The Future of Consoles: A Three-Player Game

The gaming console market is a duopoly today, ruled by Microsoft with its Xbox and Sony with its PlayStation. Of course, there is a third player, Nintendo – but it has embraced a different business model, focusing more on the players’ experience and less on cramming next-generation hardware under its hood. The two leading console manufacturers have been competing with each other for years, increasing their consoles’ screen resolution and FPS, and releasing exclusive titles to attract gamers (and their dollars, of course) to their side. Now both of these manufacturers are preparing to release the next generation of their consoles. At the same time, a new player (sic!) is preparing to enter the market in the form of the upcoming Mad Box video game console that hopes to finally break the duopoly. So, let’s take a look at what the two big ones have in store for us in the coming years.

Xbox 2

There has been a lot of speculation online about the next-gen gaming console Microsoft has been working on – and at this year’s E3, some more tangible details about the console have finally emerged. The console will come with a new hardware configuration codenamed “Project Scarlett” built on AMD’s Navi technology, promising a performance boost of up to 300% over the Xbox One X. Among other things, Microsoft promises resolutions of up to 8K and real-time ray tracing, among others, and a configuration that can put the average gaming PC to shame: 8GB of ultra-fast GDDR6 and a new and improved SSD to further reduce load times. The price is yet unknown – we’ll probably know more as the console’s launch date (next year’s holiday season) draws close. Another thing to look forward to is Halo Infinite, the exclusive title that will be launched alongside the new console.

PlayStation 5

Last October, Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida confirmed that the company is working on a successor to PlayStation 4 without revealing, in turn, its plans for the upcoming console. Since then, a series of details (and rumors) have emerged about the PlayStation 5 (if it will be called that): an AMD platform (Ryzen CPU and Navi GPU) capable of ray tracing, resolutions of up to 8K, 3D audio, and other goodies, matching the performance of a gaming PC built using some of Nvidia’s latest GPUs. It will also have an SSD instead of an HDD. Rumors speak of the PS5 beating Microsoft’s Project Scarlett when it comes to performance – only time will tell if this is true. Don’t get excited about the new console yet, though – the PS5 is expected to hit the shelves sometime in 2021.

Mad Box

Finally, let’s take a look at the Mad Box console, proposed by Slightly Mad Studios CEO and founder Ian Bell earlier this year. There are pretty much no details available about the proposed device other than there are several investors pumping money in it and that it will be as powerful as a “very fast PC 2 years from now”, as Bell put it. One of the more important features of the console will be its high speed – Bell was talking about up to 180 FPS in VR – and its policy regarding exclusive titles or rather the lack of them. Slightly Mad plans to build a brand new game engine to go with the console and offered free to developers, an engine that will allow them to deploy their work on all platforms at the same time. Do any of the above sound attractive? Have you started saving money already?

Galit Gordon

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I'm a published author and proud US Army veteran who happens to be a gamer, so I decided to combine the two and love every minute of it! Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments and I'll be sure to get back to you.