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I know it's early doors just yet, but wondering what people are thinking about for next generation as we're gonna start seeing hardware mostly next year.
We've already got the Wii-U released, with both the Ouya and Steam consoles confirmed for release next year, I'd also speculate that Sony and Microsoft will bring out their next gen machines at the back end of 2013.
I think we can write off the Wii-U and the Ouya as casual gaming systems, not to be taken seriously and neither of which are likely to get AAA title support from the big games developers, though time will tell.
It's gonna be a very tough decision for me, normally I would have said I'll just get all the good ones but finances are currently dictating that i'll struggle to buy one of these let alone three.
From what I can tell there will be three main contenders next generation, Sony, Microsoft and Valve.
All three of these are going with very straight forward powerPC architecture, nothing new for Microsoft there, but a change of heart from Sony after developers complaining about the difficulty of making games early in the PS3's history.
The console by Valve is massively tempting, from what I can tell it's going to immediately have the huge back catalogue of games available on Steam. The issues I can foresee is that you'll be playing as a console gamer against PC gamers, with the differences between mouse and control pad potentially causing problems. The other issue is that EA seem to be boycotting the Steam service and trying to compete using their Origin service....meaning a lot of our favourite games are unlikely to appear on this system if things remain as they are, games such as Need For Speed and Battlefield.
The other two companies are likely to continue with what they are doing, possibly with UI improvements/changes to media that could be fairly drastic, particularly Microsoft who I think personally did a very bad job of media playback support with their single-mindedness. Similarly I feel that Sony did a bad job of their networking and have failed on the promise of competing with xbox live with their console that was built from the ground up with networking in mind. I also feel the changes they have made to the PSN store have been less than positive.
So, currently my feeling is to give Microsoft a run on the next generation, they seem to have a superior online service which is what matters to me, hopefully they will considerably improve usability of media streaming and support systems that aren't running Windows so that those of us with dedicated NAS systems and Macs will be happy.
If Valve manage to come to an agreement with EA (unlikely given EA's pure greed) then the Steam based console is a no-brainer to me, cheaper games, more likely to get updated hardware on a more regular basis and games that are written for PC and can therefore just have the graphics output scaled back for older hardware...it'll be like gaming on a relatively powerful PC gaming rig, but without any of the hassles!
We've already got the Wii-U released, with both the Ouya and Steam consoles confirmed for release next year, I'd also speculate that Sony and Microsoft will bring out their next gen machines at the back end of 2013.
I think we can write off the Wii-U and the Ouya as casual gaming systems, not to be taken seriously and neither of which are likely to get AAA title support from the big games developers, though time will tell.
It's gonna be a very tough decision for me, normally I would have said I'll just get all the good ones but finances are currently dictating that i'll struggle to buy one of these let alone three.
From what I can tell there will be three main contenders next generation, Sony, Microsoft and Valve.
All three of these are going with very straight forward powerPC architecture, nothing new for Microsoft there, but a change of heart from Sony after developers complaining about the difficulty of making games early in the PS3's history.
The console by Valve is massively tempting, from what I can tell it's going to immediately have the huge back catalogue of games available on Steam. The issues I can foresee is that you'll be playing as a console gamer against PC gamers, with the differences between mouse and control pad potentially causing problems. The other issue is that EA seem to be boycotting the Steam service and trying to compete using their Origin service....meaning a lot of our favourite games are unlikely to appear on this system if things remain as they are, games such as Need For Speed and Battlefield.
The other two companies are likely to continue with what they are doing, possibly with UI improvements/changes to media that could be fairly drastic, particularly Microsoft who I think personally did a very bad job of media playback support with their single-mindedness. Similarly I feel that Sony did a bad job of their networking and have failed on the promise of competing with xbox live with their console that was built from the ground up with networking in mind. I also feel the changes they have made to the PSN store have been less than positive.
So, currently my feeling is to give Microsoft a run on the next generation, they seem to have a superior online service which is what matters to me, hopefully they will considerably improve usability of media streaming and support systems that aren't running Windows so that those of us with dedicated NAS systems and Macs will be happy.
If Valve manage to come to an agreement with EA (unlikely given EA's pure greed) then the Steam based console is a no-brainer to me, cheaper games, more likely to get updated hardware on a more regular basis and games that are written for PC and can therefore just have the graphics output scaled back for older hardware...it'll be like gaming on a relatively powerful PC gaming rig, but without any of the hassles!