No PS4! (What are the chances)!

[Squilliam]

bdbdbd said:

Squilliam said:

Peripheral support is a complicated thing. I really can't say at this point what they intend to do and how they intend to implement Natal and even more so whether we will see entirely new hardware or just a refresh of the current Xbox 360 come 2010.

However I do think they could support both an Xbox 360 and an Xbox 360+ console at the same time should they so choose. Every game disc has about 1GB of space locked away from developers which could be unlocked to allow developers to support both consoles. Since the architectures would likely be extremely similar the costs imposed on developers would not be of terrible concern as an updated Xbox 360 SKU could feed off higher end PC development on Direct X 11+ and possibly in a way provide an easier transition to a next generation by taking hardware leaps in stages rather than at once. Nintendo uses this method with their handhelds all the time, its quite a proven method really.

It's indeed hard to say what they do with the peripheral - if there ever will be one. It would clear things a lot, if we'd know what strategy M$ is planning to use with Natal. If it's supposed to be a peripheral, we'll see similar strategy that has been used with Eyetoy, Balance Board, and lots of other stuff and it could be bundled. If it is incremental upgrade, a new system with a launch is required for the thing to get as wide support as possible. Judging by E3, M$ marketed it as incremental upgrade, so i'm looking it from that direction. And frankly, 360 is a little too far into the generation for it to be possible to pull incremental upgrade through in the same fashion Sony pulled Dualshock through a decade ago.

The type of upgrade we're talking about, could be seen in handhelds only with DSL -> DSi. Judging by the success of DS(L), it's too early to say how Nintendo manages with the upgrade. However, it's different with handhelds, since when you buy a new system, old one goes to a family member, when home consoles are rather obsolete after getting replaced.

They are far enough into the generation, going on 5 years to pull off a relaunch. The Wii came between 4.5-5 years after the Gamecube and that was a very successful relaunch/rethink with upgraded hardware. I have really thought of the camera system that was shown for Natal as a way for many of 45M+ Xbox 360 users at the time of launch to upgrade to the current camera specification if they so chose without having to pay $2-300 for upgraded hardware. The software developers could really hit the deck running with the launch of a new console from Microsoft so long as the architecture is similar to the current generation. Probably the closer parellel with this would be the Gameboy -> Gameboy Colour transition. They can easily release new hardware and slowly transition support over 2-3 years to the new console without causing hardship to the older userbase.