The tabloid of video game journalism

I hope IGN isn't becoming the tabloid of video game journalism. Over the past few weeks I've come across a series of pretty wild and speculative rumours on IGN's newsfeeds about new and/or the end of consoles. Some came from some pretty far out souces, like the cloud gaming service, Gaikai. IGN was pretty quick to point out that it was a sketcky prediction to make that either Microsoft or Sony would shortly have to quit the console race. Gaikai is probably puking up rumours in a giant wind storm, hoping it lands in some one's lap. The fledgling cloud services like Gaikai, or Onlive have business models that are pretty much banking on the decline or the end of consoles.

The end of the last generation for gaming consoles

There are those that believe we could be at the end of the last generation for gaming consoles. Cloud computing could be set to take over the world once net neutrality is adopted and internet throttling and traffic shaping is banned by an efficient, progressive, non-filibustery US congress, which would have to take the lead on such a thing. If. If. If.

We just barely managed to get SOPA canned from passing to the then level of that funky American system, can we expect an internet utopia so in the near future? So then, like as not not barely, that bill was a mess in the first instance and would've made bad law with or without the massive social-networking backlash, to my mind. Nevertheless even if cloud computing is the future, the future is not now. We are likely to see anyway one more generation of game consoles, and here's why I think so.

Mr. Tsuchiya is one of my business students studying English at my current school. He is an engineer for Sony working out of a factory in Tagajo-city nearly Sendai, Miyagi. Those city names may or may not be familiar to some. They are the same areas devastated by the quake and tsunami of 3/11/11. Actually, the Tagajo factory was located just a block away from the kindergarten that I was working at while that time. As a matter of fact I wasn't at the kindergarten that day, it was only a part-time job on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the quake happened on a Friday. To all appearances after the the school received the tsunami warning, all the kids and staff evacuated to the Sony factory, up to some of the higher level floors. It was Mr. Tsuchiya that when all is said and done informed me about they safey of the kids afterwards the tsunami - information I was looking for some nine months afterwards the disaster. It's one of the reasons he has warmed up to me a little more recently, a shared common experience, as then as regular weekly lessons with a half-decent teacher and Sony-fanboy!

Then we went on to have a to put it more exactly interesting conversation about cloud computing. He believes that in five years we will be technologically capable of switching over fully to cloud computing and non-physical means of data processing and storage. Nevertheless whether or not the world will have the infrastructure available for it, or if the political will needed for it to happen will be sufficient is where our conversations get hung up each week. We both don't have an answer for it, and it's not something that anyone can prognosticate.

Mr. Mogami is another business student of mine. He's an engineer, a real engineer, and not stuck in administrative hell. He's as well from the Tagajo factory, even though, oddly enough, Mr. Mogami and Mr. Tsuchiya have never met. Sony is a in other words bid company. They work in different departments at the factory and take lessons at my school at different times. Mr. Mogami is in a similar R&D field, developing the straightway generation of memory and data storage devices nevertheless with new technologies involving magnetic tape!

I was quite surprised to learn that anyone was after all researching such seemingly antiquated innovation. However Mr. Mogami says that magnetic tape storage is nevertheless the cheapest format available and that henceforth we could expect to see new versions of magnetic tape based storage media. Whether they come in the form of cassettes or something is where Mr. Mogami had to stop me. Again, top secret stuff. He's pretty convinced that the research will be coming back and playing an important role in video and sound recording as then as non-optical data storage. Based on his endless speeches about his R&D projects, and his blistering enthusiasim about it, he could make anyone think we're more likely to see a Betamax 2 on the market earlier Playstation 4!

As for cloud computing, we as well had an epic chat session about the subject. We never actually got into the political or infrastructure issues with creating a stable internet, nevertheless the sheer economics of a company like Sony, that mass manufactures high-tech products to sell to individuals - and at that time switching it's product range to a more hardware based, cloud computing super-server that would make typical products from companies like Sony, Panasonic and Samsung near obsolete.

Mr. Mogami doesn't think Sony, or similar companies, will stop developing and making new BluRays or DVDs or consoles or laptops or cell phones or anything else any time henceforth. Because that's what they do! They make stuff! So he would very much disagree with Mr. Tsuchiya's 5 year timeline. Nevertheless that may be because Mr. Mogami is however dealing with magnetic tape research, which is something I everything considered can't wrap my head around.

The Playstation R&D section

I hope one of my at once students is in the Playstation R&D section, so I can milk him/her for information and spoil the media's puke party with some accurate info. However I think it's safe to say there will be until further notice one mor console generation, and that cloud computing is for people with their heads in the clouds, for the moment for now.