Expectations for the next-gen

What will the next generation of consoles (Not handhelds) bring?

We will most likely have one or two (possibly even three) next gen consoles revealed within the next 2 years. There will always be speculation up until the specifications are revealed and down below you will find my thoughts and expectations.

The next Wii:

Nintendo is mainly a console for casual types of gamers and games. My guess is that Nintendo will bring out a console capable of running all games in 720p for the next gen. (The resolution of which most of the games today run in on consoles.)

The graphics for the next wii will probably have the potential of looking like multiplatform-games today (Most games probably won't be as demanding on the graphics-department due to the very nature of most games that nintendo has made for us over the years. The simplicity and gameplay is, and probably always will be Nintendos strongest points)

The Nintendo Wii will probably have Wifi of the latest standards. The wii-motion controllers will be vastly improved and will probably be as accurate as playstation Move is today. The technology that will make that possible is cheap, and will be even cheaper at the launch of "Wii 2".

Nintendo will also most likely include a blu-ray drive, although the capacity of the discs in their drive will most likely not be above what we have today for Playstation 3.

The next Xbox 360/Playstation 3:

I expect these consoles to be similar in many aspects. Both will include a Blu-Ray drive with increased capacity. 100 Gb wouldn't be surprising. Microsoft cannot skip blu-ray another generation. It would be a very bad business decision with all the focus on HD-content and 3D that we have today.

The graphics will be a big leap from today. It is very unlikely that any game will run in anything but 1080p 60 fps or above. 720p (as most games are running in today) is about 0,92 million pixels. 1080p is about 2,1 million pixels. So the number of pixels will be more than doubled and will enable even more details and amazing graphics than ever before. We will not see consoles that can output resolutions higher than 1920x1200 until the generation after the next. It won't be viable. Even more so if we want full HD 3D running in 60 fps (Which would mean that a game that wants that needs to run in about 120 fps in normal 1080p – mode.)

Technical specifications are hard to guess, but I will give it a try.

RAM: Both consoles will probably feature at least 1 Gb. Not only because of the resolution, but it will be needed for a number of other features that will be present in next-gen consoles.

GPU: This is perhaps the trickiest one. It will, obviously, be much more powerful. We will most likely see dx11 features included, such as tessellation among other things, improved animations overall, more details in textures, models, basically everything that is in the game.

CPU: The CPU in both consoles will be much more powerful than today. There will be a smaller manufacturing process (40 nm at least), the number of cores will be at least doubled (To be able to handle more operations simultaneously as the eye-candy in every frame will be increased). One other thing we can say for sure is that it will be much easier to program for the ps4 – processors. Not only because it is an obvious mistake that Sony won’t do again, but also because of PlaystationSuite. It would be a very strange decision if the ps4 wasn’t compatible with PlaystationSuite. The more platforms a developer can program a game for, the more profit they gain.

The CPU in the Xbox 360 will be as easy at it is now, just a lot more powerful. There hasn’t nearly as much talk about troubles with that as with the ps3’s CELL-processor.

Other features: Both of them will of course have the Wifi of the latest standards. They will both have blu-ray (Not sure that they will go for the same capacity though). There will be USB 3.0 ports at least. Improved versions of Move and Kinect is obvious. An improved operating system with new web-browsers is also obvious. Sony is probably going to integrate NGP in some ways so that you can connect it to your ps4 and transfer games you bought through PSN among other features.

I am excited for the next gen. It is going to be awesome :)