I have sat here this morning wondering what I would really like the next generation of consoles to deliver. I seriously doubt that my wish list will be fufilled at all but hey, I can always dream:
- Reliability
One of the things this generation got wrong was the reliability of the consoles. Although Nintendo's Wii has probably proved to be well within the normal accepted failure rate, the PS3 and most definitely the X Box 360 have proved to be more troublesome beasts. The 360's failure rates were simply not acceptable and it is fair to say that Microsoft were very lucky that it didn't kill the 360 stone dead. There is no doubt that another release from them that is besieged by so many issues will not bode well for them. The PS3 seemed to get away with it at first but the 'Yellow Light of Death' has put paid to many of the original design consoles and again is not really acceptable.
- Improved Graphics
This goes without saying but the next gen really does need to use the absolute cutting edge in terms of graphical capabilities. It is always difficult to do this because usually a console is always out of date by the time it is released. When you consider that developers also need to know what the specifications of the console is going to be well in advance of it's release so that they can code games for it the chances of the console being able to match a PC stride for stride is going to be very difficult. What the manufactures of these consoles could do is be less stingy in other areas such as RAM and processing power in order to allow a greater potential for the console.
- Solid State Drives
At the moment these are very costly when compared to standard hard drives but I would like to think that by the time the next generation of consoles are upon us, the price will have come down sufficiently enough to allow them to be used in consoles and still allow the console to be affordable. The enemy of any console is heat as we have seen this generation. The more moving parts a console has the more heat is generated and hard drives have moving parts and are bulky. SSD's would be an ideal solution both in terms of a reduction of moving parts but also would prove to be more reliable and faster as well.
- Developer Friendly Software Tools
I never see the point in making it difficult for a developer to unlock the power of the console. It causes so much bad blood between the console companies and the software developers and publishers and it totally unnecessary. The whole point is for games to play and look their best on the format concerned. Bearing that in mind the onus has to be on the console manufacturer to create a console that is good to develop for. You can have the most powerful console on Earth, but if no one knows how to unleash the power of it, there is no point.
- Skype Quality Comms
There is nothing worse than trying to play a game with your friends online and the coms are so bad you cannot hear what they are saying. As far as I am concerned there is no excuse for it in the next generation of consoles. Skype's coms are crystal clear and should be the benchmark for the next gen, in fact I don't see why the comms cannot be outsourced to Skype.
- Blu Ray Drives as Standard
I don't think it is a good idea for games to go down the download route only for a while yet. I can see the obvious benefits to it, but one thing that has been obvious this generation is that game publishers are showing no inclination to reduce the price of the games and in most cases it actually costs more for a digital download than it does to go out and get an actual physical copy of the game from an online retailer or the high street. That cannot be right. Until this is sorted out, there is no way that I want a game to be delivered by download only. Just where would the competition be in terms of prices?
- General Design Consideration
Would it really have killed Sony to include a USB port on the back of the PS3? There is nothing worse that having the PS3 camera plugged into the front of the console taking up a precious USB slot. Why the hell did Sony not stick another port on the back of the console? Would it really have broke the bank? I would really like the general design of the next gen consoles to show some intelligence. Nintendo also showed a degree of poor design with the ports for the Game Cube controllers being along the top/side of the console. If you have the console lying down the door to access these ports doesn't work properly because the hinge pushes the console up!
I have not gone into the stuff like the online services and so on. I wanted to focus on the actual physical aspects of the consoles themselves, aside from the dev tools, because these are things that are really difficult to fix once the console is out there. Other things can be sorted out via firmware updates.
Whether any of what I want comes to pass is in the hands of the manufacturers, but it would be nice to see at least a few taken on board.
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