Riccitiello on next-gen: the stakes are enormous

@Spartan_418 @TheGamerPhenom While true, in today's day & age, people have an unfortunate habit of seeing something stranger, or seeing something they don't particularly like or enjoy, and instead of rationalizing or coming up with a reasonable argument, the easy thing to do is to cry conspiracy and move on.

@TheGamerPhenom Yeah, well the thing is that, occasionally, conspiracies actually do happen, and the theorists are right.

Though I don't think that's the case here.

@Spartan_418 @TheGamerPhenom Ah, the joy's of conspiracy theories. I always get a kick out of those type of people, haha.

@jmc88888 @TheGamerPhenom @Xethrayne I enjoyed the fact that you actually took the time to present some real facts and comparisions instead of bashing Xbox/PS4/PC like lots of ppl around here :)

@TheGamerPhenom @Xethrayne

The problem is in the race to release new consoles, they're not releasing them with the power they should have.

Seriously. When you compare PC's to consoles, this generation of consoles will start of 2/3rds slower than what the PS3/360 launched at. In other words think if the 360/PS3 launched with the SAME power it has now but in 2008.

That's basically what's happening.

If these consoles wanted to be as powerful at launch comparatively as the 360 and PS3 were, they'd literally need to be about 3.5-4 TFlops, not 1.2-1.8 TFlops.

When the 360 released it spanked thousands of dollars of PC's parts from 2004.

Now the 720 will be a $60-80 GPU card from late 2013 and the PS4 will be a $100-150 one. All with CPU's that are easily bested by a cheap i7 processor from 2008 (at stock clocks, not the easily attainable 50 percent increase that i7 920 chip could do).

So 360 beats say a top of the line $1000 AMD FX-53...and have three cores not one like the FX line. It also had basically a Geforce 7800 with half the ram, and could easily out do a Geforce 6800 ultra from 2004.

So the 360 bested $1700 in PC parts (just the CPU and GPU) or basically PC's that were $2500-5000 and just a year old. Spanked it.

Another way to look at it is that the 360 had if I translated to 2013 graphics card, what would be a GTX 780 with half the ram.

But the PS4 will be running what is basically a GTX 750. The 720 will be running what is basically a step below the GTX 750.

Then couple that again with CPU's that are bested by cheap, stock clocked 2008 CPU's.

I'll be buying a PS4. I like consoles and PC gaming. But people need to realize the starting points between this generation and the last one is vastly different.

They'll be fun systems and are a good leap from current systems. But when you see the PS4 can't even run the Unreal 4 engine correctly. It does so pretty well, but you can already see some pretty big opening differences between it and a PC running it, then you understand 2-3 years after the PS4/720 hit the shelves it'll be like 5-6 years after the 360/PS3 hit shelves in terms of how far behind it is.

Basically, you know how PC's had such a huge lead over consoles this generation? Well it's going to be far worse than that this generation.

Fun systems? Yep. But released too soon. Not chronologically, as I realize it's been a long time. But the tech is either ready or isn't. It isn't ready. PC's and engines such as Unreal 4 have set a bar, and the consoles are coming out too soon to meet it.

At some point this is going to eat away at consoles. They can use big screen tv's to play on and you can use things like the 360 controller.

I don't want there to be a huge gap between PC's and consoles, as I like them both. But there is going to be a huge gap. There already is again when you compare 15 TFlops versus 1.2-1.8. No amount of optimization and latency effienciey and learning the code can make up that ground. It can push 1.8 to be effectively 2.4 or so, and in the end they might be able to do some things a bit more (within some serious constraints), but the gap is large, and when Volta comes out with it's stackable memory (i.e. has the power of a pc WITH many of the design advantages of an APU/GPGPU latency savings and bandwidth expansion of a console.) That's 2016. Pc's won't be a half generation above, they'll be a full generation power wise from it.

Now how many devs use that power is another thing.

Console gaming is a decade away from 4k gaming and are still struggling to see if they'll be 1080p. PC's are almost there, and people will be plugging in the 4ktv's when they drop in price, which means that the 2005 era of HDTV's is only a couple years away for 4ktv. In terms of how fast they get to the $500-2000. It will only take probably 3-5 years depending on screen size.

It will be interesting to see how it plays out, but MS shouldn't be alienating its customers, and hopefully they won't by not announce all the console killing 'features'. Because they are already set to be massively underpowered. You don't want to be massively underpowered and be pissing off your customers.

@Xethrayne @TheGamerPhenom And I won't deny that fact. But let's look at the birth of each generation. In each one, there are games that come out *relatively* close to the release date that aren't what we are really used to. Just start, for example, with the 360. Gears, COD4 (which granted, was a "sequel," but played more like a completely new game), Assassin's Creed. The list could keep going on new IPs that come with a new console. It always works that way. The "old" series will still keep running, sure. But not all of them are necessarily running because of how good they are. Many of these franchises (Call of Duty, to a lesser extent now AC) run more on name brand appeal than anything else.

I guess where we have our main disconnect is that while it isn't *technically* broke (hell, I still play my PS2, 64, etc. etc. regularly), that doesn't mean that new innovation shouldn't be welcomed, and shouldn't be brought on. I'm ready and excited to see some new things, ready to see some original ideas, and another big thing is, I'm ready to see these "old" franchises running on something newer, shinier, and likely more powerful and better than the current generation (not a definite, but I feel it's pretty likely). I definitely see your point, but for me personally, it's time for an upgrade.

@TheGamerPhenom Thanks for reiterating what I said, but it doesn't answer the question.

@00LiteYear @TheGamerPhenom It's not a matter of how complicated what he is trying to say is. It's matter of how it's presented.

@Tseng @TheGamerPhenom Well . . . I feel like WE know this. And while the devs, and as you said, more importantly Microsoft/Sony know about it . . . how much are they going to pay attention to it? I felt like he raised valid points because ultimately Sony/Microsoft are still going to have to deliver on these fronts, and that isn't a guarantee. Far from it, in fact if you ask me. Maybe it's not exactly front page, headline news, but it's interesting to read his opinions nonetheless.

@grnsuperman4 @Tseng @DeViLzzz 122,000 sold in December, 38,000 sold in April...(according to the internets)

@TheGamerPhenom @Tseng @DeViLzzz

No it's definitely both. We're in an ever deepening depression. The stock market is rigged, the unemployment numbers are rigged, and there is out and out chaos in Europe.

2008 was a girl scout picnic compared to what is currently brewing. One day you're going to wake up and realize that instead of Glass-Steagall protecting your deposits in the bank (which are really just loans to a bank..and you are the lowest creditor on the totem pole)....that Obama and Romney (i.e. both sides) sold you down the river and refused to reimplement Glass-Steagall.

Because of this they went with wall street's Dodd-Frank bill, which makes Cyprus deposit confiscation bail-in the standard for bank resolution.

There's still anywhere between 600 and 1400 trillion in worthless derivatives. These should be pretty much illegal. Instead they are sacrosanct and protected at the expense of EVERYTHING ELSE within the market. Where do you think your bailout money really went? To stop the daisy chain collapse of these derivatives, because one break in the chain can take 600-1400 trillion in derivatives and cause them to spiral to 0 taking every bank and gov't with it in the industrialized world.

In other words, the economy is much worse now than in 2008.

But Nintendo needs more games, and while the unit has a decent amount of low end power, it still is a notch too low.

But also don't expect all 360 and PS3 games coming out to go to PS4 and 720. Because just like the Wii U, not every company that needs something to sell 10-20 million units of their game to satisfy wall street will be able to when the 720 and PS4 combined will probably only sell 2-4 million this holliday season. In other words expect some smaller publishers with good games to wait a year or two to put games out on the PS4 and 720.

Happens every generation. Some devs hold back until the install base is good.

Which leads me back to what's happening with Wii U. They are waiting for the install base to get bigger, the problem is, by the time that's happening their games are being ratcheted up for PC/PS4/720. So it's kind of in a no man's land. It's still got plenty of power for devs to make or port games to. Plenty of the engines used will be able to run on it. But I didn't buy a Wii U for 3rd party games. I hoped to get a few for it, but I bought it mostly for Nintendo games. I feel bad for people who bought it for an all encompassing console. In a sense it is, just it will be utilized very little.