If you are waiting for either Xbox2 or PS5 release, this year will be a dry one for you. This info has been leaked by the chipset manufacturer, AMD which is currently providing APUs (accelerated processing units) for both consoles. Both Microsoft and Sony will be launching their consoles after 7 years, in the year 2020. Please hold your gaming horses for now and wait a year more for the new and exciting features of your favorite consoles, the PlayStation 5 And Xbox2.
What is new?
There are three battle zones in the gaming world, and these are hardware, software, and delivery. The first one, hardware, is easy to understand. Both Microsoft and Sony are constantly competing for a hardware performance edge over the other. This is a standard battle where emerging technologies are constantly tested for optimizing hard performance, and this includes reading data, translating data, storage, memory and streaming performance between the console and the screen.
The second battlefield is the software, which relates to games more than to systems. Sony has an advantage on library section, but this is about to change with Microsoft latest strategy. The no budget limit strategy, where the gaming development studios that Microsoft owns, and there are plenty of them including Undead Labs, Ninja Theory, Obsidian, Inxile, Compulsion, and Playground. The head of game development has been given carte blanche to create whatever they dream of and to take the games to the wildest levels of experience. As such, what we expect to see from Xbox2 at its release is a phenomenal list of new games that are developed specifically for that platform.
This takes me to the third issue, delivery. Delivery is all about how the game gets transferred from the box to the screen, and Microsoft has another trick up their sleeve.
It seems that there will be two options of Xbox to choose from, the standard physical delivery system using an optic reader, and new emerging technology that relies on great bandwidth and performance power in the form of cloud-based gaming. Yup, you heard right, an MMPORG that is cloud-based. This new streaming platform is codenamed Maverik and will possibly change the future of gaming, making it reachable to the masses (of first world countries where streaming is fast, but not to countries where the internet connection is basically shit).
The bottom line is this; 2020 looks like the year that gaming steps out of the box and emerges as direct access to a cloud system, saving thousands of dollars in hardware, and focusing on subscription plans. This is a much better business plan for Microsoft because subscription plans are essentially easier to manage, less expensive to create, and don’t have warranties and hardware issues. If you want to get more information of leaks about the Playstation5 you can go ahead and check out this article, PS4 Home rumors a PS5.
Conclusions
It might take a bit more time than Microsoft hopes to get cloud gaming truly global, and that’s why the Xbox 2 library has to expand to compete with PS5. However, with an unlimited budget for game creation and the first step into true cloud-streaming gaming, Microsoft looks like becoming the Apple of gamers, where innovation becomes the namesake and not just pushing out the same old-same old.
Enough chit chat about the Xbox2 and PS5, I read this article about PS Vita 2 which is very interesting. The PlayStation Vita performed very well for Sony when it was launched back in 2011 and in just one week sold over 300,000 units in Japan and 200,000 in the US. If you are also a fan of this Sony gaming console, do read the article I mentioned before.