Pachter: This Is The Final Generation

[Keane Ng]

Pachter: This Is The Final Generation

Xbox 720, PlayStation 4, uh, Wiii? None of these are going to happen, and if they do happen it's not going to be any time soon, says industry analyst Michael Pachter. According to him, this is the last console generation.

You can go ahead and take that 800 dollars you were saving up for a Xbox 720 or PS4 and try to inject your local economy with some cash flow, because according to Wedbush Morgan industry fortune teller supreme Michael Pachter, this generation will be the last generation of consoles. Ever.

"I think we've seen the last generation of consoles," Pachter said at the GamesBeat [http://venturebeat.com/gamesbeat-2009/] conference today. What Pachter saw in his crystal ball was this: Nintendo might release an upgraded Wii with HD and more storage, but Sony and Microsoft probably won't release another console. That's because there's just no more money in it, and third parties won't want it either.

"[Third party publishers] are not going to support a PS4 or Xbox 720," he said. "The content is not going to change in any meaningful ways because the publishers can't afford it." Instead, Pachter envisions a standard delivery form - maybe something like the recently announced OnLive [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/90423-OnLive-Cloud-Based-Gaming-of-the-Future] cloud-based system that delivers on-demand gaming by crunching data on remote servers and displaying video over the intertubes to your PC or TV.

The developers of OnLive are on the same wavelength as Pachter. "This is the last major console cycle," OnLive's Steve Perlman said. "If not this one, then definitely the next one."

Pachter's peers, however, aren't as quick to jump to conclusions. Colin Sebastian of Lazard Capital argued that there'd be one more generation that would hit by 2012, and David Cole of DFC Intelligence thinks that by 2012, the PS3 will be king of the software sales hill and Nintendo and Microsoft will be forced to put on new consoles.

[Via 1UP [http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3173424]]


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[The Shade]

David Cole of DFC Intelligence thinks that by 2012, the PS3 will be king of the software sales hill and Nintendo and Microsoft will be forced to put on new consoles.

If there's anything left in 2012, sure.

Conspiracy nut theory aside, I'm thinking there will be at least one more console generation. No doubt Microsoft and Nintendo have already started engineering, in secret, the next step. And it wouldn't be like them to give up on what money they've already poured into it.

But, ultimately, it seems we are doomed to recede back to PC gaming from whence we came. Personally, I'm looking forward to Halo Wars meeting us there.

Also, it means I'm going to have to get a new computer. And a better internet connection. And a couple grand. And some spare time. And a bagel. And a monkey. And a solid gold elephant statue....

I'm sorry. I lost focus there for a minute. Where was I going with this?

 

[Avatar Roku]

I wouldn't be altogether surprised by consoles ending next generation, once the 360 has caught up with the PS3. I mean, where is there to go from there?

 

[asinann]

Yay, force everyone to come back to PC gaming so we get everything again!
O wait, we get almost everything anyway, and we get it for $10 less.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

This is like that old tale of Bill Gates saying 'well, I don't there will be a time in the future when we'll ever need 16 whole megabytes of memory!'

I think it's either misquote or made up in fact, but the fact is people like shiny stuff, there's a fair market out there for just that, make new stuff and people will buy it.

There's always going to be improvements, I just believe they'll be smaller and with bigger gaps inbetween, and I hope I'm right, too, I still feel this generation came about 5 years too early, if you look at the quality of God of War II, Okami, Shadow of the Colossus, can you imagine what the Xbox and Ps2 could be pumping out by now, if programmers had been given an extra 5 years to master the hardware.

I still don't think we're close to the peak of the PS3 or 360's capabilities.

 

[Skizle]

Console technology is peaking. Yes we could make them better, but the price would be outragious. who would pay $800 for a Playstation 4 or the next Xbox. i think Red Vs. Blue said it best "Xbox 360? When did i miss Xbox 2 through 359?"

 

[Corven]

I can see Nintendo sticking with the Wii for a while, and the PS3 is just starting to get a strong foothold and still has a lot of potential, but I won't be surprised to hear of a new xbox variation in the future hopefully this time they won't rush to production while the system still has internal flaws like overheating or the ability to scratch disks beyond repair if you accidentally breathe on it while it's running.

 

[Mstrswrd]

Everyone remember that "Nintendo ON" video? That was from the future!!!1!.

Joking aside, Pachter seems to make outlandish claims that usually seem to be true, at least in part, so I really wouldn't be surprised if a better version of the Wii was released, and then that was that for a good 10 years as they perfect projection 3D and VR gaming.

 

[ward.]

I can see the Ps3 getting a slight upgrade halfway through it's life span, considering it has 10 years it's very likely there will be no Ps4.

 

[Royas]

I'm afraid I just can't take this guy seriously. The only way there wouldn't be another console generation is for all three big companies to go belly up before then. And even then, some newcomer would step up to the plate and try to make money off the console market. And I really don't see this OnLive thing replacing consoles in the market, it seems a bit too chancy to me.

 

[Aries_Split]

This is like that old tale of Bill Gates saying 'well, I don't there will be a time in the future when we'll ever need 16 whole megabytes of memory!'

I think it's either misquote or made up in fact, but the fact is people like shiny stuff, there's a fair market out there for just that, make new stuff and people will buy it.

There's always going to be improvements, I just believe they'll be smaller and with bigger gaps inbetween, and I hope I'm right, too, I still feel this generation came about 5 years too early, if you look at the quality of God of War II, Okami, Shadow of the Colossus, can you imagine what the Xbox and Ps2 could be pumping out by now, if programmers had been given an extra 5 years to master the hardware.

I still don't think we're close to the peak of the PS3 or 360's capabilities.

Well, you're half right. The 360 has peaked, but the Ps3 has a tonne of potential left, at least thats what developers on both sides are saying.

>.<

Hardware can't have "potential"

The PS3 is limited by it's 7800 GFX card.

The 360 is limited by it's 6800 GFX card.

The Ps3 has peaked too, just at a higher place than the 360.

 

[bkd69]

He's right.

Not necessarily about the OnLive thing, but as far as this current console generation goes.

Sales of the Wii and PS2 games show that the last generation of graphics are certainly good enough for a sustainable chunk of the market, and the market won't support the additional budgetary costs that going too far beyond the PS3 and 360 would entail. Of course, there's always more development that can be done on the process side of things, but compared to the presentation side, that's dirt cheap.

There will certainly be incremental improvements, bigger hard drives, SSD, manufacturing/integration, clock speeds, memory, but I share his doubt that we'll see any more core architecture changes.

To those who say that this will make PCs into consoles, or vice versa, well, yeah. That started with the availability of the high speed peripheral interconnects, Firewire, ESATA, and USB 2.0, continued with high capacity external storage, >4Gb flash drives, external hard drives, and continued with the convergence of tv and computer video resolutions, and pretty much comes to a head with the presence of industry standard interconnects (USB, Bluetooth, WiFi/LAN) on the various consoles. Broadband is killing the optical disc as a storage and distribution medium, first in the video market, but there's still some life left in the data side of the market. Flash isn't that cheap yet.

Think about what personal computing and gaming looks like in 2016, when your phone sports a terabyte of user available storage.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

Sounds interesting.

I think there'll be one more generation, that will let companies set up pure virtual box's. Hardware will probably be nearly identical, and the differences will be competing services. I wonder what this means for publishers like EA who make their money putting games into Brick and Mortars.

 

[Sir Ollie]

Ahh what a load of bullshit, theres going to be at least another generation

 

[KDR_11k]

Ugh, analysts...

Anyway, the claim of PS3 sales dominance is so ridiculous that guy should get fired. Multiplatform games tend to sell significantly worse on the PS3, how's that going to be sales dominance?

Console technology is peaking. Yes we could make them better, but the price would be outragious. who would pay $800 for a Playstation 4 or the next Xbox. i think Red Vs. Blue said it best "Xbox 360? When did i miss Xbox 2 through 359?"

That's if improvement only means better graphics. Look at what the Wii did, went off in a completely unexpected direction because graphics are becoming too expensive to push while not bringing any gain.

 

[iamnotincompliance]

Please. Both the 360 and the PS3 may be able to reach 1080p under certain circumstances, such as total galactic planetary alignment, but a search I just conducted confirmed what I was already pretty sure of: most games for either system simply cannot hit that resolution. There will be another generation, probably with Nvidia 8800/9800 equivalent cards installed, which will hit 1080p consistently. Sure enough, sooner or later, a new standard in video will hit the market, maybe [a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Hi-Vision]Ultra Hi Def[/a] and it's audio counterpart, [a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/22.2]22.2[/a]. Games will take longer to make, developers will complain, systems will cost more, but they will come out nonetheless, and people will buy.

Meanwhile, Nintendo will be off doing something else, because that's what they do best.