New XBOX next year?

@W3bbo:  I find it amusing that Nintendo did motion control for the Wii as their "bet the farm" strategy, then everyone else doing it, and now they're going back to their controller roots.

Wii-U will continue to use the wii-mote + nunchuck combo... with the addition of the tablet... so, they are not going back to the classic controllers

@aL_: imo its not at all a given that microsoft will build their next console themselvs. 

They might have to farm it out if they fired everyone involved in the $1B RRoD disaster... as they should

The next Xbox will support DX11 and runs at 720p smoothly. And what? Not 1080p? I am talking about complex graphics and visual simulations here, not Lego Star Wars or Dragon's Lair 3D in case you are confused.

Probably will come out 2012 or 2013. Most likely 2012 because you can get a decent priced and decent DX11 performing hardware in 2012 (better than my HD5870 for sure). In 2013, DX11 would feel out-dated and yet DX12 will be too new.

@Minh:

They mentioned in the investor Q&A that there could be future scenarios where a second touchscreen controller could be used.  But it's not planned right now because these are much more expensive than traditional controllers.

Next Xbox, PS4 will be 10x as powerful as current gen, out in "a couple of years," says Carmack - http://bit.ly/jvW0lc

@Dovella:

Yeah Carmack also said if they release consoles 8-10 times as powerful, the only thing graphics programmers will do is turn up some dials, make it 1080p, 60hz, crank up anti-aliasing, deeper frame buffer.  And while those are all good things, it'll be too incremental a change to get people to buy hardware.  They really need an order of magnitude increase in graphics power to get developers to create new rendering techniques that's worth the upgrade.

23 hours ago, Minh wrote

...

I wonder what the next level of HD gaming is... I don't think 3D is going to be big just yet... And I don't think it's going to be graphics either... You can't go beyond 1080 ... so, it's gotta be something else...

We are a long way off from anyone looking at a 3D game and being anywhere close to convinced that it is a real scene. We still have a very long way to go.

Also, it will be a mistake to release the next gen Xbox if it isn't fast enough to emulate the current hardware at full speed (backwards compatability). Since MS made the mistake to go to PowerPC in the current gen, and it is unlikely that the next gen will still use PowerPC (most likely back to x86/x64), that makes it so much harder to emulate.

Plus with the 360 selling so well right now, I don't know if they would want to rock that boat. Unless they say something like "we are working on the next gen Xbox, and we plan to release it in 2 to 3 years". That probably won't affect the current selling streak much.

1 hour ago, BitFlipper wrote

We are a long way off from anyone looking at a 3D game and being anywhere close to convinced that it is a real scene. We still have a very long way to go.

Yeah I think the main difference between real-time rendering and pre-rendered stuff is the way lighting is calculated.  Lighting is still horribly fake and terrible in games, and haven't seen anyone really pushing the boundaries this generation.

3 hours ago, Cream​Filling512 wrote

@Dovella:

Yeah Carmack also said if they release consoles 8-10 times as powerful, the only thing graphics programmers will do is turn up some dials, make it 1080p, 60hz, crank up anti-aliasing, deeper frame buffer.  And while those are all good things, it'll be too incremental a change to get people to buy hardware.  They really need an order of magnitude increase in graphics power to get developers to create new rendering techniques that's worth the upgrade.

But that's what we need. (Besides lighting) the main thing holding photo-realistic games from being well... photo-realistic is polycounts and texture resolutions, but these aren't limitations of the platform, but of the tools used to create virtual worlds. I wish level designers would get rid of all the unrealistic ways that two surfaces meet: it's never a clean line between a wall and a floor, for example. Where's the beat-up skirting boards, dust and dirt?

But that's what we need. (Besides lighting) the main thing holding photo-realistic games from being well... photo-realistic is polycounts and texture resolutions, but these aren't limitations of the platform, but of the tools used to create virtual worlds. I wish level designers would get rid of all the unrealistic ways that two surfaces meet: it's never a clean line between a wall and a floor, for example. Where's the beat-up skirting boards, dust and dirt?

Ideally it would be like non-realtime rendering where there's no prebaked textures and they just have really long and complex shaders that can simulate any surface at any resolution.  Combine that with good lighting and better geometry (not triangles but NURBS or something) and you can attain photorealism.  But the hardware isn't anywhere close to doing that in real-time yet, not a complex scene.

The platform and its tools are intertwined... If the video card only has 512 MB of video memory... No tools will give you 10hrs of photo realistic gameplay

1 day ago, Cream​Filling512 wrote

*snip*

Ideally it would be like non-realtime rendering where there's no prebaked textures and they just have really long and complex shaders that can simulate any surface at any resolution.  Combine that with good lighting and better geometry (not triangles but NURBS or something) and you can attain photorealism.  But the hardware isn't anywhere close to doing that in real-time yet, not a complex scene.

You still convert NURBS into pixels (or polygon for NURBS surfaces) in the end, same with sub-division infinite polygon resolution, ultimatly they are still polygons at specific details.

Anyway, to the topic about better tools for better graphics. One word: tesselation.

Tesselation is basically a simple version or NURBS or sub-divisions that artist can use it easily. Combined with animations, of well, those are mind blowing. Tesselation morph and smoke, dang.

3 days ago, Cream​Filling512 wrote

Yeah I'm betting Wii U will be the only next-gen console for a couple years at least.

If the rumors of Wii U being 50% faster than the XBox360 and PS3 were true, it is already an outdated machine by the time "XBox720" and "PS4" comes out.

Think of this.....

XBox360 and PS3 are already 5-6 years old and WiiU is only 50% faster than those machines?

Sure Nintendo might have some cool games like Mario...
But are game developers really gonna support its "outdated hardware" once PS4 and XBox720 starts coming out? 

Cream​Filling512 They really need an order of magnitude increase in graphics power to get developers to create new rendering techniques that's worth the upgrade.

8-10 times IS an order of magnitude

all this talk of the next gen stuff led me to a pretty cool vid of the frostbite 2 engine. Wow! realtime (good enough) radiosity. And it's cur-gen

1 hour ago, stun wrote

Sure Nintendo might have some cool games like Mario...
But are game developers really gonna support its "outdated hardware" once PS4 and XBox720 starts coming out? 

I think PS4 and Xbox720 are a long ways off.  Both companies have said how they planed to get another 5 years out of their consoles.  Consider at E3, Xbox announced yet another dashboard redesign for this year.  They're pulling out all the stops to extend the life of the console.  Supporting new disc formats, cloud storage, new live TV services.  And the console redesign+kinect launched just last year.

On the contrary, the Wii has been dry with developments for a while now, making it obvious a new console was brewing.  I think for PS4/Xbox720 it'll be 2014 at the earliest.  While the latest news on the Wii U puts it after April next year. 

@CreamFilling512:

So that means that for ~2 years the Wii U will be 1.5 times (50%) faster than PS3/Xbox, after which the PS4/Xbox720 will be ~22 times faster than the Wii U (2100%) based on my quick Moore's Law calculation).

BTW, if Xbox720 is to be released in 2014 then they must be very close to starting development on it. The 360 took just over 2 years to develop.