My thoughts on PS handhelds, handhelds in general, console hardware, and also console/handheld generations, and future irrelevancy of the term

Note 1: This was originally posted on my WordPress blog, and I decided to repost it on the Busy/Steemit and Minds blogs, due to the fact that rerez is talking a lot about stuff I covered in this blog post. Keep in mind that it may not be 100% correct, but overall, there's a lot of overlap between what I say below, and what rerez talks about. Link to WordPress blog here, because I'm not currently providing links in this shared post.

Note 2 (original note on WP post): This has become longer than I expected it to be, so everything after the 3rd paragraph has been hidden under a “Read More’ tag! Also, you may want a tea or coffee before diving in, because you’ll be here for a while!

Even if I have the PS Vita 2000 model, I might end up considering getting the 1000 model (the TV model would be perfect for streaming on Twitch or doing Let’s Plays with), if only so I’m able to see hat else can be done with the Vita hardware; I already have the PSP 1000 and 2000 UK models here, so would eventually want to get the 300X models, and possibly a Go. I’d have to think long and hard about that however. I have my 1000 model set up for Homebrew with CFW, whereas the 2000 model is still factory default, so I can still play games from the PS Store, although I’m wondering now if there’s even any point in keeping it otherwise untouched (although I can put the CFW on temporarily), seeing as officially speaking, the PSP has been withdrawn from the store. The PS3 must be very close to EOL at this point as well, seeing as Sony are starting to EOL the PS4 (though it still has a couple of years before it is fully EOLed.

I do wonder what’ll happen with the Vita, or if there will be a successor, as it does look like Nintendo has effectively won the handheld wars, though that said it has pretty much dominated in terms of handhelds since the OG Game Boy days; Sony currently is winning the current generation’s console wars, given that there are less XBO sales globally, compared to PS4s (if we count all versions of the consoles). I do wonder what’ll be happening with the so-called 9th Gen though, seeing as there’s not been anything definitive about it as of yet, plus given that the Switch is Nintendo’s newest console, we’re likely not going to see anything new from them for even longer, especially as I think that the Switch is gradually starting to take off (even if I haven’t been watching it closely), seeing as it has a lot of unused potential right now.

All that said however, I’ve felt for a while that console generations were going to become irrelevant from the 8th Gen, initially because I was figuring that Microsoft and Sony would instead be bringing out iterative upgrades within the PS4 and XBO, that is to say that we’d see slimline versions replace the previous model (as a cost-reduced option, and also more efficient, such as what we saw with the past few gens), along with an incremental upgrade in hardware specs, like what we have seen with the PS4 Pro and XBO X; after a quick read of a few things, I’m also noticing a couple of trends, such as the aforementioned consoles being referred to by some as Gen 8.5 (or 9 in the case of the XBO X, although I’d still consider that a subset of Gen 8 as it’s not a huge leap; it’s gen 8.75ish at most), and the Switch being considered Gen 8 or 9, depending on the metrics used. However, the Switch is essentially an upgrade over both the (New) 3DS and also the Wii U, so where does that actually place it in terms of the traditional generations?

I’d argue that console generations are becoming even more irrelevant now, especially as it’s become even more difficult to define them; looking at that Reddit thread indicates that there’s disagreement between some gamers about which generation the Switch belongs to, or where it belongs – “traditional” console or handheld… or a new hybrid? – the entire concept of generations has become pretty much muddled, partially due to the way the most recent PS/XB upgrades have been handled (more powerful versions of the current platform), plus the release of the Switch, which is a different format to the Wii U (which used optical media), and more in-line with what the 3DS family uses; at the same time though, Nintendo seems to intend this to effectively be their replacement for both the 3DS (itself being superseded by the New 3DS relatively recently) and also the Wii U, which technically is like the jump from the PS4/XBO to their respective “successors”, and if that’s the case, then the Wii U is technically Gen 7.5 (as it retains original Wii – but not Game Cube compatibility, though interestingly the system architecture is similar to the PS4, which indicates that Nintendo was ahead of its time – will we see MS/Sony do the same down the road?), with the Switch being the 8th Gen console (the internal hardware is interestingly more akin to a tablet), both in terms of the regular consoles, and also in terms of handhelds; you could even justify the New 3DS as a half-generation itself, as it is essentially a slight upgrade from the regular 3DS, and Wikipedia says that it’s an 8th Gen console!

Of course, the issue for the Switch is that you could effectively argue that it’s both an 8th Gen console, and also a 9th Gen handheld, because it’s a definitive replacement for both the Wii U, and also the 3DS platform (especially as it was discontinued last year)! Console generations are pretty much no longer as clear cut as they used to be, though let’s face it, Nintendo pretty much march to the beat of their own drum at this point, especially when you consider that they tend to aim for the more casual gaming market overall, and generally use hardware that is not as powerful as Microsoft’s or Sony’s consoles, which seems to work well for them, on the basis that it’s generally made the consoles cheaper to manufacture (and therefore cheaper for the consumer), plus the older hardware (which they seem to use) is also easier to develop for; both MS and Sony tend to go for cutting-edge hardware in their systems, although for the first time in any console generation, we see both consoles running on effectively the same hardware architecture.

Sure, the XBO X may be more powerful than the PS4 Pro in terms of specs, but they are effectively the same console hardware wise; its the software architecture (and the operating system) that effectively distinguishes the two consoles at this point. Not only that, both consoles are effectively PCs that follow a single architecture. One striking advantage of games consoles is that there’s generally a single hardware architecture (the Pro and X upgrades are the same still, just with a bit more power) which means that there’s a lot of predictability with coding for any console platform; there’s no variations like there is with PC, and despite the PC being the overall best gaming platform – it can for the most part easily play games from throughout its entire history, plus also let you play games from older generations and other systems via emulation, plus you also have the modding, mapping and related communities that release free content for the games, or even patches/source ports to get older games working on new systems – there is no standard set of hardware; you need to design games to take on a variety of hardware configurations, and also a particular API/OS, all of which is quite messy for developers.

Consoles (and by extension to some degree the 8 and 16 bit home computer systems) on the other hand have (on the whole) been a lot easier to develop for because you only have one specific CPU, one sound chip, and one GPU to develop for, with no variation in the hardware – if you’re only releasing on only a single platform; a lot of the older systems might have used the same CPU, making porting easier between systems, though a little work may still have to be put in to upgrade the graphics or sounds (though the former may not necessarily be done beyond the bare minimum in some cases). In any case, up till about the 5th Console Gen (with occasional examples in the 4th and maybe 3rd Gens), the PC (DOS) platform was traditionally not terribly good with games, outside of CGA and EGA graphics, and relatively poor sound. PCs started coming into their own roughly around the time of the VGA display standard, and also the addition of sound cards to the mix, and therefore started to get on-par with the current generation of games consoles and home computers, and eventually being able to beat them, especially in the case of Doom, which pretty much pulverised the Amiga platform, seeing as the OCS, ECS, or even AGA chipsets couldn’t run a game like that in a stock configuration, though developers did release FPS games on those systems (mainly the 1200, as it was more powerful), but none came close to the full experience of Doom.

Even the game consoles at the time – the SNES and Mega Drive (MD – or Genesis in North America) had their own versions of Doom, along with other consoles if the current and subsequent generation, although in the case of the MD, it required the addition of the 32X – which itself could be considered a half-generation, though required an MD to interface with – because on its own, the MD was likely not much more powerful than an Amiga (especially as it used the same CPU); the SNES needed extra chips in the cartridge (which drove up the costs) to get it to run the game, though 5th Gen consoles could run it without any extra hardware; each platform had its own quirks, in addition to whether or not it could run it half-decently (many couldn’t), but even now, the sheer amount of platforms Doom was released upon has made some people try to get Doom running on every platform possible, from graphing calculators, to 8-bit home computers (and more), and anything else with a display!

Doom (and its successor, Quake) eventually came to the Amiga, but it was long after it was originally released. In any case, though the architectures of game consoles and PCs (mostly) differed from the 5th generation onwards, the end result was relatively similar, if you discount the control scheme of gamepad (or joypad if you’re old school) vs the keyboard & mouse combo (though some consoles supported that option too, but only a relative few games), and the occasional poor port (where the dev didn’t take advantage of the superior raw power of the PC hardware). Going back back to the current generation (whatever we should call it now), both the PS4 and XBO architectures pretty much resemble a PC, which is a stark contrast for most consoles; the OG Xbox had an architecture that was pretty much a Pentium III, though the Xbox 360 used the PowerPC architecture along with its competitor console, the PS3, which likely began the path to migrating to the x86-64 platform, as the former platform was hard to develop for( at least on PS3), and I would guess that the latter architecture was easier to program for, seeing as it had seen extensive use in PCs well before the 8th Console Gen.

In any case, we’re now seeing somewhat of a convergence of console and PC hardware architectures (even the Mac eventually moved to the architecture), which still leaves us with the question… what will happen with game consoles in the future? Nintendo, I imagine will likely have at least one more standard console generation in them possibly, given the way they have done things so far, but the PS and XB successors are a bit trickier. On the one hand, we could further another upgrades within the x86-64 platform for the PS5, and/or even the next Xbox (Xbox Two?), but equally, when you consider Sony bought Gaikai – which is a game streaming service – some time ago, it makes you wonder if their next console or the one after that may become sort of streaming box, where we no longer see any physical releases (or downloadable digital ones), where you ultimately just pay some sort of membership fee to access the streaming service, and buy the games digitally for access, which isn’t dissimilar to the now-defunct OnLive platform; even more interestingly, according to the OnLive website (which still exists), Sony acquired some “important parts” of the platform, back in 2015, making me wonder if indeed we’re going to see some sort of streaming games as a service setup with regards to the future of PlayStation, especially when you consider that they have likely incorporated bits from OnLive into PlayStation Now, which itself used to be Gaikai.

The XBox’s future is less known to me however, especially considering I don’t pay huge attention to developments, especially as I have someone on my future staff who is more invested in the Xbox platform anyway (plus I do handle enough as it stands). I do however think that VR, and most definitely AR will factor into the future of gaming as a whole. Whilst we’re close to it, we’re not quite at the level where streaming games over the internet is feasible in every country, so it may be another couple of generations before we start seeing streaming games (much like Amazon Video or Netflix for movies, or Spotify for music) becoming more dominant; Sony naturally has a head start already with PS Now, though it wouldn’t surprise me if Microsoft eventually moved into that direction too. AR is especially going to become much more of a thing, with VR likely to start trailing behind a bit; the tech is still in its infancy, so it does have a long way to go still; I personally regard 4k as a more important upgrade in terms of 3D displays, which ultimately became a bit of a gimmick, and has subsequently died out. That said however, we will likely see some sort of convergence of AR with 3D/VR, and/or some other sort of projection in terms of user interfaces.

All this said however, I have no idea what the next “generation” will bring, as we’re at least 2-3 years from that coming, or at least having Microsoft and Sony catch up to Nintendo in terms of gens (if you consider the Switch to be a 9th Gen console); a lot can happen technologically in 2-3 years, though I definitely expect MS and Sony to continue to embrace the x86-64 platform, especially as there will likely be refinements to the architecture, plus it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that there will be backwards compatibility between the PS4/XBO game libraries, seeing as the architecture is pretty standardised; look at how you can technically play a Windows XP game on Windows 10 for instance… the system architecture between x86 and x86-64 aren’t too dissimilar to each other, plus 64-bit copies of Windows (perhaps in some cases with a bit of a tweak) can easily run 32-bit software. About the only major issue would be (I figure) the way the newer hardware architecture of the future PS/XB systems would work in older software, but we’re truly into the realm of speculation at this point.

In theory, it’s not impossible to get PS4 running on a PS5 – likewise for the XBO and its successor – if they stick to the x86-64 architecture; you could easily write a patch that takes advantage of the newer hardware, and I would say that even if the theoretical PS5 kept the same architectural layout as the PS4 (albeit with more power versions of the chipset, or at least a compatible one), there may not even need to be any tweaks within the software to get it running! Granted, the game will look like it has PS4 Pro graphics at best – which is not surprising given that most PS4 games are upgraded to take advantage of the Pro hardware; the PS5 hardware is going to be at the minimum display PS4 quality graphics to retain backwards compatibility, much like the Pro does with the “Base” model now – but it would likely be able to handle 4k resolutions a lot better than the PS4 Pro can, leading to a constant 60 FPS. Microsoft will likely do similar, and in fact I think it’s more likely they’ll try to make it easier to have backwards compatibility, especially when you consider they have done it with the OG XB and 360 on the XBO.

Even if I’m speculating right now, I’m using what I know about what has gone before (in terms of news and speculation), plus some of my university education, most notably the hardware courses – even if I never graduated fully, though I did pick up a CertHE from there – I’m able to take a literal educated guess for the next stage of console development, and I ultimately see both MS and Sony continuing with the iterations within the x86-64 platform, though the leap will be much larger than it was; it would be more like going from the PS3 (XB360) directly to the PS4 Pro (XBO X) as opposed to what we saw this generation, especially given that in a lot of cases, the recession is very much over for a lot of the world, and tech prices have also dropped. Additionally, I see that AR will become more prominent with all gaming platforms, with VR possibly being more of a wildcard; it still has niche uses outside of gaming, but again, it’s still in its infancy. In the future, VR will definitely be able to take off more, as the tech develops to take full advantage of it, eventually leading to VR without the headset, but that is still sometime off. We will likely see better internet connections (which are more conductive to streaming games) appear before more advanced VR arrives.

In any case, we’re definitely seeing the end of traditional console generations come about, at least with Ms and Sony: Nintendo will likely stick to that system for one or two more generations, before they finally join the other two companies, or perhaps other companies – either additional to or replacing MS/Sony – depending on what happens over the next 10-15 years. Either way though, it’ll definitely interesting to see the advancements of tech in that time, and how it affects gaming.

That’s me done for now however; hopefully you all enjoyed reading it… be sure to collect your free cookie at the end! I admit that most of it was done off the top of my head, so certain things may not be 100% accurate, but I think that otherwise it’s pretty true, especially considering the state of things, and the on the fly research I did whilst typing it all up. I’m very open to discussing things further if people like, but I will need time to unwind from typing all this up, and also to consider your comment.

Until next time though, good night and take care.