What exactly is a next generation game? - Blu-ray Forum

Cyorg · 09-24-2007, 04:45 PM

What exactly is a next generation game?

The term next-generation is used a lot in the video games industry but what does it actually mean? How are developers taking advantage of new gaming hardware and what are the challenges and next steps for the industry?
With each new iteration of games console hardware comes the promise of revolutionary game experiences.

When the Xbox 360 launched in November 2005, the then boss Peter Moore said: "Xbox 360 will deliver mind-blowing experiences."

Ahead of the launch of the PlayStation 3 (PS3) Sony gushed: "Gamers will literally be able to dive into the realistic world seen in large screen movies and experience the excitement in real-time."

The reality of course is quite different.

"Each time we have a step forward in games, it feels phenomenal. But when we look back we realise it was just another step," says David Braben, the veteran developer who co-created Elite in the 1980s, and whose studio is now working on a so-called next-gen title, The Outsider.

He says video games are entering their fifth generation of hardware (starting with home computers in the early 1980s) and that developers need to be more ambitious and aim higher with the kinds of stories they want to tell.

"The tools we need are still under development, but the technique of story-telling also needs to be mastered.

"We need the Alfred Hitchcock and the Orson Welles of gaming to step forward and lead the industry into a new era. At the moment we have plenty of Buster Keaton's and Harold Lloyd's."

Braben believes that the industry needs artistic figures who can employ the next-generation of tools to tell stories in new ways and cross the Uncanny Valley.

The Uncanny Valley is a term coined in 1970 by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori. He pointed out that as robots, and computer animations of people, get closer to replicating the movements and expressions of humans, the bigger the gulf between them and us seems to be.

Human challenge

Frontier has been working on tools to help cross the Uncanny Valley for more than five years and The Outsider is still more than two years away from completion.

"It will be a game where you genuinely can do different things; you can come at a problem in different ways because you thought of a way."

The Outsider's ambitions are to put thousands of characters inside a game, each one unique and displaying "subtle human behaviour".

The company has also been working on an animation system which gives a greater feeling of realism and is more adaptive and less scripted.

These challenges are among the biggest issues all developers are grappling with, along with non-linear story-telling, artificial intelligence, photo-realism, connected experiences and user-generated content.

A new wave of titles for the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 hoping to confront these issues are due for release in the coming months, among them Bioshock, Crysis, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, Fable 2, Metal Gear Solid 4, Halo 3 and Killzone 2.

Nintendo has stepped away from this debate somewhat, focusing on games which highlight participation.

Power pack

Halo 3, for the Xbox 360, is hoping to be the very definition of next generation when it launches next month.

"We're expanding our ability to empower our fans to really take the game and make it their own," says Brian Jarrard, director of franchise and community affairs at the game's developers Bungie.

Halo 3 will include tools to let gamers edit their own game movies and share them among friends, swap photographs from games, as well as re-build many of the maps the makers have provided, through a feature called Forge.

Jarrard adds: "We want to let our fans do great things. These fans are making really great Halo movies and we're giving them really powerful tools and we're excited to see where they go with that."

The increasing amount of raw power available to developers has made the job of creating immersive, detailed worlds more achievable.

David Braben estimates that today's machines are 20 million times more powerful than the first mass-market games machines of the early 1980s.

Game ambition

One title aiming for "Hollywood realism" is Killzone 2, for the PlayStation 3. A recent demo of the game at E3 in Los Angeles impressed many observers.

Steven Ter Heide, one of the producers on the project at Guerilla, says: "The PS3 allows us to deal with a tremendous amount of data on screen, the amount of polygons on screens, animation, the hit responses."

One level of the game equates to about two gigabytes of data, he says.

He adds: "In this one sequence at the start of the level we are drawing well over one million polygons. There's a lot of processing power needed to pull off these effects, such as motion blur, full-screen anti-aliasing, volumetric smoke."

But throwing more polygons and higher definition textures on to a screen are not going to be enough on their own to create truly interactive experiences, argues Braben.

In 1982 he and Ian Bell created a whole galaxy for Elite on the humble BBC Micro, and all inside just 22K of RAM.

"We have textures on a single rivet in The Outsider that are bigger than 22K," he says.

Braben says the firm is also working on tools that allow for more realistic conversations between the player-controlled character and AI characters in the game world.

And that world will be huge. The ambition for The Outsider is to render a 49 sq km city

But Braben is pragmatic about what can be achieved this generation.

"There is no silver bullet that will solve our problems of tools and storytelling.

"I don't think any of the games we have made have ever matched the ambition we had for them. But that's true of the whole industry.

"The important thing is to have the ambition."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6937058.stm

shatta · 09-24-2007, 04:51 PM

its too long...can someone summarize plz

blu-dave · 09-24-2007, 06:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shatta

its too long...can someone summarize plz

PS3 is one hell of a cool machine!

Gamekid · 09-25-2007, 03:08 AM

Interesting stuff to read about. I summarized this stuff into plain english, I would say that the next gen hardware is allowing developers to do more then ever before in their games, but at the cost of needing more time prior to release.

cfranklin · 09-25-2007, 03:25 AM

Doesnt it cost more though for next generation gaming? I think i read somewhere on gamespot where they said instead of spending $20-$25 million to develop a PS3 or Xbox 360 game they can go with a wii and spend a 1/3 less. i think to profit from games on ps3 and xbox 360 developers must sell 600,000 copies.

Gamekid · 09-25-2007, 03:49 AM

Games have always cost money to make. Bad news is that it costs more now then ever, but nowadays, it costs more then ever now to make a movie.

MrBogey · 09-25-2007, 05:00 AM

If it can be done on the previous system without overhauling the hardware then it's not next-gen IMO.

If you can take a game that's on the PS3 and run it on the PS2 without significant issues or differences then it's not truly next-gen IMO.

Zeus · 09-25-2007, 05:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by blu-dave

PS3 is one hell of a cool machine!

That it is...that it is. Just finished Heavenly sword in one sitting on Sunday night!!....looked beautiful but still too short to be on the right side of the price / value equation imo

Was just wondering that all the hype Sony's put into having blu ray to hold "tomorrow's games" and the fact that heavenly sword alledgedly takes up 22 gigs of space, etc...........but its all for cutscenes and CG work!!!.......is that the direction sony wants to go in??....big epic blockbuster games on 50+ gb on shiny blu ray disks but which only have around 10 hours of gameplay (or less

) but tons of cut scenes.

I'd be the first to agree that length of the game has to be a derivative of the story, gameplay elements, etc. but manufacturer's have to keep in mind that consumers pay the same price for every game (irrespective of "enjoyment hours" provided) and hence the goal should be to provide products / experiences that deliver value in accordance with the price.

Heavenly sword left me with a feeling of being cheated out of at least 20 bucks

Sonny · 09-25-2007, 05:40 AM

PS3 is next gen, well when they get the CELL processors " cooking " anyway. I dont see any real next gen in the xbox 360 there still using dvds (dvd-9) 60.00$ dvds ouch!

JakeNRoland · 09-25-2007, 06:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zeus

That it is...that it is. Just finished Heavenly sword in one sitting on Sunday night!!....looked beautiful but still too short to be on the right side of the price / value equation imo

Was just wondering that all the hype Sony's put into having blu ray to hold "tomorrow's games" and the fact that heavenly sword alledgedly takes up 22 gigs of space, etc...........but its all for cutscenes and CG work!!!.......is that the direction sony wants to go in??....big epic blockbuster games on 50+ gb on shiny blu ray disks but which only have around 10 hours of gameplay (or less

) but tons of cut scenes.

I'd be the first to agree that length of the game has to be a derivative of the story, gameplay elements, etc. but manufacturer's have to keep in mind that consumers pay the same price for every game (irrespective of "enjoyment hours" provided) and hence the goal should be to provide products / experiences that deliver value in accordance with the price.

Heavenly sword left me with a feeling of being cheated out of at least 20 bucks

I don't know that this was the correct thread for this rant, but I agree 100%. There's no denying what was there was awesome... but that's it?

movies3 · 09-25-2007, 04:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sonny

PS3 is next gen, well when they get the CELL processors " cooking " anyway. I dont see any real next gen in the xbox 360 there still using dvds (dvd-9) 60.00$ dvds ouch!

ooohhhhh burn! lol

Icemage · 09-25-2007, 05:20 PM

Next gen isn't just HD graphics. It's about empowering the player above and beyond what the last generation offered.

What do I consider next generation?

- Amazing visuals. Call of Duty 4 : Modern Warfare fits this bill quite nicely, as do Heavenly Sword and Halo 3.

- Incredible game processing power. Super Stardust HD tracks an immense number of objects on-screen, and is one of the clearest examples of next gen technology flexing its muscles. Heavenly Sword also has some great shock and awe scenes featuring hundreds of enemies onscreen.

- Unparalleled interactivity. Rock Band and Haze are great examples of this, allowing 4 player co-op gaming. Games like Tekken 5, Virtua Fighter 5, and hopefully Soul Calibur 4 also adding online gaming are going to be huge.

- User generated content. The advent of usefully large hard drives in consoles is driving a new movement toward user creatable content. SingStar, Unreal Tournament 3, and especially LittleBigPlanet are going to be huge in this respect.

takezo · 09-25-2007, 07:35 PM

Next gen is a generic term to categorize games that have just been released for the latest console. Note that at one point PS2 was once "next gen" back during the last leg of N64, PSone era.

the term next gen is offten coined to games with better graphics than similar games before it. Though "next gen" offten coined as graphical advances, it's not really what "next gen" means. "Next gen" became a slang for graphically advanced games due to pop culture. Basicaly games were staying esentially the same save graphical improvement thus a game that was not "next gen" had graphics too close to games that have been out for a while. Since gameplay is essestially has not changed for many games (any EA sports game, WII shooters, and most FPS games) and graphics were last gen, the game was NOt "next gen". With countless blogs, forums, games sites, the term next gen coined to games with next gen graphics but last gen game play, resulted in the salng "next gen" for games with better graphics.

the slang still is in wide use today, infact they might even more used now than ever.

But in reality Next Gen is short for Next Generation, basicaly meaning any games that has been recently released or upcomming releases. Basicaly any game even for DS, PSP, and Wii are Next Generation games.

statikcat · 09-25-2007, 07:59 PM

Next Gen means consoles finally catching up with pc games graphically.

bubs · 10-09-2007, 12:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by statikcat

Next Gen means consoles finally catching up with pc games graphically.

haha true. heavenly sword was amazing for me. ive never played on a console with so many enemies at once. the story was interesting and the graphics were crazy. my friend said they take time to develop the characters and he was dead on. this to me is a nex-gen game. yea it was short, but i prefer short games with crazy graphics/story than boring levels. take ridge racerfor example, i cant beat this game. im stuck at 94 percent or seomthing, this makes me furious dude

jorg · 10-09-2007, 01:43 AM

i define a game as next gen when it has things that notciable make the experence better that could not be on on a previouse generation machine

so anything desinged for the shitbox 360 :P :P :P
or in a nute shell anything that uses 60% of blu-ray disc lmao

09-24-2007, 04:45 PM	#1
Cyorg Special Member Member since:Jul 2007 Location:San Antonio, TX. PSN ID: Cyorg Blu-ray collection:62 Blu-ray reviews:1	What exactly is a next generation game? What exactly is a next generation game? The term next-generation is used a lot in the video games industry but what does it actually mean? How are developers taking advantage of new gaming hardware and what are the challenges and next steps for the industry? With each new iteration of games console hardware comes the promise of revolutionary game experiences. When the Xbox 360 launched in November 2005, the then boss Peter Moore said: "Xbox 360 will deliver mind-blowing experiences." Ahead of the launch of the PlayStation 3 (PS3) Sony gushed: "Gamers will literally be able to dive into the realistic world seen in large screen movies and experience the excitement in real-time." The reality of course is quite different. "Each time we have a step forward in games, it feels phenomenal. But when we look back we realise it was just another step," says David Braben, the veteran developer who co-created Elite in the 1980s, and whose studio is now working on a so-called next-gen title, The Outsider. He says video games are entering their fifth generation of hardware (starting with home computers in the early 1980s) and that developers need to be more ambitious and aim higher with the kinds of stories they want to tell. "The tools we need are still under development, but the technique of story-telling also needs to be mastered. "We need the Alfred Hitchcock and the Orson Welles of gaming to step forward and lead the industry into a new era. At the moment we have plenty of Buster Keaton's and Harold Lloyd's." Braben believes that the industry needs artistic figures who can employ the next-generation of tools to tell stories in new ways and cross the Uncanny Valley. The Uncanny Valley is a term coined in 1970 by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori. He pointed out that as robots, and computer animations of people, get closer to replicating the movements and expressions of humans, the bigger the gulf between them and us seems to be. Human challenge Frontier has been working on tools to help cross the Uncanny Valley for more than five years and The Outsider is still more than two years away from completion. "It will be a game where you genuinely can do different things; you can come at a problem in different ways because you thought of a way." The Outsider's ambitions are to put thousands of characters inside a game, each one unique and displaying "subtle human behaviour". The company has also been working on an animation system which gives a greater feeling of realism and is more adaptive and less scripted. These challenges are among the biggest issues all developers are grappling with, along with non-linear story-telling, artificial intelligence, photo-realism, connected experiences and user-generated content. A new wave of titles for the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 hoping to confront these issues are due for release in the coming months, among them Bioshock, Crysis, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, Fable 2, Metal Gear Solid 4, Halo 3 and Killzone 2. Nintendo has stepped away from this debate somewhat, focusing on games which highlight participation. Power pack Halo 3, for the Xbox 360, is hoping to be the very definition of next generation when it launches next month. "We're expanding our ability to empower our fans to really take the game and make it their own," says Brian Jarrard, director of franchise and community affairs at the game's developers Bungie. Halo 3 will include tools to let gamers edit their own game movies and share them among friends, swap photographs from games, as well as re-build many of the maps the makers have provided, through a feature called Forge. Jarrard adds: "We want to let our fans do great things. These fans are making really great Halo movies and we're giving them really powerful tools and we're excited to see where they go with that." The increasing amount of raw power available to developers has made the job of creating immersive, detailed worlds more achievable. David Braben estimates that today's machines are 20 million times more powerful than the first mass-market games machines of the early 1980s. Game ambition One title aiming for "Hollywood realism" is Killzone 2, for the PlayStation 3. A recent demo of the game at E3 in Los Angeles impressed many observers. Steven Ter Heide, one of the producers on the project at Guerilla, says: "The PS3 allows us to deal with a tremendous amount of data on screen, the amount of polygons on screens, animation, the hit responses." One level of the game equates to about two gigabytes of data, he says. He adds: "In this one sequence at the start of the level we are drawing well over one million polygons. There's a lot of processing power needed to pull off these effects, such as motion blur, full-screen anti-aliasing, volumetric smoke." But throwing more polygons and higher definition textures on to a screen are not going to be enough on their own to create truly interactive experiences, argues Braben. In 1982 he and Ian Bell created a whole galaxy for Elite on the humble BBC Micro, and all inside just 22K of RAM. "We have textures on a single rivet in The Outsider that are bigger than 22K," he says. Braben says the firm is also working on tools that allow for more realistic conversations between the player-controlled character and AI characters in the game world. And that world will be huge. The ambition for The Outsider is to render a 49 sq km city But Braben is pragmatic about what can be achieved this generation. "There is no silver bullet that will solve our problems of tools and storytelling. "I don't think any of the games we have made have ever matched the ambition we had for them. But that's true of the whole industry. "The important thing is to have the ambition." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6937058.stm

09-25-2007, 05:40 AM	#9
Sonny Blu-ray Ninja Member since:Aug 2007 Home Theater Gallery:8 Blu-ray reviews:6 Trading Score:1	PS3 is next gen, well when they get the CELL processors " cooking " anyway. I dont see any real next gen in the xbox 360 there still using dvds (dvd-9) 60.00$ dvds ouch! Last edited by Sonny; 09-25-2007 at 05:47 AM.

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09-24-2007, 04:51 PM	#2
shatta Expert Member Member since:Jun 2007 Location:New York	its too long...can someone summarize plz

09-25-2007, 03:08 AM	#4
Gamekid Power Member Member since:Feb 2006	Interesting stuff to read about. I summarized this stuff into plain english, I would say that the next gen hardware is allowing developers to do more then ever before in their games, but at the cost of needing more time prior to release.

09-25-2007, 03:25 AM	#5
cfranklin Banned Member since:Sep 2007	Doesnt it cost more though for next generation gaming? I think i read somewhere on gamespot where they said instead of spending $20-$25 million to develop a PS3 or Xbox 360 game they can go with a wii and spend a 1/3 less. i think to profit from games on ps3 and xbox 360 developers must sell 600,000 copies.

09-25-2007, 03:49 AM	#6
Gamekid Power Member Member since:Feb 2006	Games have always cost money to make. Bad news is that it costs more now then ever, but nowadays, it costs more then ever now to make a movie.

09-25-2007, 05:00 AM	#7
MrBogey Expert Member Member since:Jan 2007	If it can be done on the previous system without overhauling the hardware then it's not next-gen IMO. If you can take a game that's on the PS3 and run it on the PS2 without significant issues or differences then it's not truly next-gen IMO.

09-25-2007, 05:20 PM	#12
Icemage Blu-ray Ninja Top contributor Member since:Jul 2007	Next gen isn't just HD graphics. It's about empowering the player above and beyond what the last generation offered. What do I consider next generation? - Amazing visuals. Call of Duty 4 : Modern Warfare fits this bill quite nicely, as do Heavenly Sword and Halo 3. - Incredible game processing power. Super Stardust HD tracks an immense number of objects on-screen, and is one of the clearest examples of next gen technology flexing its muscles. Heavenly Sword also has some great shock and awe scenes featuring hundreds of enemies onscreen. - Unparalleled interactivity. Rock Band and Haze are great examples of this, allowing 4 player co-op gaming. Games like Tekken 5, Virtua Fighter 5, and hopefully Soul Calibur 4 also adding online gaming are going to be huge. - User generated content. The advent of usefully large hard drives in consoles is driving a new movement toward user creatable content. SingStar, Unreal Tournament 3, and especially LittleBigPlanet are going to be huge in this respect.

09-25-2007, 07:35 PM	#13
takezo Active Member Member since:Aug 2006	Next gen is a generic term to categorize games that have just been released for the latest console. Note that at one point PS2 was once "next gen" back during the last leg of N64, PSone era. the term next gen is offten coined to games with better graphics than similar games before it. Though "next gen" offten coined as graphical advances, it's not really what "next gen" means. "Next gen" became a slang for graphically advanced games due to pop culture. Basicaly games were staying esentially the same save graphical improvement thus a game that was not "next gen" had graphics too close to games that have been out for a while. Since gameplay is essestially has not changed for many games (any EA sports game, WII shooters, and most FPS games) and graphics were last gen, the game was NOt "next gen". With countless blogs, forums, games sites, the term next gen coined to games with next gen graphics but last gen game play, resulted in the salng "next gen" for games with better graphics. the slang still is in wide use today, infact they might even more used now than ever. But in reality Next Gen is short for Next Generation, basicaly meaning any games that has been recently released or upcomming releases. Basicaly any game even for DS, PSP, and Wii are Next Generation games.

09-25-2007, 07:59 PM	#14
statikcat Blu-ray Guru Member since:Jul 2007 Location:Washington, DC Blu-ray collection:67	Next Gen means consoles finally catching up with pc games graphically.

10-09-2007, 01:43 AM	#16
jorg Power Member Member since:Dec 2006 Location:Ontario, Canada Home Theater Gallery:2	i define a game as next gen when it has things that notciable make the experence better that could not be on on a previouse generation machine so anything desinged for the shitbox 360 :P :P :P or in a nute shell anything that uses 60% of blu-ray disc lmao

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