parity on each platform.
WIN: If Microsoft goes the incremental route with the same Xbox OS a-la Apple's iOS evolution, they keep middleware compatibility with larger graphical budgets for teams to play with... EVERYONE likes this and every dev team that has shipped an Xbox 360 game hits the ground running immediately -- possibly opening up the doors to dual Xbox 360 and Xbox 720 releases of their games (one with lower quality textures and rougher geometric assets and the other with higher-end business) -- I am sweeping my hands across a fairly complex problem here, but you get the point. With compatibility intact, there are interesting things that can happen here that we've seen work on the iOS ecosystem. (maybe not for Triple-A devs, but for budget minded games, this could work wonderfully especially as digital-downloads and indie devs grow).
LOSS: Sony has to make a clean cut and scuttle the last 8 years moving onto an x86 design, new OS, new middleware all new QA cycles and retraining all the PS3 devs.
WIN: Sony now matches the same arch as the Xbox-next (same CPU optimizations apply and same GPU family) and we can stop getting these damn port-style games that never take advantage of the extra Blu-ray room or cell processing power.
LOSS: No revolutionary boost in performance if the hardware rumors are true. I have no doubt the bump in specialized/tuned hardware will give us real-time versions of the Unreal Engine 4 demos (of that smoking guy that beats up mechs) BUT, at 4k resolution and 120hz for 3D? Not for every game. I imagine we will see something akin to what we have now with most games running at 720p with the few rare tuned ones actually running at 1080p resolutions. I would guess next-gen will offer 4k resolution on some titles and 3D on others while running at 1080p or some such combination. Obviously if it is a simpler game like a Wave Racer, we'll get both, but for Gears of War 15 and Mass Effect 32, I doubt it.
WIN: Faster game dev cycles means we get some more impressive titles on the improved hardware/experience sooner. Don't have to wait 2 years post-launch for the first real good game.
LOSS: Next-generation consoles are going to be engineered to be all-in-one entertainment hubs... TV cable tuning, DVR, streaming, apps, social, games, mobile-tie-in, etc. etc... this will make jumping between consoles harder as you stake your claim in the Microsoft or Sony (or possibly Nintendo -- yet to be seen if they can pull off a Network) camp and build up your life/existence within their walled garden. This generation it was nothing more than rep points, next-generation (especially Microsoft) will be throwing every Facebook-esque psychologically engineered trick in the book to keep you ON their platform, consuming content through their channel with your credit card en-tow, sharing your pictures with friends and building your character's rep from game to game to game, movie to movie and app to app.
I sincerely doubt we (the harder-core folks) will all have all 3 next-gen systems this next time around and will most likely have 1 (probably Xbox-next) as the cost of flipping between them will be bigger than just powering on Console X to play game Y for a few hours.
LOSS x2: Double the resolution on the Kinect-next, rumored eye-tracking, multi-person tracking and more accurate voice controls? I can't even imagine what is in store (e.g. "You don't seem to be enjoying this episode of Lost, would you like to skip to the next episode or can we recommend Battlestar Galactica?" -- say "Start Mass Effect, invite Scotty32, Soldier load-out" -- experience {episode of Law and Order, McDonald's Billboard in background... notification popup...} "Just emailed you a buy-1-get-1-free BigMac coupon for McDonalds! The nearest one is 2 blocks from you... yummy! Say 'Pause' to pause what you are watching and go grab lunch!")
No one's lunch was eaten by Wii. I think by now it's pretty much been concluded that Wii was an alternative to the PS3/XBOX demographic (that is, people interested in PS3/XBOX also bought Wii), and that Wii itself brought a lot of new players into the console gaming world. Not much if any actual cannibalization of sales occured.
Also besides ignoring game sales, it also ignores the fact that Wii sold the most during the early part of it's release. This year Xbox 360 and PS3 are on pace to massively outsell Wii and have been doing so for a while. This is the part in the cycle where hardware sales are most profitable, so who really has the last laugh?
Besides, with the PS3 it was mission accomplished for Sony as they used it as a large bargaining chip to win the blu-ray format war.
Looking at 10 year stock trends, you can see the real story. Nintendo had a massive stock surge after the release of the Wii, but now they have fallen to pre-Wii levels. Sony has been steady throughout.
Wii sales where always profitable, because Nintendo did not subsidize the Wii. More importantly, sales late in a consoles life cycle are worth a lot less because the company's get a cut of game and accessory sales and someone that has a console for longer probably buys more games or at least more new games. People who buy late have a lot of great cheap games to keep them entertained, where someone who had the console from the beginning probably already played those games and is therefore interested in new titles.
Well stated, and hints at what I think a lot of folks are surmising: the platform has become more important than the box.
For generation after generation, console manufacturers basically asked us to give up the old box -- and our entire library with it -- and move onto the next one. Developers have to be retrained, consumers have to be resold, and all at a higher price point.
This was all well and good until things like XBox Live started becoming integral to XBox 360, and all the services attached to the online experience became central components of the total experience of ownership.
This is, indeed, the Apple iOS model. The devices might get incremental upgrades every so often -- and it's not inconceivable that we might start seeing incremental yearly refreshes on XBox and PS systems someday, the same way we do with iPhones and iPads. But the core OSes and platforms will remain fairly stable.
The future generations of kinect will bring astonishing changes to the world of gaming. You assume the new capabilities will be used for "malicious" means which is possible but that's a bad way to judge some technology. That's like saying the next Gen Intel CPUs will be 2x faster so people will use it to spam twice as much or hack passwords twice as fast.
The fact of the matter is Kinect will continue to shape the future of gaming. The hardware is just not good enough for hard core gamers currently. Once that barrier is gone I think it can create a much more immersive gaming experience that would benefit all gamers.
"Once that barrier is gone I think it can create a much more immersive gaming experience that would benefit all gamers."
I wonder about this. I think the lack of tactile feedback as well as the higher intensity play style will never sit right with all games or gamers, but I do think there will be genres that become synonymous with the Kinect and become better than they ever were--and more than dancing and fitness. What I hope is that developers recognize this and don't just shove kinect down our throats but use it when it makes sense to do so.
There should have been a winky-face after that heading; you are absolutely right that the tech will take us forward in fascinating ways, I was trying to be somewhat snarky about some of the lesser-benefits-to-life enhancements we will see; surely there will be brilliant applications as well.
When you say Nintendo "ate everyone's lunch for 5 years," do you mean in sales or in profit? My impression is that XBox 360 and PS3 are much more popular consoles (but this is just based on anecdotal evidence).
Global Sales
-------------
1. Wii ~95 million[1]
2. Xbox 360 ~66 million[2]
3. PS3 ~62 million[3]
Nintendo has made profit on the Wii hardware sales since launch, roughly $50 on average between US, EU and Japan[4] while it took Sony until 2010 (tail end of 2009) to become profitable with the PS3's hardware[5] while Microsoft most likely hit profitability in 2007 (2006 was a wash[6] with 2008 showing profits of the entire division[7])
Given that the Wii wasn't much more than a 50% performance bump over the Gamecube[8] which launched 5 years prior, it was amazing how such a conservative approach with an ingenious/untapped interaction mechanism sold like it was going out of style for years.
In a lot of ways the Wii was a lot like the first iPhone -- they did something no one else had thought to do, did it well enough that even hardcore gamers thought it was cool and made it accessible to everyone.
I agree that (especially) in my circles, the Wii is a paper weight, but I have a feeling the market it sold so ravenously to was brand new gamers and non-gamers... people that I don't interact with on a regular social basis which is why the Xbox seems so much more popular to me.
I don't think Microsoft wants to be out-done by Nintendo again, especially since it is clear MS knows how to do the software side better than anyone, and Sony cannot physically afford to do not follow suite... I am actually excited because all these next-gen devices LOOK to have AMD platforms in them (CPU/GPU) which will make middle ware normalization more formal and hopefully make squeezing life out of the platforms even longer and more effective than the current cycle (which blew my mind how long it lasted).
I personally bought a Wii, because it's not just a PC with a joypad. Most of the games for ps3 and xbox360 come out on PC, too and if need be, I can connect any controller I like to my box. The Wii however, was something new and different. They pushed things in a new direction and I really liked it. Prior to that, the last console I bought was a Sega MegaDrive.
Please provide some reference links -- without it to make your point comments like this are too easily influenced by personal experience (what you, friends, social circle see/do versus everyone in each country)
The PS3 and 360 are, without a doubt, used on a more consistent basis by their owners compared to the Wii. But in terms of sales, Nintendo blew everyone else away this generation, in both the console and portable markets.
WIN: If Microsoft goes the incremental route with the same Xbox OS a-la Apple's iOS evolution, they keep middleware compatibility with larger graphical budgets for teams to play with... EVERYONE likes this and every dev team that has shipped an Xbox 360 game hits the ground running immediately -- possibly opening up the doors to dual Xbox 360 and Xbox 720 releases of their games (one with lower quality textures and rougher geometric assets and the other with higher-end business) -- I am sweeping my hands across a fairly complex problem here, but you get the point. With compatibility intact, there are interesting things that can happen here that we've seen work on the iOS ecosystem. (maybe not for Triple-A devs, but for budget minded games, this could work wonderfully especially as digital-downloads and indie devs grow).
LOSS: Sony has to make a clean cut and scuttle the last 8 years moving onto an x86 design, new OS, new middleware all new QA cycles and retraining all the PS3 devs.
WIN: Sony now matches the same arch as the Xbox-next (same CPU optimizations apply and same GPU family) and we can stop getting these damn port-style games that never take advantage of the extra Blu-ray room or cell processing power.
LOSS: No revolutionary boost in performance if the hardware rumors are true. I have no doubt the bump in specialized/tuned hardware will give us real-time versions of the Unreal Engine 4 demos (of that smoking guy that beats up mechs) BUT, at 4k resolution and 120hz for 3D? Not for every game. I imagine we will see something akin to what we have now with most games running at 720p with the few rare tuned ones actually running at 1080p resolutions. I would guess next-gen will offer 4k resolution on some titles and 3D on others while running at 1080p or some such combination. Obviously if it is a simpler game like a Wave Racer, we'll get both, but for Gears of War 15 and Mass Effect 32, I doubt it.
WIN: Faster game dev cycles means we get some more impressive titles on the improved hardware/experience sooner. Don't have to wait 2 years post-launch for the first real good game.
LOSS: Next-generation consoles are going to be engineered to be all-in-one entertainment hubs... TV cable tuning, DVR, streaming, apps, social, games, mobile-tie-in, etc. etc... this will make jumping between consoles harder as you stake your claim in the Microsoft or Sony (or possibly Nintendo -- yet to be seen if they can pull off a Network) camp and build up your life/existence within their walled garden. This generation it was nothing more than rep points, next-generation (especially Microsoft) will be throwing every Facebook-esque psychologically engineered trick in the book to keep you ON their platform, consuming content through their channel with your credit card en-tow, sharing your pictures with friends and building your character's rep from game to game to game, movie to movie and app to app.
I sincerely doubt we (the harder-core folks) will all have all 3 next-gen systems this next time around and will most likely have 1 (probably Xbox-next) as the cost of flipping between them will be bigger than just powering on Console X to play game Y for a few hours.
LOSS x2: Double the resolution on the Kinect-next, rumored eye-tracking, multi-person tracking and more accurate voice controls? I can't even imagine what is in store (e.g. "You don't seem to be enjoying this episode of Lost, would you like to skip to the next episode or can we recommend Battlestar Galactica?" -- say "Start Mass Effect, invite Scotty32, Soldier load-out" -- experience {episode of Law and Order, McDonald's Billboard in background... notification popup...} "Just emailed you a buy-1-get-1-free BigMac coupon for McDonalds! The nearest one is 2 blocks from you... yummy! Say 'Pause' to pause what you are watching and go grab lunch!")
You get the idea...
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii#Technical_specifications