Consoles: the next generation

Almost four years after the release of the Playstation 3 and five years after the unveiling of the Xbox 360, we are still no closer to getting our hands on the 8th generation of consoles. Sure we’ve been given the slim versions to placate our voracious appetite for something new and shiny (or new and matte if you’re a PS3 owner) but beauty is more than skin deep after all; yes my Xbox may have been on a diet and is flaunting its slick new contours about town for all the boys to see, but inside, it’s the same dowdy old processor.

Both consoles were cosmetically redesigned, slimmed down and hushed up, with increased storage capacity and a few extra USB ports thrown in for good measure. And now; silence descends…and it’s not down to the new whisper quiet fans. As we stand squinting, facing the horizon, waiting for the dawn of a new era of super consoles, Microsoft and Sony lurk just out of sight, making no mention of their next gen plans. It looks like we’re in for a long wait…

But what exactly are we waiting for? Both consoles, particularly the Xbox 360, would benefit immensely from a much needed upgrade to their innards. 5 years is a healthy lifespan for a console. However, with the announcement of the slim versions, we could be looking at another 2 or 3 years tacked on to their life cycles.

With the wave of developers bashing our bargain bin games and the recent influx of titles requiring online passes in order to access the online content (EA being the biggest culprit), it might be reasonable to assume that we are being steered towards a more download exclusive market. And what could be better than a console designed specifically for this purpose.

Money, money, money, money...Mooooooney!

Could it be that the tact being adopted by such avaricious developers such as EA, THQ, Activision and very possibly Ubisoft, which is spreading like bed bugs in a “Beds! Beds! Beds!” depot, is casting its golden hued spell on the console Gods? The colour of money can be very persuasive.

There is already a wealth of games available on the Xbox Live Marketplace to download and with just a few clicks of a button, any one of these titles can be yours, conveniently installed right to your hard drive and all at full price no less. Incidentally, I bought my used copy of Mass Effect about a year ago for £8. It’s currently on the Marketplace for £19.99. That’s incentive for you. Pay over the odds and wait an eternity for the game to download and eat up all of the space on your hard drive when it’s finally installed. Of course, at this juncture, your gnarled old hands will already be at the mercy of arthritis and the grandkids will probably be heading over on their hover-scooters so the game will have to wait until after dinner. But then you’ll be free to crack open a beer, take a journey into the past and play that crazy Mass Effect game with its antiquated genre of space travel. Yes, it takes that a long to download a full game…well almost.

There’s no real cost saving for the consumer when purchasing a download only title and not everyone will have the broadband speed required to make this a viable option. This problem would become even more pertinent on release dates, with the huge numbers of people simultaneously wanting to download the same title. Then there’s the problem of hard drive space, which Microsoft have only exacerbated, as an upgrade to your hard drive means having to purchase an Xbox HDD which is very much over priced, unlike the PS3 which allows the use of any external hard drive with the console. And should you download a game, you’d pretty much have to delete it once completed to make space for your new titles…but what if you want to reminisce and play it again at some point in the future? You’d have to download it all over again and we know how long that takes. It’ll be the great grand kids coming over for dinner before it’s installed.

Conspiracy theories are rife; proclaiming the console of the future will be released sans disc drive. But consumers would need to be offered a reasonable price for downloadable games and cheaper, larger capacity hard drives before even contemplating purchasing such a console. And the issue of broadband speeds isn’t a problem that can be resolved by Microsoft or Sony. Are these concerns going to be seriously addressed over the next few years before releasing the 8th gen console as envisioned? Or will we be coerced down this path against our will, with all developers eventually adopting EA’s strategum and making chargeable DLC and online passes the status quo; before hammering the final nail into our coffins and making the games themselves download only, with no cost incentives, enormous strains on our hard drives and broadband speeds becoming the bane of our gaming existence?

If this is the vision of the future, making the used game market a relic of the past, frustrated consumers could consider donning thier pirate hats and actually start cutting into the developers profit margins; they would stand to lose a lot more through potential piracy than they could possibly be losing now as a result of the buying and selling of used games. More often than not, I’ll buy a used game that I would never have even considered purchasing at full price, find I enjoy it and buy the DLC. That’s a fiscal transaction which wouldn’t have occurred without the likes of CEX or Gamestation selling discounted second hand games.

In the face of boycotting and piracy, maybe the likes of EA will regret the position they’re inevitably sailing towards. Arrr mateys! Maybe the used game market wasn’t so bad after all…