…I'm not sure where he's getting that "console cycles are getting shorter". The PS1 lasted 5 years, the PS2 6 years and the PS3 8 years. And yeah, the PS4 "only" 6, but still, new consoles are coming out at a much less frantic rate than in the late 80s and 90s. And I consider that a good thing, honestly.
I don't remember the 90s very well, but having new consoles come out almost every year must have been overwhelming. Especially when you were tricked into buying a freaking Jaguar.
Edited by Lyendith on May 12th 2020 at 12:21:56 PM
Calendar enthusiast
Back in the 90s, we didn't get multiple consoles. We got one, and a couple of games, and we were grateful. It was only the rich kids who had more than one. Things are different now that those kids have grown up and had children of our own.
Ukrainian Red Cross
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
He said it's because of rapidly advancing technology that console generations are getting shorter. (Possibly taking us back to the days when the life cycles of consoles were 4-6 years long) And I'm honestly not surprised.
This was also the first generation with midway consoles like the One X and Pro, same generation, more power to run stuff faster.
Calendar enthusiast
Let's consider home console lifespans. I define a console's lifespan as starting on the day it goes on sale, and ending on the day its successor goes on sale or the date of discontinuation, whichever comes first. I'm also going to ignore generation 1 because it's weird.
Generation 2
- Atari 2600: 5 years (1977 - 1982)
- Atari 5200: 1 year (1982 - 1983)
- Bally Astrocade: 5 years (1978 - 1983)
- Magnavox Odyssey^2: 5 years (1978 - 1983)
- Intellivision: 10 years (1980 - 1990)
- Vectrex: 2 years (1982 - 1984)
- Colecovision: 3 years (1982 - 1985)
8-bit era
- Atari 7800: 7 years (1986 - 1993) [includes XEGS]
- NES: 7 years (1983 - 1990)
- Master System: 5 years (1983 - 1988) [I'm counting the SG-1000 and Master System as one console)
- Videopac+: 7 years (1983 - 1990)
16-bit era
- Mega Drive: 6 years (1988 - 1994)
- SNES: 6 years (1990 - 1996)
- Jaguar: 3 years (1993 - 1996)
- CD-i: 8 years (1990 - 1998)
- 3DO: 3 years (1993 - 1996)
32- and 64-bit era
- PS1: 6 years (1994 - 2000)
- N64: 5 years (1996 - 2001)
- Saturn: 4 years (1994 - 1998)
Generation 6
- PS2: 6 years (2000 - 2006)
- Dreamcast: 3 years (1998 - 2001)
- GameCube: 5 years (2001 - 2006)
- XBox 0: 4 years (2001 - 2005)
Generation 7
- PS3: 7 years (2006 - 2013)
- Wii: 6 years (2006 - 2012)
- XBox 360: 8 years (2005 - 2013)
Generation 8
- PS4: 7 years (2013 - 2020)
- Wii U: 5 years (2012 - 2017)
- XBox One: 7 years (2013 - 2020)
So overall, generation 7 was unusually long; 5 - 6 years seems to be normal (gen 6 is shorter because the Dreamcast skews the average; if we exclude it as an outlier, the average becomes an even 5.00 years)
Edited by VampireBuddha on May 13th 2020 at 2:49:20 PM
Ukrainian Red Cross
Didn't the PS4 come out in 2014?
Redmess
I remember back when the PS 3 was supposed to last 10 years, and then it didn't.
Optimism is a duty.
Face me now, Bitch!
Calendar enthusiast
Wikipedia says the PS4 came out in November 2013 in NA and EU, and February 2014 in JP. That's why I went with 2013.
Ukrainian Red Cross
Redmess
That looks amazing. Is that a real game, or just a demo?
Optimism is a duty.
Ah, okay. 
That's why I couldn't recall any PS4 game as old as 2013. I'm kinda surprised Japan got it later than Europe and the US…
I assume it's just a tech demo, but an impressive one nonetheless.
Didnt seem that impressive to me but then you can only push photorealism so hard before it looks the same as every other photorealistic game that vaguely resembles Horizon zero dawn or tomb raider
It's a bit better from a quality standpoint but the big standout looks to be the ease of acchieving that quality; from the sounds of it we may be seeing AAA quality graphics from much smaller studios that we do now.
The current AAA studios will be able to correspondingly increase the scope and fluidity of their games as well if achieving that level of graphics takes as much less work as they made it sound.
Redmess
Yes, I think that is the takeaway: making film-grade graphics much easier to achieve on consoles.
Optimism is a duty.
with a commensurate uptick in budgets and monetization, I'd bet
The Unknown
UE5 is apparently going to be super easy to develop on with some automated processes. I don't think budgets will balloon that much as a result of the switch.
Edited by Karxrida on May 13th 2020 at 7:23:26 AM
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?
The Head of the Hydra
Well then that’s a fucking dope achievement.
Technology actually making things easier instead of tougher.
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."
Redmess
From the promoted comments:
Across various movie studios all of NYC has been modeled to a pretty high detail. Surely it will be cheaper to license those assets and downsample in-engine. Being able to render one poly per pixel opens up the space much as retina displays eliminated the need to do custom pixel art and hand antialiasing, and allowed you to just throw vector art around with wild abandon, and not have to hand tweak to make up for the deficiencies in the display. Dynamic lighting further opens that space up. The sound engine does as well.
The ability to eliminate so much hand detailing will allow studios to really expand their worldspace because not only was that work labor intensive, but it was slow. It's why an AAA game takes 7 years to develop, and its why massive world canvasses are only really done fully procedurally (from NMS to DF).
That's really what Epic is focused on here, and surely it derives from the work they're doing with movie studios. These are all problems that they are encountering using Unreal for filming. But now Marvel could build a Mandalorian game around the digital assets they created for the show. Everything is already in-engine. There's still a lot of work to do around gameplay, actors, scripting, dialogue, etc. but having so much of the world assets already done seriously eases the cost and length of development.
Edited by Redmess on May 15th 2020 at 11:17:19 AM
Optimism is a duty.
Professional Forum Ninja
Face me now, Bitch!
Professional Forum Ninja
It's at 1 pm PDT for those wondering about the date.
Face me now, Bitch!
I can definitely see that benefiting Final Fantasy VII Remake. That game practically pushes the PS 4, even the Pro, to its Absolute limit, and the texture's barely loading shows that (Though UE 4 is also known for poor Texture pop ins too).
Watch Symphogear
Redmess
Ars has an article on the trailer for the upcoming event.
- The event is June 4th
- We will be seeing major new games during the event, but no word about first party games, which would likely be PS 5 exclusives
- No new information will be given on pricing, design, or release date
Seems like the life cycle of the PS5 will be as long as the PS2 at minimum.
As Ito noted in the interview, the gaps between consoles are getting shorter. He explained that, “in the past, the cycle for a new platform was 7 to 10 years, but in view of the very rapid development and evolution of technology, it’s really a six to seven year platform cycle.”
With any longer of a lifespan, Itso notes, “we cannot fully catch up with the rapid development of the technology, therefore our thinking is that as far as a platform is concerned for the PS 5, it’s a cycle of maybe six to seven years.”