Profcrab said:
Yea, it is sort of the pet dream of the Sony fanboy that MS will drop out next generation. It is funny to see it keep popping up though. It is very likely that both Sony and Microsoft will be using Blu-Ray for the next generation. The reason is simple, no new development is necessary and no game is going to touch 50GB for a long time (yes, yes, they can use uncompressed sound but sound isn't going to push them to develop a new medium). All the development for the next generation will go into control schemes to take advantage of the motion control games, a modest bump in graphic quality, and greater online integration. No one is going to want to tack on development costs for storage as well. I expect Nintendo to stick with DVD since they can still make HD games with it and it will offset the cost of having to include a hard drive. I give that post a 9.6. |
Well thanks!
I'd just like to elaborate: I'm a big fan of video game history, and I know that this generation has offset things a bit and history alone must be taken with a grain of salt in making future predictions. In many cases, history no longer gives us a stable image of the future of gaming.
Sony has used a different format for all four of it's machines: CD, DVD, UMD, Blu-Ray. They're a huge electronics and tech corporation and you can bet that they've already got Blu-Ray's replacement cooking somewhere. Especially since I don't believe Blu-Ray will actually detrone DVD like the most ardent Sony fanboys believe. DVD is too well ingrained in society. It's used everywhere, it's the perfect new replacement for both CD's and VHS in most cases. Blu-Ray is still the new laserdisc and will be relegated to video games and some movie sales--though it will fare overall better than the Laserdisc medium, it won't displace DVD's as a standard format. When it comes to computer software, movies and the like, regular DVD's will maintain control.
The recent reports that Nintendo is working with InPhase on a purpoted HVD (Holographic Versatile Disk) reader show interesting new ambitions on Nintendo's part. I think it's obvious that the main reason Nintendo is working with this technology is to implement it in future video games. By the time Nintendo and InPhase are ready for the next generation, this technology is actually likely to be consumer-affordable. If not, I'm not sure what Nintendo would do since they aren't using a standard technolgy as is. Their optical disks are developed by Matsushita, and are similar but not the same as DVD's--in fact, they aren't actual DVD's because Nintendo didn't want to pay royalties to use that medium.
I only half-heartedly theorize that MS will use HD-DVD next time simply because they're familiar with it now, and just because a medium isn't popular doesn't mean there isn't a use for it. Beta videos are often still used in various aspects of televised production. Sega used a format called GD-ROMs for the Dreamcast (with equivalent storage to the tiny GameCube optical disks). Really, if MS uses something like HD-DVD, it'll be an advanced follow-up to the format because I don't believe they're fans of Blu-Ray, and don't think they'll become fans of Blu-Ray any time too soon.
But again, the Wii and DS threw some big-ass wrenches into the gears of gaming and no doubt sent everybody else back to the drawing board. This makes it next to impossible to actually predict where things may be headed with the next generation and all but ensures that it probably won't come as soon as we might fear. If anything, I see MS as the only console maker next time to stick to the classic scheme of things (dual analog and the like). Sure, there is a motion-sensing controller in development for the X360, but it's not being made by MS. Someone else is tinkering with that. And what that means is that MS probably won't do much of anything--if anything at all--with it. About the only solid predictions I can make are that all next-gen (8th Generation) consoles will be Wi-Fi and will come with large built-in harddrives, and that none of them will be weaker than the Xbox360--Nintendo included. They will also all be HD.
The final point I want to make is that Hideo Kojima himself essentially claimed to have already maxed the Blu-Ray medium with MGS4--even alluding to the fact that there are parts of the game of somewhat lower quality (be they audio or visual, I don't know) due to having to use compression to get them all to fit on the disk. It took a long time and an uphill battle for DVD to finally usurp VHS from the market. The average consumer is the reason for this. And the average consumer is not going to abandon a format they took years warming up to just because Sony is offering something slightly better--in many cases, Joe Sixpack consumer can't see any real difference from DVD to Blu-Ray anyway.
