Why bother buying an 8th generation console?

[eskil]

Personally, I've never bought a new console anyway, I've always waited for one generation to end and then bought the console that was made obsolete for cheap.

[msimplay]

Personally, I've never bought a new console anyway, I've always waited for one generation to end and then bought the console that was made obsolete for cheap.

Theres advantages and disadvantages to that tactic.
At the moment I've found some bargains like Metroids other M for £7.99 but that could go up.
Prime Trilogy was £30 on release and now I can't seem to find it less than £45.
Plus since the games are no longer sold in the shops makes them harder to obtain at reasonable prices those ones that become rare.
I mean I bought Panzer Dragoon Saga at a reasonable £20 new but I have seen it go for ridiculous prices on Ebay now.

[Niode]

Right, let me just get this straight. The PSP2 is not capable of PS3 graphics. It's capable of something that looks similar. However, since the screen is only running 960 x 540 the power required for fill rate is dramatically lessened compared to 720p (the vast majority of PS3 games). Like Mr. Popo said on the other thread, resolution is a squared problem. The power required to fill progressively higher resolutions grows exponentially. That's one of the reasons why when somebody states their PC specs and says "it runs crysis on maximum" it means absolutely fuck all, since they could be running it at 640x480, most likely their lying or they're running at at some paltry resolution like 1280x768 or 1440x900 and they're just about squeezing 24fps in the quiet sections.

If you're expecting the PSP2 (I absolutely refuse to call it NGP because that means something completely different in my eyes) to be a portable PS3 you are sorely mistaken. A lot of people read 'PS3-like graphics' as it being a mini Cell and a mini RSX in a plastic case with a screen on it. It just isn't. It's using the same technology as the iPhone 4 but with higher clock speeds and more cores. It's essentially a system on a chip (RAM, CPU, GPU in one package). It's the same PowerVR SGX chip as seen in the Galaxy S and the iPhone 4 but the quad core variant. Which leads me to believe that battery life on the PSP2 is going to absolutely stink. They're going to be lucky to squeeze 4 hours out of the damn thing. Forget it if you want 3G connectivity at the same time. Maybe 3 hours if you're lucky. They're going to have to cram the damn thing full of cells, and you can forget about having a user serviceable battery. For the form factor that they're aiming for I just cannot see it. They either sacrifice battery life for a smaller unit and a serviceable battery or they cram it full of cells that aren't user serviceable. Both possible routes suck for the customer.

[msimplay]

Right, let me just get this straight. The PSP2 is not capable of PS3 graphics. It's capable of something that looks similar. However, since the screen is only running 960 x 540 the power required for fill rate is dramatically lessened compared to 720p (the vast majority of PS3 games). Like Mr. Popo said on the other thread, resolution is a squared problem. The power required to fill progressively higher resolutions grows exponentially. That's one of the reasons why when somebody states their PC specs and says "it runs crysis on maximum" it means absolutely fuck all, since they could be running it at 640x480, most likely their lying or they're running at at some paltry resolution like 1280x768 or 1440x900 and they're just about squeezing 24fps in the quiet sections.

If you're expecting the PSP2 (I absolutely refuse to call it NGP because that means something completely different in my eyes) to be a portable PS3 you are sorely mistaken. A lot of people read 'PS3-like graphics' as it being a mini Cell and a mini RSX in a plastic case with a screen on it. It just isn't. It's using the same technology as the iPhone 4 but with higher clock speeds and more cores. It's essentially a system on a chip (RAM, CPU, GPU in one package). It's the same PowerVR SGX chip as seen in the Galaxy S and the iPhone 4 but the quad core variant. Which leads me to believe that battery life on the PSP2 is going to absolutely stink. They're going to be lucky to squeeze 4 hours out of the damn thing. Forget it if you want 3G connectivity at the same time. Maybe 3 hours if you're lucky. They're going to have to cram the damn thing full of cells, and you can forget about having a user serviceable battery. For the form factor that they're aiming for I just cannot see it. They either sacrifice battery life for a smaller unit and a serviceable battery or they cram it full of cells that aren't user serviceable. Both possible routes suck for the customer.

I understand what you are saying but with a screen smaller do you really need the highest resolution to get it to look like a PS3 game ?

Although am not too fond of the poor battery life to be honest either

[BLAST PROCESSOR]

While I actually think the 3DS looks good, I'd really like to see a portable system that could hook up to the TV and allow for multiplayer. Something like a Sega Nomad or FC-16 Go (portable SNES), but with modern graphics/gameplay ability.

[Gunstar Green]

I think we've hit a wall as far as consoles are concerned. Games are at a point where the current graphics are nearly as good as we're going to get and it takes loads of time, money and work to produce photo-realistic games. There's not much more the developers can do. We can make more powerful hardware but we still need to make the games which have sort of plateaued at a level of expense and complexity.

As for the handhelds I'm interested in seeing what the 3DS is like but other than curiosity I have no interest in it.

[MrPopo]

I understand what you are saying but with a screen smaller do you really need the highest resolution to get it to look like a PS3 game ?

Although am not too fond of the poor battery life to be honest either

Here's a simple experiment you can do. Take an old PC game like Quake 2. Set the resolution to 640 x 480. Walk around a bit, look at everything. Now crack up the resolution to the max your monitor can do. Notice how everything looks a bit better? Higher resolutions smooth everything out because you can't see the individual pixels as much. It's still all the same drawing instructions. So there's two halves to the notion of looking like a PS3 game. The first is the poly count. The second is the resolution. I doubt they'll get the poly count as high as the PS3 can put out and the resolution won't be as good either. So it'll look good, but it won't be PS3 caliber.

[msimplay]

I understand what you are saying but with a screen smaller do you really need the highest resolution to get it to look like a PS3 game ?

Although am not too fond of the poor battery life to be honest either

Here's a simple experiment you can do. Take an old PC game like Quake 2. Set the resolution to 640 x 480. Walk around a bit, look at everything. Now crack up the resolution to the max your monitor can do. Notice how everything looks a bit better? Higher resolutions smooth everything out because you can't see the individual pixels as much. It's still all the same drawing instructions. So there's two halves to the notion of looking like a PS3 game. The first is the poly count. The second is the resolution. I doubt they'll get the poly count as high as the PS3 can put out and the resolution won't be as good either. So it'll look good, but it won't be PS3 caliber.

I get that bit but it's a smaller screen they don't need to crank it up to the max.
It'll actually look better on a smaller screen take a portable dvd player with a 7inch screen the resolution is still 720x480 but looks much better on the small screen than the larger one.

[Limewater]

Theres advantages and disadvantages to that tactic.
At the moment I've found some bargains like Metroids other M for £7.99 but that could go up.
Prime Trilogy was £30 on release and now I can't seem to find it less than £45.
Plus since the games are no longer sold in the shops makes them harder to obtain at reasonable prices those ones that become rare.
I mean I bought Panzer Dragoon Saga at a reasonable £20 new but I have seen it go for ridiculous prices on Ebay now.

I think the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages, if you're buying games in any quantity. Metroid Prime Trilogy is a current-gen example. By next-gen, it'll likely come down a bit.
Yes, some games go up and never come down, but they're exceedingly rare. Sure, Panzer Dragoon Saga now sells for, like, 4 times its original price, but most used games are selling for 10-25% of their original price. Ten new games will be around $500. Panzer Dragoon Saga, along with nine other good, cheap, used games will be around $250-$300 total, and that's in today's money. Don't forget about inflation.

[Limewater]

I get that bit but it's a smaller screen they don't need to crank it up to the max.
It'll actually look better on a smaller screen take a portable dvd player with a 7inch screen the resolution is still 720x480 but looks much better on the small screen than the larger one.

You're right. It only really makes a big difference if you're planning on using TV-out.

I think the resolution-based posts are in response to folks saying, "Why do I need a console when this handheld is just as powerful?"