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Resident_Hazard on 19 August 2008
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Again, I don't think the next generation will be rushed like this one was. Not in the least bit. Why?

MONEY.

Almost every single third party company, and even 2/3 of the console makers, finished the last two fiscal years in the red--meaning that their financial losses far outstripped their gains. And for some of those companies, it was losses were damn near catastrophic. Third party companies are going to decide how it works next time and anyone rushing too soon will be shunned the way Sega shot themselves in the foot by releasing the Saturn too soon after the 32X and the Dreamcast too soon after the Saturn. Third party devs need time to make money, and so far, many of them haven't made any. This console generation transition has been financially harder than any ever before.

Third party companies won't start reaping what they sow until the end of the current fiscal year, and I'm sure that many of them will still end with tremendous losses. Developers are taking longer to get used to the new systems and in that, it's taking longer to balance game-making effeciency with cost of development. Games are also taking far longer to develop than ever before meaning that some Xbox360 games that are just getting started now won't even be out until late 2010 at the soonest in many cases.


The next console generation will cost even more to develop for, and early developers will not make profits on the new system--especially if it's rushed out in 2010 or 2011. The last "guesstimate" I read was that the next generation would start in 2012, and that may be financially feasible, but for now, 2010 or 2011 simply aren't. On top of all this, the current generation isn't enough of a leap in gameplay (aside from DS/Wii). The next generation needs to be VASTLY improved, and not just graphically. You can bet that the unforeseen (by everyone but Nintendo) success of the DS and Wii will have sent MS and Sony's R&D teams back to the drawing board for their next consoles. Now everyone knows that simply upping the power simply won't be enough next time. The learning curve next time will be even more dramatic because of this.


I think we've finally reached a point where a console's life is a more natural 7 or so years rather than 4 or 5. Both the Xbox and GameCube were killed before their full potential had been tapped, this is evidenced by the fact that new tricks and wonders are STILL being ironed out of the PS2--and both the Xbox and GameCube were more powerful systems. There is simply too much potential in current machines to rush another generation.

History can't really be used to analyze the future transition to Generation 8 because things are much different than before. Costs are much higher. And there are people playing games for the first time since the second generation that aren't hardcore gamers.