I hope we don't see PS4 for a very, very long time. If the PS3, 360, and Wii were not out yet I would still be happy with them. IMO games like Twilight Princess, God of War 2, Gran Tursimo 4, Shadow of the Colosses, Halo2, Oddworld Stranger, and many more proved there was really no reason for these new systems yet. If Sony would not have had the massive market share they had last gen I doubt we would even have the consoles we have now.

If all goes well this gen, and all of the companies stay fairly equal in market share I really don't expect to see a new console before 2014. To be honest I really would like to see all three companies wait to release new consoles tell there is a new standard for HDTV. With PS3 and 360 handeling 1080 pretty decently at this point in their lives, and knowing it will only get easier for devs to achive over the next 3 to 8 years, there is really no point for another 1080p console.

So to get to the point of the thread, here is what I would like to see from PS4:

Release Date: September 2015
Processor: CPU/GPU Combo Processor (4K graphics at 60fps, as long as every game looks as good as Spirits Within I will be Happy)
Storage: 500GB Blu-rays 16x (Panasonic has this in development), 1TB SSD, Most items saved server side
I/O: Multichannel Wireless HDMI, Bluetooth, Multichannel Wireless USB, Wifi (basically a wireless console besides the powercord)

Features:
-Home from Day 1
-Complete Software B/C with All PS consoles
-All Games available on Blu-ray or over PSN
-Dual Shock 4, PSEye 2, and Wii like motion controller all packed in from day one, to allow full dev support for all play types
-IPTV, VOD, Music, Books ect. all avaible from PSStore Day 1
-PC functions (word processor, web browser w/ flash, photo/video editing software available at extra cost)

Basically I just described a Mac, only as an open platform, with full support from the developing community. That is all I want, to me that would be the 2 Publishers shy of the perfect system.

PS. After thinking about this and writing that down, I just can not see any better future than a single standard next gen. All games, all systems, all CE companies envolved. No more wars, no more fanboys, and way better games. Please, please let it happen.

It actually has been working that way with the PS3 since launch. You should do a little research if you're skeptical; it's pretty common knowledge.

Whether it makes a difference is an issue left to developers, but when memory resources are limited as they are with consoles, every MB makes a difference. Every developer will agree more available memory is always beneficial. A few extra MB of memory would allow for an in game screen shot capability. 8MB allows a PSP to be used as a second monitor. Or they could just use the memory for typical game resources; engine or whatever. Developer's choice. It makes quite a difference.

It is PC development that typically allows for bloated memory resource usage, both with the OS and game software. While the scalable architecture allows for the user to shut off features to minimize OS memory usage, the hardware scalability of simply adding more memory is the natural choice for anyone not working with a limited budget. Consoles don't have that option, so streamlined firmware updates remain the only solution.

Interestingly enough, the 360, with its architecture that has more in common with desk top PCs is considerably more efficient when it comes to OS memory usage: only 32MB. It's why features like in-game soundtracks and in-game text/communication were standard available features from the beginning.

http://www.innerbits.com/blog/2007/05/09/ps3-memory-footprint/

http://www.ps3fanboy.com/2007/05/14/new-playstation-3-sdk-released-os-memory-footprint-lessened/

Recently we were given the opportunity to ask Naughty Dog, the creators of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, some interview questions. Here are the results.

Questions 3 and 4 answered by Pal Engstad, Lead Rendering Programmer. The others were answered by Evan Wells, the Co President of Naughty Dog

Q4: With streaming technologies and the included HDD in every PS3, how important is actual memory? I ask because the PS3’s OS takes up so much more of the available 512MB than the 360’s OS does.

A4: Main memory is a cache, but remember that a larger cache enables us to keep more data in memory at the same time, enabling more detail in textures. Therefore, every MB saved improves the quality of our game. We’ve solved most of our memory problems by relying on the SPEs to perform compression, both at load-time and at run-time, using techniques developed by ICE, SCEA Tools&Tech and the SCEE ATG group. So yes, memory footprint is very important to us.

I think it is almost certain that both consoles will use a Blue-Laser diode based disc format (which will be inexpensive by then) for their game format, and Microsoft's console will include a Blu-Ray movie player ... I would put the odds of Nintendo's next console playing Blu-Ray movies at 50%; the Wii was going to include a DVD player and what stopped Nintendo from including one was that everyone already owned a DVD player and you can buy them for $15 today.

Architecture has nothing to do with bloatedness of (windows)
OS. You can go (atleast) down to 70MB with linux that has gui and without gui about 35MB.

(Click for bigger pic, don't have picture for without gui. Too lazy to play around with camera.)

@ Deneidez

Although I love the Linux open source community, it's not an efficiently written option neither. Check out QNX instead which also shares many common features as well as far more modern other features in addition.

Here an older version with GUI system booting from solely 1.44 MB diskette (no harddrive or CDROM required). 8 MB of Ram is enough:

http://toastytech.com/guis/qnxdemo.html

Anyway, point proven and I think we can both agree that linux is doing a 'bit' better than windows when it comes to use of resources. :)

Interesting information. Thanks for the links. I didn't realize that Sony had streamlined the OS.

Linux is an apple to Window's orange: two entirely different paradigms.

The overhead for Linux is low enough to run on the limited memory resources of the PS3, which just about says it all.

Point was, that the PS3 OS was relatively inefficient from the start, and has consistently been improved by freeing up more memory for games with firmware updates. Considering that it initially used 86MB of combined memory between GPU and CPU available resources, it had a lot of room for improvement, relative to the lightweight efficiency of the 360's 32MB overhead.

But the efficiency of Linux has absolutely nothing to do with the pyramid approach to operating systems taken by Windows, which is more or less mandatory due to being a legacy platform. It's common knowledge that's where much of the bloat in Windows comes from.

1) As I've said before the I know for a fact the PS3 runs a modified version of AIX (and so might the 360 for all I know).

2) Just because the firmware is a certain size doesn't mean the actuall kernel is that size. Things like the SMB, webbrowser, etc I assume are part of those firmware updates and they most likely get swapped out when not being used and so they will not affect the amount of memory a game has access too.

@MikeB lower memory footprint does not imply less compute time, in fact the opposite is usually the case. This is one of those fundamental tradoffs in algorithms.