Microsoft’s Phil Spencer questions the immediate value of new GPU and CPU combos
Microsoft has continued to distance itself from the opportunity to build a new console.
Speaking to Develop, Microsoft Game Studios’ Phil Spencer suggested that few are signalling for a new Microsoft console.
“Do we need to sell a new console at some point? I don’t think we need to right now,” he said.
“We’ll wait until our experiences are at the right point, like we have done with the Natal camera. We’ll wait until everyone is ready for it from a software perspective.”
Spencer echoed the sentiment of Xbox division VP Don Mattrick, who notably stated that a Natal-powered 360 is – essentially – a next-generation console.
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“I see [Natal] as like the launch of the Xbox 360 back in 2005 – there will be a launch portfolio of games to support it,” added Spencer.
Natal is expected to be released late in 2010, some five years after the 360’s initial launch.
Meanwhile, Spencer questioned whether the next generation of consoles will need to follow the traditional, and perhaps outdated, hardware upgrade process.
“In terms of putting more hardware on the market, what else can we do? Put more memory in it? I don’t think that’s enough,” he said.
Story originally published on Develop
Comments
720
I would like to see the next consoles be user upgradeable, I own a 360. But I would l like to be able to boost the ram up myself by an official 360/720 plug-in. So it runs fine for a budget, but a gamer could have it load quicker or option to swap out 5400rpm hard disk for a 7200rpm or SSD.
@ 1 - NO!!!!!
No! That would be horrible for developers - you're approaching the PC model, which is nothing but a pain in the arse for us with it's nine billion different configurations. The beauty of consoles is that they are consistent. If you're writing a game for, say, the PS2, you know that every PS2 the disk goes into will have hardware with identical capabilities.
The 360 complicated that model slightly by allowing the consumer to not have a hard drive, and even that simple change makes developing a game more complex because you have to make sure the game runs the same with both configurations (the HD is used to cache files so they can stream and/or load faster, so having or not having one can impact your engine's streaming performance).
If you suddenly allow users to change the amount of RAM they have, or different speed hard drives and wotnot, the number of available combinations goes up exponentially and will be a nightmare.
I think we're fine with the current generation of consoles for a good while longer.
upgrading future consoles
HI THERE YOU ARE RIGHT MY XBOX 360 TAKES FOREVER TOO LOAD HALO SOO UPGRADING THE CPU PROCESSORS THE RAM AND GET MY A REALY FAST SSD UPGRADE OVER THE SLOW 5,400 RPM HDD WOULD BE GREAT
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