The Wii wil never get the kind of third party support that the PS2 had.

[Ail]

txrattlesnake said:
For those that are making comments like "With PS3 and 360 now going to have motion control, then we're not really going to see much a jump in graphics next gen."

Actually, it is true that Sony and Microsoft do seem to be embracing the motion tech philosophy in an attempt to increase their systems sales; however, that goes against many of the ideas of customers that have bought PS3 or 360 so far. Many people that bought those systems so far did so because they enjoy much better graphics in their console but they aren't rich enough to be able to go out and buy pcs every couple of years to keep up with the major jumps in pc graphics.

So what happens to the roughly 50% of gamers that prefer better graphics to better controls in their games when the next gen rolls around if Sony and Microsoft aren't trying to have consoles that can hang with some pcs in the graphics department for the next five years?

It could leave the market wide open for those that want to make systems capable of much better graphics as occurred when 3DO entered the market ( and 3DO could have become a much bigger player in the industry if Sony and Sega's own super graphics machines weren't released so close to the 3DO's release).

 

I really don't think next gen will see a huge graphical leap for several reasons :

 

- Graphics are getting to the point that they are good enough ( you woudn't get the same kind of leap you got from PS1 to PS2 or PS2 to Xbox360/PS3)

- Enhancing graphics is going to enhance development costs again

- We are not anymore in a situation where a huge number of gamers are playing games with a lot better graphics on the PC right now.

 

Sure you can get better on the PC right now except

- The number of PC owners owning those graphical powerhouse PC isn't that huge

- There aren't many games developed for the PC to take advantage of those graphics anyway ( and with develpment costs and piracy this ain't going to change a lot, heck the next 2 big games to be released (SC2 and D3) aren't going to be graphic powerhouses...

- The difference between those graphics and current best attainable on console isn't that huge

 

Most likely the transition to the next gen will be a lot smoother and will feature  things like new controls schemes, highly increased on-board memory in consoles ( most likely 2Gb+), slightly more powerfull processors and improved storage devices ( to support digital downloads).