Next gen consoles coming not so soon...

This year I was really excited for E3, mainly to hear more news about the next generation of console and what they might bring, however sadly there was very little information to do with next gen and I was left relatively disappointed with the situation.

I have always loved the console announcements so I can compare what console will run the best, which one is the best purely for gaming and what little extras are added to make the console seem better. For the current generation of console I went with the PS4 because it seemed like the better console purely for gaming whereas the Xbox one was too social media focused for me and some of the extras seemed more annoying than helpful.

Recently my PS4 disc tray broke out of the blue leaving fifa 18 stuck inside and unplayable so I can't play any of the games I have on disc, but I can still download and play downloaded games which means I can still use the console. With this recent malfunction I was hoping to hear news about the next generation coming soon because I don't want to pay for someone to fix the console and I don't want to go and buy the equipment to take apart and fix the console.

However it isn't that unexpected to not hear much about the next gen of consoles because there is usually a six or more year gap between each generation, usually with an updated version of each console three years after the initial release. With that information it is not surprising that we will have to wait a few years more before any upgrade.

I think people were hoping for a slightly sooner release than the expected 2020 because current consoles are becoming out of date faster than ever before and it can be a difficult decision to buy games for an ageing console when you can often play the same games on PC and run them better. The closer we get to next gen it is also harder to justify purchasing expensive games that you likely won't be able to play on next gen consoles. This wait does also give us a lot to look forward to as the next generation consoles should run a lot smoother and it looks likely that both next gen consoles will run off the yet to be released AMD Navi, which is supposed to come out late in Q1 or early in Q2 of 2019 so we will have to wait until then for performance details. This also gives time for Sony and Microsoft to make important decisions such as integrating a blockchain solution to help work out some current DRM (digital rights management) issues.

Personally I hope that we see less focus on VR or AR with the next generation because I'm not a huge fan of those systems for gaming as they leave a lot to be desired at the moment and I don't think there will be any good systems in these areas that are widely adoptable for a long time. These systems also come for an added cost usually over £100, and that just isn't worth what your are paying. There are a lot of costs when it comes to console gaming and VR and AR systems are not needed as an added cost, at the moment they are clunky, they don't have many games and the quality and responsiveness isn't close to being good enough to play regularly. We still don't know a huge amount about the specs or design of the next gen consoles but from the little information we do have it looks like we could be getting some absolutely amazing consoles in the near future and I'm excited to hear any more news to come.