The future of games...

[624]

Coming out of this year’s E3, the industry found itself in an interesting position. The pre-show conferences for Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony are where the big announcements are made and the strategic tone for the upcoming year is set. But while Nintendo’s DS and Sony’s PSP were the talk of the show, everyone had at least one eye forward to the future. Each of the console makers – in their own roundabout way – touched on the next generation of hardware, but with release dates, specs, and all manner of other details still unknown, what does the future actually look like?
More and more speculation points to the fact that Microsoft will be out of the gate first with Xbox Next (code named Xenon) by the end of 2005. Both publishers and developers have been told of a release next year, and with its recent announcement of it looks like tomi spent a lot of time copying and pasting this from a site just to express no real opinion of his own XNA development tools, it seems that Microsoft has every intention of getting studios prepared for the company’s next console. General Manager of Microsoft Games Studios, Shane Kim, even mentioned at E3 that it was determined to hit the market first. Nintendo has sent some mixed signals about when the successor to the Game Cube, code-named Revolution, would appear. President Satoru Iwata ways that the company will give its first public showing at next year’s E3 and that the Revolution’s launch will be “competitive” with the other systems’. However, Nintendo has stated that being a slave to release schedule is hampering the industry.
Out of all the potential release dates for the consoles, Sony’s PlayStation 3 appears to be the farthest out, not likely until sometime in 2006. The company itself has said that it and its partners Toshiba and IBM don’t expect mass production of the Cell processor to occur until the second half of 2005. At E3, Sony announced that workstations with the processor would start rolling out in the fourth quarter of this year - a first step towards getting development kits to studios. Sony is said to be working on a shell that makes creating games easier for studios. Regardless of a speculated release data. Sony of America president Kaz Harai was very clear at E3 that he thinks the PS2 still has plenty of life and money in it.
There are benefits to coming out first, but there are pitfalls, too. At a Piper Jaffray investor’s conference, one president of retail chain anticipated that Microsoft could pick up as much as 30% of the market if it came out first. Historically, however, being the leader isn’t always advantageous. Early technology could be supplanted by those companies that wait. Sega’s Dreamcast was not only first, but also technologically ahead of the game with its built-in modem, but neither was a ticket to success. (GAMEINFORMER)
MY HANDS HURT NOW SO I’LL TYPE SOME MORE LATER.

[Dr. Dos]

NES SNES and GEN will always be better.

[superbowl shuffle]

plz embolden the parts that are important so we don't have to read the whole thing.

[99]

TEE
ELL
DEE
ARR

[Ryan Ferneau]

So Long, but Did Read

Will Revolution have 4-D graphics? It would better. Those 3-D graphics are getting so stale.

[Commodore]

emboldened for oof

[Zenith Nadir]

i've not paid for a game since 1998 and i'm yet to regret it

unless you count paying £2 postage for a free copy of myst 3 as paying for a game

[Mooseka]

Dear tomi,

stop posting.

Thanks,
Z2 administrarion team

[624]

it looks like tomi spent a lot of time copying and pasting this from a site just to express no real opinion of his own

I was going to express my own opinion once I was done giving the 'facts' of these systems. And no I did not copy and paste, I really have been getting GAMEINFORMER magazine, I saw the artical on the next generation consols and thought that some people here might like to know some of this (in short I typed it all, but yes I did copy) But if you really want to know my opinions so badly: I will buy Nintendo's Revolution mostly because the other two consols have no games I really like to play. I could care less about a .2% better graphics card or whatever, as long as the game is fun, I'll play it. (Thats also why I play ZZT.)

Also to Ryan Ferneau- Really nothing about the Revolution has been confirmed. The only little specs of info I have is that the Revolution sports dual 1.8 GHz POwerPC processors and a 500 MHz graphics chip, and a alleged 15 GB hard drive. (Again nothing has been confirmed.) What is promised is that the revolution will offer something new in gaming.

[Dr. Dos]

I bought a GameCube just for multiplayer stuff.

Which I never use it for. Instead I use this nice little modern console to ease the pain of not having a switchbox for the old atari to play shit like pac man and because i don't have sonic 3 on my genesis but i do with the gamecube! And eventually to play megaman games.

[Ryan Ferneau]

I like how Tomi took my comment seriously.

[Zenith Nadir]

[Commodore]

Instead I use this nice little modern console to ease the pain of not having a switchbox for the old atari to play shit like pac man.

Man, a good switchbox is hard to find.

[Dr. Dos]

Last I checked, a few years ago radio shack sold them online for like $5

[Commodore]

well hot shit. I guess I can play atari again.