When do you think the "next-gen" consoles will be announced?

... Whoops, forgot to get rid of some. Still they do have a lot of IPs.

Before anyone comments on why Kirby and Super Smash Bros are still up, Hal Labs is indeed a subsidiary of Nintendo.

We don't need new freaking tech, we can stay where we are and improve on/solidify what we currently have. And I'm in Sincerity Mode here. I think it would be silly to jump to the next generation when so much can still be done with the current tech. And this is coming from a PC gamer.

Then again, maybe I'm just jaded from reading about Tablet PCs and all the new handheld devices.

edited 30th Oct '10 12:26:24 AM by RocketDude

And I say hello back to it, Indigo Dingo. Crysis is still the gold standard though.

edited 30th Oct '10 2:15:23 AM by GameGuruGG

It has been argued that Sony's jumping the gun with the overpriced and overteched PS 3 was mostly to win the HD format war (something that was important for several branches of the company) and not to achieve market leadership in the relatively unimportant video game business. Unless they pull a dick move like a new console without any real improvements to force an upgrade, they are in it for the long haul.

If anything, I honestly imagine Nintendo partnering up with Sixense Entertainment to make a controller similar to the True Motion controller that Sixense are making for the PC, which basically makes M+, Move and Kinect look like crap in comparison, and only relies on a weak magnetic field for its motion-sensing, as opposed to IR, gyro or a camera, which would make such tech relatively affordable.

But, really, Nintendo have nothing to lose by releasing their next console first, and a lot to gain, especially if they focus on proper third-party support. Now that everyone won't be bettering on the wrong horse again (like how everyone assumed the PS 3 would come out on top like the PS 2 and the Wii would be dead last, but everyone got caught with their pants down when the reverse turned out to be true) when that time comes around, it should be a lot easier. The next Ninty console will likely be HD and roughly on the level of the 360 and PS 3, if not slightly better, I think, but they'll probably have something new that we never even thought about.

edited 30th Oct '10 3:02:54 AM by Cronosonic

^^^ Well, if we're defining it as on PC, yes, but overall its been acknowledged even by Crytek themselves that Uncharted 2 overtook them.

so what horizon do we think these 3 companies are hitting in the future? Sony and Nintendo (mostly Sony) seem to be pushing the 3d thing.

Nintendo with the 3DS, and Sony with their patch for their system, which enables players to play their games (select few of course) in 3D, provided you have the TV set that enables the rest of it.

Come to think of it, how are they gonna go forward?

Beyond souping up the Wii, throwing in a hard drive, and giving it DVD playback, Nintendo could always try and broaden the overall console experience by encouraging game development for more controller setups (seriously, how many non-downloadable games actually exploited the Wii's support for the Classic Controller?) and broaden their Virtual Console to support 6th Gen stuff. The main challenge that Nintendo will likely face is how to make their HD console easy and cheap to develop for (one of MS and Sony's biggest hurdles this gen). If they can resolve that, they're golden.

Nintendium isn't cheap you know.

^ You'd be surprised...

Curse you, forum! Well, just Google for similar articles and you'll find it towards the top of the results list.

edited 30th Oct '10 6:37:03 PM by TheGinkei

(62) as it stands now there console is still the cheapest (Nintendo)

http://www.amazon.com/Wii-Hardware-Bundle-White-Nintendo/dp/B0045F8QD4/ref=sr_1_1?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1288491827&sr=1-1

edit: dang links wont work, oh well you get the point

edited 30th Oct '10 7:27:24 PM by ARC1300

I kinda hope Nintendo doesn't have a optical disc drive in their next system.

For backwards compatability I kinda hope they do. Would be amazing if it went back to the Gamecube.

well they haven't disseminated so far in that department. im just wondering what they are going to do to distinguish them from the competition.

or maybe they don't have to?

edited 30th Oct '10 8:28:37 PM by ARC1300

Of course, Nintendo will have an optical drive next generation. Digital Downloads are not popular enough yet to support a console or a handheld by itself. I suspect that the next system with be able to play Game Cube and Wii Games, especially if GameCube games can be bought off of Virtual Console since it would be easy to have the GameCube's disk be read and boot up the GameCube emulator for it.

Digital Downloads are not popular enough yet to support a console or a handheld by itself.

The PSP Go is proof enough of that. Although, the price and lack of titties available for it certainly didn't help.

Edit: Oh wow. Best typo ever.

edited 30th Oct '10 9:22:58 PM by Electivirus

The alternative to an optical drive would be a cartridge system. Considering the 3DS cartridges can hold 2GB each, it shouldn't be too difficult to hold similar amounts as a DVD on a cartridge made for a home console system. One advantage of this is that the memory space can scale as technology improves without having to change the drive.

Does that mean the return of blowing on the cartridges or slots to make them work method?

^ I haven't ever had to do that with my DS, so I'm assuming that problem has already been fixed.

^ That could actually be really interesting, considering how the soon-to-be discontinued DS cartridge format has apparently already been ramped up to 4GB carts, so it is technically feasible for a home console to run on cartridges again. Now, whether it's worth it to junk two generations' worth of backwards compatibility to do it is another story (unless Nintendo decided to take a gamble and take a page from the Saturn and have both a disk drive and a cartridge slot)...

The cartridge still has the general flaws that it did in the N64 era, namely they are harder and more expensive to manufacture than Disk Media. The reason that cartridges are still used for portable systems is because of the lack of moving parts which disk media requires and which drain the batteries faster.

edited 31st Oct '10 2:10:25 AM by GameGuruGG

Carts still cost dollars and every megabyte adds more pain, DVDs hold 18 gigabytes and cost less than a penny. That's all pure profit going down the tubes on every game (the only part that always makes money) sold.