I thought that the PS3 japanese versions had a $5 emulator chip in to do the work for older games. If that was the same price for the new consoles it would add 1.25% to the price. Even if it were double it would only add 2.5% to the price.

As I said before, the PS3 is something like 1000x as powerful as the PS2 was. You simply can not compare them. They have nothing in common at all. The PS3 and 360 were incredibly advanced for their time and are still complicated and quite expensive to make.

If you could build a "PS3 on a chip" for a few dollars then the newest model, the 5th generation "Super slim" which was only released in September last year, would contain one and it would be dirt cheap.

Similarly, the August 2011 "Corona" version of the 360 was built with modern processing techniques, but is still a relatively complicated, power hungry and expensive beast.

It's possible that by using more widely available components, the build cost of the next generation of consoles will actually be less than they could build a new 360 or PS3 for!

That makes sense. It also makes it very clear that it was a technical cul de sac. It does open up the possibility of future consoles being very much easier to support previous versions. Interestingly if they are making it from bog standard components it does open up the idea that people can build their own, depending on whether there are no proprietary chips involved.

My crystal ball tells me that building your own will be very difficult. They're going to be using a memory arrangement that is much better optimised for graphical performance than PCs have. It would almost certainly be cheaper to just buy one from Sony.

Of course, that may change in another 5 years or so when PC tech advances even further.

It would be beyond most people I agree, plus we do not know what OS they will use, and that could be a real problem for those intending to build their own, especially with an always on set up.

Now this I wasn't expecting...

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/40 ... on-report/



I think we should go back to cartridges...

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/40 ... o-founder/

If the consoles aren't that big a deal, it's because they've been priced wrong. And the games. And those blu-rays... As he mentions himself, individual publishers do well whether the overall market's bad or not, and if you struggle to sell even a 69p game, it's because nobody knows it exists or cares!

Next-gen Kinect will detect eye-rolling

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/40 ... nt-rumour/

The sooner we get away from this motion-control bollocks the better. If even kids wind up not caring, what chance for adults?

Carts have some real advantages. Some of the Nintendo games included hardware which made the impossible possible by effectively upgrading the console. However, I think their time has past.



Well that's one way around the backwards compatibility issue... except who's really going to buy one? Anyone with a pile of 360 games is going to own a 360 already...

Wow big turn around on the "always on" thing, especially since MS hasn't said anything about it.

The backward compatibility thing is a bit useless, as JJW009 points out. The entire idea is that you get rid of the console but can keep your discs. This new idea would mean buying essentially a new Xbox!

Maybe the solution is to allow Xbox 360 to be plugged in instead? Save yourself $149 as well.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/40 ... ys-online/

Even if MS gave him a relative fortune there, it'll be worth it if they learned from it. I doubt it, but...

I thought the guy was a knob and was glad to see him go but in the back of my mind I do wonder whether this was a deliberate move by MS to test the waters. They never made a statement about it being "always on" and they still haven't denied it.

You can never help wondering in this day and age

I'll laugh my balls off if MS are dumb enough for always on and/or second-hand blocking... I live close to the shipyard that built the Titanic, maybe we could build another giant FAILboat for 'em

It probably was a way to test the waters. Though sacking him might be too much. I think it if this person was the creative director his input might be quite large and seeing that his brainchild was not going down well meant that his future might have been limited considering the flak it was creating. While there may be some piracy problems, that could be solved by an initial check when players join a multi player session, or initial solo player. There simply has to be a better way that being lazy and demanding always on.