Recently there’s been a lot of rumors about the next Xbox. For some reason ‘rumor professionals’ are heavily leaning towards an announcement at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), and a launch of the next Xbox late 2012. There are many obvious reasons why this isn’t even true, but all of the reasons relate to one core topic, there’s too many games coming out at the end of 2012 for another Xbox to be launching.
Star Wars Kinect (with a Limited Edition 360), Bioshock: Infinite, Tomb Raider, and Halo 4, are all launching late 2012 for the Xbox 360. Why would Microsoft risk poor sales and alienating an audience by announcing a new console at CES and then releasing it the same year? It’s simple, they won’t do that. These are just a few AAA titles from 2012. There’s also Far Cry 3, Ghost Recon Future Soldier, Prey 2, The Darkness 2, Borderlands 2, and Mass Effect 3. Each of these games are highly anticipated, and even more proof that 2012 is not going to be the start of the next generation; well maybe for Nintendo, but that’s a different story for a different time.
This console generation is unlike any before it. It will last a lot longer, and probably has some of the largest, most expensive, and most immersive games ever created. Also why rush into the next generation? With DirectX11 (DX11) just recently being released and utilized by game engines, why don’t we wait a couple years for the hardware that can run these games to become cheaper? We don’t want gimped consoles, but right now at the end of 2011, we’re in a transition phase. DX11 hardware isn’t cheap, and the requirements for a true DX11 game are pretty steep. The next Xbox and Playstation should ship with 8 core processors (you could argue the PS3’s Cell is that), 6GB RAM (or more), and minimum 500GB hard drives.
The earliest you’ll hear concrete facts about the next Xbox and/or PS3 will be 2013. However, it’ll more likely be 2014. That’ll give the 360 a 9 year life span, and the PS3 8 years.
Note: This article was originally written on November 13, 2011, although because of time conflicts, it was posted on January 7, 2012.
