So we are all assuming that neither Sony or MS has learnt anything from Nintendo/Wii or this generation? That "more power" is the way to "winning" the next generation?

A 720 & PS4 vrs Wii HD battle would be brutal - Wii HD would get all the PS3/360 titles ported to it, would fully support all Wii peripherals - and integrate nicely with the DS II.

PS4 wont be out even anytime soon, so I think its pointless to talk about it - 720 might get "announced" in 2010, but if its out earlier than Xmas 2011 I'll be real surprised.

The reason the Wii succeeded is because of its innovative control scheme.  Sure the graphics didn't matter, but how many times can you pull that on people?  The next leap in graphics will be the largest.  We will truly pass the uncanny valley. I mean just look at the footage of real time ray tracing and the tech demos on display by ATI of the newer GPUs.  Imagine what the reality of that will be in 2012, or 2014 (the time I expect PS4 to hit).

I think Sony and Microsoft are suffering because they are vying for the same market share.  Neither console has casual appeal.  The Wii swooped in and made the soccer moms, geriatrics, and 5 year olds all happy.  Microsoft and Sony are both watching, and I'm sure they are vying to make the jump into that realm.

I expect the next Sony and Microsoft console to be competitively priced, and if they are smart, to include their own innovative control mechanism.  The PS4 could easily see Cell + Larabee + GPU and a partnership deal with NVidia.   If they can partner up properly, they could easily charge 299-349 for the consoles out the gate and still have a beast of a system.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/09/12/larrabee-might-great-analyst

Kumar reckons Intel is being either supremely daring or supremely hubristic in proclaiming its Larrabee will be able to outperform Nvidia’s best GPUs, noting, "Nvidia has had over 10 years to optimize the 3D graphics pipeline, the necessary drivers, the platform connections needed to supply the memory bandwidth required, and to work with the software and apps developers".

It is precisely this “different approach” Kumar seems to be taking to task in his report, with Intel using software which will have to run properly on multiple processing cores and based on what Kumar calls an "antiquated" Pentium design.

Kumar, however, remains skeptical, noting "If Larrabee ends up knocking out Nvidia, it will be a shocking upset", especially, he adds due to the "high efficiency of Nvidia's existing designs".

thay should make ps4 a supercomputer

The bottomline is that the consumer will benefit the most from these battles, as we will get optimal performance at reasonable prices.

I don' t think they r going to add too much CPU power in the PS4.. probably they r going to slightly increase RAM and graphic capability... maybe add a little AI or Physics processor.. but number of cell processors are going to be 2 or atmost 3..

Larrabee scales well from 8,16,24,32,40,48 cores so it really depends on how they wish to use it. In the end it could be something to make jaw dropping visuals on a next generation console or simplify its construction and layout to make a cheaper/cooler console or even do both and rely on Larrabee + a few next generation sandy bridge architecture (Ring bus is required to intergrate them).

The possibilities on how it could be used are really up in the air.

I just want to say that I am EXTREMELY grateful that alephnull was able to come in and contribute so much to this thread; I think this is a great discussion to be having and I also thank Squilliam for bringing the possibility to our attention.

As far as the proposition itself, I think that Sony at least would be quite foolish to abandon the Cell, now that every Sony developer is finally getting used to it, just to run after another brand-new unproven technology that may be moderately better.  It would also prevent Sony from having easy BC next time around. 

Microsoft will probably be cautious of anything that strains the famous 360-PC relationship, but on the other hand it does seem like Larrabee could potentially be a real sweetheart deal for them ... if you are really correct about MS not having the same problems with Larrabee that Sony had with the Cell.

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/gpu-sweeney-interview.ars

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/idf-gelsinger-interview.ars

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080804-larrabee-intels-biggest-leap-ahead-since-the-pentium-pro.html

Some interesting articles on Larrabee etc.

i dont see that happening, development cost are now to high imagine if they use it they are going to start charging 80 bucks for a game =/ OMG