It seems that next generation consoles might make an appearance much before E3 2013. It seems that Microsoft and Sony might hold Apple style press conferences unveiling their next generation video game consoles. These don't necessarily be product launches, as the devices may just be showcased and launched later this year, or might receive a paper launch only.
LATEST: PS4 and X720 Processing Power Leak
VG247 reports the following rumours:
- The next PlayStation, codenamed Orbis, will have a run-capability of 1.84 teraflops. Conversely, the next Xbox, codenamed Durango, will be able to achieve 1.23 teraflops.
- The next Xbox will have 8GB of RAM, of which 3GB are reserved for the operating system and security, leaving 5GB for games. By comparison, the next PlayStation will have 4GB total, of which around 1GB will be used for the OS and security, leaving 3GB for games.
- The next Xbox is will use a Radeon HD 8770 GPU, compared to the PlayStation's previously rumoured variant on AMD’s A10 APU.
- Both machines will be able to read 100GB-capacity Blu-Ray discs.
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PlayStation 4 & Xbox 720
The PlayStation 4 and Xbox 720 will be the long expected update to consoles. In 2013, the X360 and PS3 with their limited specs are horribly under powered, considering even smartphones have nearly the same processing power (approaching soon) and desktops are simply held back by console games. Off late, developers have started to develop with PC in mind than consoles, showing clearly how much their faith has gone off consoles of yester-years.
The PlayStation 4 and Xbox 720 are said to pack RAM content between 2 GB to 8 GB. I don't know about you, but 8 GB would be really sweet, and affordable considering RAM prices as of now. The PlayStation 4 is said to pack an AMD Trinity (or later) based APU (which has onboard graphics) with an additional discrete graphics running in tandem. We don't know how well this will work out, and having to utilize two GPUs might be a boon for developers, or a curse as well (remember the PS2 being labelled as a developer's nightmare? Thankfully Sony did extremely well in supporting and helping out with development which has made the PS2 what it is today.
For the Xbox 720, Microsoft has chosen IBM and Power PC architecture once again, but the GPU of choice is once again AMD. AMD has scored two huge and important contracts by becoming the supplier of both of next generation console graphics (in addition to the Nintendo Wii U already, that's a hat trick of product design wins by AMD which will really come of use for this financially challenged company).
The price of these consoles might be anything between $299 to $499. It's unlikely that it will be way to high, because the market is entirely different than 2005-2006 when the last generation was released. Nintendo released the Wii U for $299. It's possible that the coming consoles launch for a higher $399 price tag.
For now, it is really exciting to think that the announcements of next generation consoles could be so near. We eagerly await to see what the future of gaming will be, literally (as these mean machines will be around for the next couple of years).
EDIT: Clarification for my statement
"considering even smartphones have nearly the same processing power
(approaching soon)"
With PowerVR Series6 GPUs we’ve taken our patented tile-based deferred rendering (TBDR) technology and created a design that reaches from a 100 GFLOPS up to more than one TFLOPS of computing performance with significantly greater efficiency relative to our previous cores.
Source
The performance figures for the Nova A9600 are astonishing - "... POWERVR Rogue GPU that delivers in excess of 210 GFLOPS.
Source
The next generation Rogue series of GPUs by PowerVR wants to bring console quality graphics to mobile handsets/smartphones. We will be seeing products based on the same some time later this year, or very early next year. We are pretty sure that Apple will adopt this new generation core (Apple uses PowerVR GPUs since the iPhone 3GS).
AMD GPUs in Next Generation
Via various info leaks over the past couple of months, it is most likely that both the next generation consoles will be using AMD based GPU products.
AMD seems to have scored a trio of design wins with their latest trio of next generation console GPUs (yes, Wii U is considered next generation by many analysts in the industry as well).
About PC Games
You don't see titles like Day Z to hit consoles any day. Games like Max Payne 3, Far Cry 3 and Hitman Absolution are fine examples of how optimized PC games are getting these days despite having much higher graphical fidelity. Another fine example would be the just released Devil May Cry which is hitting as high as 200 fps on PC configurations.
As for un-optimized games, there are and will remain such games. Assassin's Creed happens to be one of them, sadly.
Rumor: PS4 to be more powerful than X720
VG247.com reports, via unnamed sources who talked to certain people last week at CES 2013, state that the next version of the Playstation has a run capability of 1.84 teraflops. The same report claims that Microsoft's next Xbox will only generate 1.23 teraflops.
Source
However, in terms of memory, games on the next Xbox, which is referred to by its code name Durango, will have a lot more memory to work with. The story claims that it will have a total of 8 GB of RAM, with 3 GB made for the console's operating system and the rest for playing games. The same report says that the next Playstation, code named Orbis, will have just 4 GB of RAM, with 1 GB reserved for running its OS.