Sadly in many regions internet bandwidth isn't pogressing as fast as one would hope. For example for the United States, the average bandwidth in people's home only increased by 20% (lowest growth in the past 7 years) last year and lags behind a whopping 30 fold compared to the average bandwidth in Japan households (the EU is somewhere in between).

Despite this I expect full quality streaming to become feasible worldwide in developed countries by around 2016-2020, but I expect Blu-Ray to stick around as well as an off line alternative. It requires a lot of bandwidth to properly stream 1080p image quality and the surround sound without too much delay (there will be people, who only want to surf the web and read some emails, going for the cheapest solution possible). It's also important for full backwards compatibility with CD, DVD, VCD, PS1, PS2 (Come on Sony, tell us there's a software emulator in the works for those who want this!).

I think it would be cool though if the (by then a considerably cheaper, slimmed down) PS3 with huge harddrive would be indirectly PS4 compatible. If everything goes relatively smooth with regard to internet progress worldwide, Sony may not need to actually release a PS4 onto the general consumer market, the PS3 (maybe with faster built-in Wi-Fi, the gigabit ethernet should be more than sufficient) could do just fine with a firmware update.

For example, I imagine a small game specific input/control/image enhance (SPE usage similar as the Toshiba scaling chip, amount of scaling required depending on internet bandwidth) engine to be executed on the PS3. The actual heavy game processing would be done by remote Sony Cell clusters, with results to be streamed back to the PS3. Maybe the settings could be made scaleable, so if there are bandwidth constraints, consumers can pick between optimised setting for image quality (highest bitrate, least local post-processing) and performance (lower bitrate, lots of local post processing). Upgraded internet, results in upgraded or optimal experience.

What do you guys think? What do you think of the streaming potential? Do you want to see a modernized cheap PS3, a PS3 deluxe an significantly upgraded PS4, a combination or something else on the market in the future?

I hear you. That's what I've been asking for all along, getting more memory by upgrading firmware!

In the end I would prefer the PS3 to remain compatible through streaming and I would like Sony to allow HDTV manufacturers to built this functionality into distant future HDTVs, Sony (apart from the HDTVs) selling mainly seperate controllers wth charging stands and proper wireless headsets and microphones. Everything except for power connection wireless.

Wishlist, software emulation for PS2 and DVR functionality built-in by default. Maybe a position changeable (with zoom function etc controlled by remote) webcam. Maybe 3D capable display and/or virtual reality headsets/gloves.

My PS3 does PS2/PS1 emulation off the box, you must have gotten the cheaper 40gb version.

No, I have a 60 GB PAL launch model with PS2 GPU (unlike US launch models the PS2 CPU is emulated). But there are a lot of people who are looking for an upgrade to upscale their PS2 games, but there is no PS2 backwards compatible solution available today.

The PS3 should be more than powerful enough to emulate it, but it's incredible complex to emulate the GPU through just software.

No thx I don't want any of this streaming nonsence.
I'd rather buy PS4 then pay for bandwidth needed by 1080p streaming.

@ Zlejedi

Can you elaborate a bit further?

What do you consider to be nonsense with regard to streaming?

At least Sony has been thinking about game streaming since a long time, have you tried this with Lair yet? Lair is too demanding for the PSP to process itself, so that could be an interesting test case. I haven't been able to test this myself yet and you own both.

Of course the PSP's screen resolution is really low compared to HDTV, so it requires a lot less bandwidth.

What ever works I guess... doesn't matter much for me.... I just hope they don't go for another big tech jump on the next system.

With streaming for cluster solutions this shouldn't be much of an issue. A simple game could just use one SPU on a remote server location, a high demand fully raytraced (for example) game could use up to as many as Sony allows (more expensive though to the publishers I assume). In a sense that could mean there would not be any PS4, PS5, PS6, etc anymore. Just as technology progresses and becomes cheaper, more remote processing boards are added by Sony, new Playstation games each year can become increasingly more demanding without user upgrades.

> Just as technology progresses and becomes cheaper, more remote processing boards are added by Sony

To expand on this, the same of course regards to system memory, system bandwidth and storage space.