News - Xbox 720 and PS4 announcement at E3 2012?

[TooNice]

iPhone 4/4S are released in Japan as such though. Granted, a Japanese company may be more sensitive to such things. Games usually don't skip that number, if they were ordered by number in the first place.

As to the Xbox720, it wouldn't bother me too much if they call it that, but they are probably going to need to find a new naming strategy afterwards: Xbox 1080? Sounds too much like the 1080p which is already supported. And Xbox 1440 would really be weird.

[Steve]

I would love to see keyboard/mouse for FPS on console.

One of my concerns right now is that I no longer have a desktop PC in use... and I don't want to buy a new one just to play Half-Life 3. But I certainly don't want to play it on a PS3 controller.

For those that worry about fairness in keyboard vs gamepad... they already solved that on the Wii. Mariokart online shows people who are playing in steering-wheel mode (i.e. accelerometer mode) and those who are playing with a nunchuck attached. It'd be easy enough to do the same for mouse/keyboard and have filters/preferences/handicaps online.

[Raz316]

Completely irrelevant to the grand scheme of things, but I am hoping 720 is just a code name. What's next Xbox 1080?

[watercooled]

I'm going to totally disagree with you I'm afraid. First off, unless you're the kind of guy who goes for the "minimum specs are good enough for me" then you can figure on changing graphics card every 12-18 months for a start, then you've got new mobo+cpu+memory combo every 3-4 years. Now granted, the current champs - '360 and PS3 - are probably past their sell-buy dates, but the console cost is only about the same as a good mobo+cpu+memory bundle. I bought a GT460 Christmas '10 and I'm very sure that I'll need to upgrade next Christmas if I want to have a reasonable level of graphics performance.

Secondly, Sony might be able to get away with selling a PS4 for £500, but I would politely suggest that if the Xbox720 was priced at this level then there's going to be real problems selling it - especially at the kind of volumes that developers will expect if they are to develop for it. That kind of price point will be fine for the folks that happily drop that kind of money for a tablet, but surely it excludes "mum and dad" buying one for junior? My feeling is that if the '720 doesn't come with bundled Kinect then it'll be priced somewhere between £300 and £400.

But it also seems to be the consensus that you need the latest and greatest hardware to play games but that's simply not true. Consoles run games at far from PC max settings (for example, very few games are rendered at 720p on either current console and those that are tend to be very sluggish, its just a marketing point - either you let the upscaler on the console or the TV do the work) yet they're still acceptable, hence a PC will last a similar amount of time if you accept you won't get max settings on everything. Of course, the amount of time going into optimisation for consoles does make a difference, but it's not nearly as big as some people make out.

I don't see why one brand could get away with selling for that price but the other one wouldn't? About the only reason the PS3 got away with that price was the BD drive i.e. the console was a similar price or less than standalone players at the time.

Buy the games not the console.

Specification is irrelevant in console.

Very true from a consumer standpoint, but a better thought-out platform would make life easier for developers so possibly decreasing development time, and it would leave more headroom for future games.

Now if the next gen consoles allowed native support for Mouse and keyboard for all FPS games, then i think that alone would get many die hard pc fans attentions.

I doubt it, PC gamers are on that platform for more than the controls, and many PC gamers would rather use a controller over mouse/kb. Consoles aim to give a level playing field for all players i.e. people who dump more money into their setup won't gain an unfair advantage over others. Adding mouse/kb would seriously dent that.

In terms of the new xbox, which I think will just get called "X-Box" if they are going to use a version of Windows 8 for its OS, production would not start until I would guess the RTM build is done of Windows 8 which could be tail end of 2012

Just calling it the Xbox would confuse matters so I doubt it, but I've seen worse names for that - search for source code now and you end up with a load of film reviews.
The UI may look similar to Windows 8 but it's very unlikely the underlying OS would be even remotely related to the desktop OS. Consoles only need a very simple OS with no unused extras, the 360 OS is more of a BIOS with the actual OS, if you can call it that, being part of the games. The PS3 uses a more traditional OS but it really eats into RAM usage, something which doesn't come cheap on consoles.

[crossy]

But it also seems to be the consensus that you need the latest and greatest hardware to play games but that's simply not true. Consoles run games at far from PC max settings (for example, very few games are rendered at 720p on either current console and those that are tend to be very sluggish, its just a marketing point - either you let the upscaler on the console or the TV do the work) yet they're still acceptable, hence a PC will last a similar amount of time if you accept you won't get max settings on everything. Of course, the amount of time going into optimisation for consoles does make a difference, but it's not nearly as big as some people make out.

I'm going to disagree with you on the above - it's been my experience that I've needed to do an update every two years just maintain my PC at a level where I didn't have to double check the system recommendations.
E.g. until Christmas 2010 I had a single core box with 2GB RAM - and stuff such as CoD:W@W was playable, but you had to be patient. None of the stuff I bought last year for the PC would run on that PC.
Compare that with the console, where once you've spent the £300 (coincidentally about the same price as a good midrange graphics card - one good for 2-3 years) then that's it until the new one comes out.

I don't see why one brand could get away with selling for that price but the other one wouldn't? About the only reason the PS3 got away with that price was the BD drive i.e. the console was a similar price or less than standalone players at the time.

Down to marketing - Sony is/was a "premium" brand so their products tend to be priced at the upper end of the market. Even now the XBox is cheaper (slightly!) than the PS3.

Personally I wouldn't buy either at £500, my point was that it's more likely that PS4 could still sell at that price point than the XBox720. I have severe doubt that either Sony or Microsoft would choose to price at that level long-term.

[watercooled]

I'm going to disagree with you on the above - it's been my experience that I've needed to do an update every two years just maintain my PC at a level where I didn't have to double check the system recommendations.
E.g. until Christmas 2010 I had a single core box with 2GB RAM - and stuff such as CoD:W@W was playable, but you had to be patient. None of the stuff I bought last year for the PC would run on that PC.
Compare that with the console, where once you've spent the £300 (coincidentally about the same price as a good midrange graphics card - one good for 2-3 years) then that's it until the new one comes out.

But how long had you had that PC, and what sort of single core? Decent Athlon/C2D CPUs have been popular since 2006 and are still fine to run modern games at reasonable settings. Cards like the 8800, also released 2006, are capable of running modern games. You don't need to upgrade anything like every 2 years unless you're buying generations-old tech on eBay or something. Again, we're talking about running at console-quality settings here, so <720p resolution along with low-mid shader quality and so on. I know some PC gamers consider a PC incapable of running a game unless it can do it maxed out at 100fps but it's by no means a fair comparison here.

[Hicks12]

I'm going to disagree with you on the above - it's been my experience that I've needed to do an update every two years just maintain my PC at a level where I didn't have to double check the system recommendations.
E.g. until Christmas 2010 I had a single core box with 2GB RAM - and stuff such as CoD:W@W was playable, but you had to be patient. None of the stuff I bought last year for the PC would run on that PC.
Compare that with the console, where once you've spent the £300 (coincidentally about the same price as a good midrange graphics card - one good for 2-3 years) then that's it until the new one comes out.

Think you are missing a bit here atleast in my experience so ill give an example...

My last whole build was:
E8400
P5n-d
4gb DDR2
8800GTS 512Mb
500GB WD AAKS
700w Xclio PSU
Random Case

Now that was all bought Jan 28th 2008... pretty much 4 years ago now, that system still exists now and is my Lan pc, the only item that has changed is the GPU.... it went to a 9800GT! it can play any game on low/medium atleast at 1920x1080, as we are comparing it to console then its safe to say that playing at Low is ACCEPTABLE since that is the graphic scale a 360/ps3 runs at (BF3 a prime example) so that system is keeping up with the times no problem and to put a financial note on this, the above cost me £456 when i bought it 4 years ago and the 360 at the time was well in the £250+ region iirc! Ive had 2 360s over the time and sold them both after getting bored because you can only game on a console really, the PC can be used for a magnitude of tasks as well as games people seem to forget this when looking at "value", my PC was used heavily over the 4 years for school/uni work and video entertainment and other things so it was crucial for me to have. Reliability aswell, the 2 360s i sold broke down a month or two later and my friend who is now on his third due to RROD and other issues (had to buy new ones...) means they have spent more than my PC!.

My current system(bought less than 2 months ago!):
I5 2500k
ASUS P8Z68-V
8gb DDR3
675W TT PSU

Cost me £325, carried over a gtx460 and yes before someone says the gpu has been upgraded i will say i upgraded from:

8800gts from original build ---> 4850 ----> gtx460
I spent a whopping £50 in total as they were sidestep upgrades, selling the older one pretty much negated any difference (the 460 being the most) you cant take a part of a console and upgrade (bar the HDD ofc!) so it cant really be compared and considering the lan pc is using an older gpu now and still usable i can safely say the only reason for upgrading is that i like having high/ultra graphic settings and this year i will be buying a new gpu .

Quite a cheap setup i must say.... cant compare between consoles as consoles are similar in pricing when you get down to the specifics and one is for a specific task the other is not.

I cant wait for the new consoles to be released though as it does mean PC games get even better!

[j.o.s.h.1408]

my htpc runs a i5 cpu and i tossed my 3-4 year old 260gtx in it and i can play every game at 720p res on my tv on ultra settings

[lainux]

I wonder what specs we can expect on the ps4

[crossy]

But how long had you had that PC, and what sort of single core? Decent Athlon/C2D CPUs have been popular since 2006 and are still fine to run modern games at reasonable settings. Cards like the 8800, also released 2006, are capable of running modern games. You don't need to upgrade anything like every 2 years unless you're buying generations-old tech on eBay or something. Again, we're talking about running at console-quality settings here, so <720p resolution along with low-mid shader quality and so on. I know some PC gamers consider a PC incapable of running a game unless it can do it maxed out at 100fps but it's by no means a fair comparison here.

That single core was an old A64 - and each W@W level took 10-15 minutes to load, although once it had loaded the performance was fine. Graphics card was an 8800GTX and I'll wholeheartedly agree with you that this was probably man enough to deal with the games today. So much so in fact that I reused it for a build for someone else - it really steams through MP3/MP4 encoding using CUDA!

Slightly off topic, but I'm going to agree with something that I've seen oft-quoted here - when it comes to PC's it's probably worth buying the best components you can afford at the time. I do this with graphics cards and they seem to have a good longevity (I've even still got an SLI pair of 7800GT's if anyone wants these very cheap). Until recently though, I've gone for "good enough" with the processors and invariably ended up regretting it 2 years later. Duron 800 -> Athlon 800 -> Athlon64 (3700+). This time around I went for PhenomII hex core and it's really nice to have loads of power to spare a year down the road!