I have to be honest...

The main reason why I brought up this thread is because of anger towards my laptop and the price tag of being a pc gamer. My laptop has a week embedded 7000 [Gt, Gtx, i don't really know, it's an NVidia....] and 1GB of ram, and 1.9GHz dual core Processor.

I was playing Resident Evil 4 [love the game but couldn't find the PS version on this pathetic island...]. At a windowed 800x600 res, the games graphics were fine but the frame rate sucked balls, I looked at my settings to get the best out of it I could [am running vista..... I hate vista.....] and my frame rate sucked balls none the less but the graphics were fine. I looked at task manager every once in a while and noticed that the game was always taking up between 240MB to 350MB or Ram on my computer..... and then I remembered that I had the game on ps2 and the ps2 had a minute 32MB or ram.... that bummed me out when I think of how much I would have to pay to run this game well on my desktop at home [am at work right now....].

My desktop sucks worse than my laptop:

2.4Ghz Single Core
846MB or Ram [DDR1 btw...] [it's supposed to be 1GB.... that's what I said on the Box and when I looked inside the thing there were 2 512MB ram cards...]
Embedded 6150 [Nvidia... so throw in you GTX, GT, G/S, D/P, DMC LOL]
Power Supply: 250W
19" Monitor [which my ps3 is also connected to threw an HDMI to DVI cable, I play in 720p]

I still live with my family, am only 16, I didn't buy the computers... I wasn't even their when it was purchased. Neither the laptop, Am the only one that uses the laptop, and the desktop is supposed to be for the family... but am the one using it about 96% of the time...

If you'd asked me a year ago I'd have probably said 2 GB unified memory would be best for next generation but already in 2008 you can buy 4GB for 80$ or so if you can shop around you can get it lower.

By 2011-2012 when I estimate we'll be kicking into next gen 4 GB will be significantly cheaper as PC's seem to get stronger every few months, prices reduce better things come out etc. I'd say in the next 3-4 years 4GB of ram will be cheap as I recall 2GB being 80-90$ not long ago which now I can buy 2 GB for... 20$ I'd say 2-6 GB is within reason pending how price drops go and the price of the system.

Edit: One of the best things they could do is not so much increase the memory as lower the latency and improve how it communicates with the CPU. Combined GPU/CPUs are in the future so that could be a cost cutting measure. I've always been a fan of unified memory though, it seems a better system as you can scale it as you need it, non unified if you're not using it for graphics, it just doesn't get used.

Flash memory seems quite possible with the sizes that those things are getting to now. But I don't see gaming going back to old school cartridges though....

I loved sega, my first console was the Sega Genesis. I didn't include the dreamcast because it had quite a bit less ram than the others. Saturn had more ram than it's competitors [and a more powerfull processor, but development wasn't so kind to the utilization of that processor though...

Yep. Am pretty sure I've seen some one with a laptop that has 8GB. A LAPTOP!! Must have been custom made or something, I understand apple does that. And it looked like an apple laptop to me.

I doubt it, the console developers will very much be trying to keep costs down. My prediction is 2 gb, 1gb seems more likely than 4.

Am thinking 2GB the least. I'm just saying 4GB because I tried to follow a trend... I trend that I find to make sense quite a bit.

It really depends on the year of the console's release ...

If a console is released in 2010, being that most manufacturers favour speed over capacity, I wouldn't be surprised to see a console with 1GB to 2GB of memory. If a console is released in 2012 I would expect it to have 2GB to 4GB of memory.

The PS4 may not be that much more powerfull than the PS3 in relation to how powerfull the PS3 is to the PS2.

I guess we'll have to wait for information about how the big three are going to react to the consumer this gen, i'm certain Sony will capiltlise on the casuals next gen far more than they did this gen.

dont you think that with the way things are going we will be talking about howmuch motion-ier the controls will be next gen...rather than howmuch more ram? :)

3 or 4 sounds reasonable.