With the story that just was published over at IGN, it seems that XBOX 360 is also planning on having a ten year life cycle. Microsoft sites Project Natal as the reason for their optimism on the ten year plan. Sony had previously announced that their plan was to have a ten year life cycle for both the PS2 and PS3. All that is left is for Nintendo to announce that the Wii is going to have a ten year life cycle. While this seems unlikely they could certainly make minor improvements as they did with the DS and come out with a partially new similarly priced console to the current one. Perhaps an addition of hard drive, Wii Motion Plus built in, and possibly component cables packed into the box. But as the Wii is all ready under powered and is beginning to look overpriced the inevitable probably lies in some price cuts for the current system and a Wii 2 in the next couple years.
All indications both from the economy and from game developers suggest that a new console cycle would do nothing for the current hardware makers except greatly indebted them with R & D costs. With both Microsoft and Sony championing digital distribution however, it seems that there is definitely a new slimmer more powerful and cooler console coming down the line in the not so immediate future. But I honestly can't see that we will not be seeing a new console until 2015. It seems more likely that the new Sony and Microsoft consoles will have minor upgrades and be similar in price to the consoles we have now. The consoles we have now, in the mean time, there will probably have two more price cuts to the current PS3 and XBOX 360. Which will probably make it perfectly plausible for this half step forward and all most original price structure.
The new consoles would probably have built in motion sensors be they Project Natal or the new Eye Toy Motion camera. The consoles would also have solid state hard drives. Probably around 500 GB. Which is only around $100 for an external unit on the internet right now. So in a couple years they will probably be less than half that, at least for the non-solid state unit. No disc drives will be necessary as any media will come over the built in GIGA Ethernet ready port in the machines. Both will have whatever HD resolution is the maximum for the current time. When will these fantasy machines be announced? E3 2012... They will BOTH be out in Holiday of 2013. Wii will have a Wii 2 probably out in 2012, but considering the current state of the hardware in the Wii, it wouldn't be too surprising.
Of course, all most all of this is speculation but even with a lagging economy the march of technology moves forward and in some cases the current PC market is all ready cutting into the parody that exists between PC and consoles. By next year, I'm thinking that the PC will totally eclipse the power of the consoles. If this leap gets too far a head the developers will have to, too significantly dumb down their console ports and people will start to once again believe that the PC is the best device for gaming. This hasn't occurred in quite a while. Which is the reason why I think that my console strategy is more realistic than what the current hardware makers are implying.
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