Speaking with investors in a conference call earlier today, Sony executive vice president and CTO, Masuroto Kato has confirmed that Sony is actively working on the development of a new platform. According to Eurogamer, Kato confirmed the existence of the new platform when he was asked to account for the significant increase in research & development expenses.
“For the home equipment the PS3 still has a product life, but this is a platform business, so for the future platform – when we’ll be introducing what product I cannot discuss that – but our development work is already under way, so the costs are incurred there.”
Kato did not provide any information on how long the console had already been in development, or when it will be expected to make its way into the hands of developers or the public.
Earlier this year SCE boss Kazuo Hirai stated that the company hadn’t even started discussion on the new platform, as the Playstation 3 is not even halfway through the planned ten-year market cycle.
I expect the next console to be shown at E3 next year, or the year after that at most.
Hopefully this time they won’t make a system that confuses developers to program for it in the first year or two. New consoles are always fun to look at.
Too soon! Give me another 5 years at least before launching a new console! please!
Of course they are developing a new console… they are always developing a new console. In the case of Nintendo, they are usually finished developing the next console as they release a new console.
I think 2 years from now will be when we’ll start to see things about it. Any sooner than that and the general populace will complain – because so few games are even coming CLOSE to maxingo ut the ps3’s system resources.
I expect we’ll hear details about some new xbox system next year, because the 360 is being overtaxed by almost every game that comes out.
I agree. Nintendo needs a new console for many reasons, including processing power, Hard drive space (which I hear they are not tackling), and a new disk storage device.
Microsoft mainly just needs the new storage device, but updating the hardware will go a long way as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if their next console uses some type of cloud computing ala Onlive. They need to do something to avoid using Blu-ray, and maybe constant streaming is the answer. With XBL being so successful, they could probably make the transition with relative ease.
Sony is in a position where the hardware is still able to exceed the demands of the software. Who knows, this could be the last successful Sony hardware for home gaming. They are in a dangerous spot, and maybe they should focus more on their software than hardware at this point.
More games lately will be maxing out the hardware of the PS3. BF3 will be toned down for consoles because the hardware can’t match what the PC can do. Uncharted 2 maxed out what the system could, and 3 looks to do the same. Of course there is also optimization issues, but that is on the developer.
Well it is easy to max out the GPU (since it is only 256MB), but the Cell Processor is a different story.
Yeah, Nintendo will put out something, but the one to watch is Microsoft and their next XBox.
I read a report that the only two games to fully max out the ps3 were GoW3 and FF13.
That a few other games like UC2 and evne MGS4 came close, but that so far there’ve only been 2 games to actually push it’s limits.
Now, this report was in December of last year, so it’s possible some of the ones since then have, but I’ve also read some interviews with various developers that have said they’re building the pc and ps3 versions to the same standards and downscaling to the 360(examples are ME3, Skyrim, and… my mind is blanking as to the other one I read that about)… which means the ps3 is still in a good spot.
But the biggest problem is that most developers don’t want to design multiple versions, so they do one of two things:
If it’s a PC title, they design pc and ps3 to same and downscale to 360
If it’s a console title, they design the 360 and just port it to the ps3.
Because of that, we end up with a lot of ps3 games that underuse the potential because it’s too expensive to design to maximize performance on both.
FF13 is one of the only crossplatforms I’ve seen that actually did a good job of using the ps3’s hardware… the rest of them tend to be just the 360 version ported. Which is why ps3 games so often have increased issues.
I know BF3 will be downscaled to be able to work on the consoles, as PC is the main focus on the title (as it should be). But yeah, two years and they will need a new console.