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Remember convergence, the idea that all technology would merge? Sony’s PlayStation family isn’t there yet, but it’s getting close…

The process of turning all our culture into digital formats creates the tantalising prospect of complete integration of all the stuff we care about: books and films and TV programmes and music and pictures of our dogs that we can access anywhere at anytime.

The reality is there are hundreds of different technical standards and proprietary business standards making it a complete pain to do very simple things with your digital possessions: say, moving a song you’ve bought from one company to play on a portable device from another. For example, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to take the TV content I pay my cable company for and watch it on the train, and there are various daft ways you can do this now.

In response to this problem different vendors are proposing complex mash-ups of hardware and software that will bring all the disparate elements of our digital lives together. Needless to say, they want to own the whole piece. So, Microsoft has Media Center PCs, the Xbox, and Windows Mobile devices. Apple has the Mac, the iPod, Apple TV and the iPhone, and Sony has its PlayStation family, as well as phones, cameras and TVs. Because they’re all trying to cover so many bases, and because they all come from different places, it’s easy to miss the fact they’ve all got their eye on the same prize, but don’t be fooled. Sony, for one, has made its final destination absolutely clear: it’s planning a long-delayed online virtual world accessible from its PS3 game consoles, called simply Home.

Home is aptly named. It’s where in fact all these companies want to be, in the sense that they all want control over the digital media in our homes. They know that the company which controls the living room computing platform in the way that Microsoft used to control the office desktop computing platform will make ungodly profits. Each company has its strengths and its weaknesses. Microsoft has its formidable PC installed base and the hugely successful Xbox console, but Windows brings problems as well as benefits, not least the ludicrously restrictive digital rights management (DRM) software built into Vista. Apple has great hardware and lovely interfaces, and has cracked the music content relationships, but also insists on horrible DRM software and has yet to get the studios on board properly. Sony has great hardware devices and the brilliant PS3 game console, as well as loads of media assets, and has even won the next-generation DVD war, but a tradition of weird proprietary hardware formats like the Memory Stick as well as amazingly shonky software interfaces.

I’ve been playing with the Sony PS3 and the Sony PSP lately, and despite some typical Sony weirdness together they do offer some insight into what a dream converged home entertainment system might look like. The PS3 is a great piece of kit. It’s a bit easier to smuggle into your living room than the Xbox as it’s practically silent, and lacks a ludicrous external power supply, and of course it also plays HD Blu-ray movies.

A key element in convergence is linking together the internet, from which all digital goodness flows, to your PC, your TV, your games console, and a handheld device. Clearly wireless is the way to go: the PS3 makes this magic connection between console and PC very easily. I found it much easier to connect the PS3 wirelessly to my PC than the typically Windows rigmarole involved when linking the Xbox and a Media Center PC, and I never managed to get Media Center to stream via the Xbox, while the PS3 caught movies from the air as if by magic, bringing the movies on my PC hard drive on to my TV

So what do you end up with? Sony has a nice interface, (Microsoft’s Media Center interface is also very good.) You get great games and Blu-ray discs (although Sony’s gaming line-up and online play are still lagging behind the Xbox.) You can rip a DVD on the PC and then stream it wireless to watch on your TV. You can take that DVD and watch it on your PSP on the train (once you’ve invested in Sony’s horribly expensive proprietary portable memory standard.) You can download movies, games and game demos from the Sony store and watch them on your TV or PSP. It’s all starting to come together nicely, on some elegant hardware.

And yet… even though the hardware and network pieces are coming together, there are huge gaps. Why can’t I use my PS3 to buy music from iTunes (I can stream all my music from my PC to the TV if I want to)? Why can’t I buy movies and TV programmes from the Sony Store? All these things are technically possible and will probably emerge in time: in the US, online movie company Netflix allows people to download movies to watch via their game consoles. Sony charges you for an arm and a leg for media management software that makes it easy to copy your movies and music from your PC to your PSP – clearly this should be just part of the device’s basic software.

There is a forest of business, technical, and user interfaces the industry will have to navigate, and it’s frustrating to see the missed opportunities and delays preventing this mish-mash of standards, hardware and software coming together. It’s all so close. What I’d now like is an XboxPS360, which combined the Xbox Live experience and games with the PS3’s hardware; an iDS-PSP, which combined iTunes and the iPhone interface with the PSP’s screen and the Nintendo DS’ games, and a lovely Sony TV, camera, and video camera. Of course they will all connect wirelessly, play nicely together, and integrated via a high speed 3G or wireless connection. They’ll give me open web access to iTunes, Napster and all online music, TV and film providers, and it will all be properly indexed and searchable by Google. And oh, why not throw in a Kindle, Amazon’s promising eBook reader, for added fun? Stay with me people, I know this is going to happen!

We’ve played GTA 4 to exhaustion here at VideoGamer.com and already thought of the kind of content we want added to the game on top of the Xbox 360 episodes. We got thinking though: what do we want from GTA 5? In keeping with how GTA 3 spawned only unnumbered sequels on the PS2, we’re guessing that GTA 5 will be launched on the next generation of systems in the winter of 2014. So here’s our Top 10: Ideas that will make GTA 5 on PS4 mind blowing.

10. Facial scanning
Imagine playing multiplayer GTA with your friends. Not just random-faced virtual avatars but in-game characters that look like the spitting image of your mates. By the next generation of consoles we expect face scanning will have come on a bit from Rainbow Six Vegas and that your face will be faithfully recreated in the game. I can picture the cooperative bank jobs now. Just imagine sitting in the getaway vehicle as three of your mates come charging out of the bank’s double doors. It would help immersion no end.

9. Car customisation
While playing through GTA 4 we never really felt attached to our cars. If we’d had the option to completely customise them, from performance to decals, we might have felt a stronger bond. Imagine having tools similar to those found in Microsoft’s Forza 2, effectively letting you apply any paint job you’d like. Head to the car performance store and pick up some nitros, a few neon lights and you’re set. It’d be great in single-player, but it would be brilliant in multiplayer games, with each gang having their own custom designs.

8. Zero pop-up and slowdown
Even though the visuals in GTA 5 will probably blow everything else away, we just hope that Rockstar finally manages to eliminate pop-up and slowdown. The GTA series has been plagued by these graphical issues since it moved from 2D to 3D and by the time the next round of consoles are on the market we hope they’ll be a thing of the past. In GTA 4 it’s hard to look past these issues when they are at their most severe, and it’d be a shame to have to suffer the same problems for yet another generation of GTAs.

7. Voice recognition
We’re expecting AI to come on in leaps and bounds by the time we’re playing GTA 5 on our PS4s, so although this one’s quite out there we’d love it to become a reality. We want to be able to speak as the lead character. If you wander up to a character and speak to him using your own voice, the game is advanced enough to understand and generate an appropriate response. We’re not talking about pre-set conversations, but proper responses that add life to everyone you speak to.

6. International Travel
We’ve had planes in GTA games before (we assume they’ll return to the series ahead of GTA 5), but we want it taken to the next level. GTA 5 is going to be massive so we want to be able to fly a plane from one country to another, or jump on a train or boat. By default you’d just be along for the ride as a passenger, but hi-jack the vehicle and go wherever you want. It’d take joyriding to a whole new level. We know a whole world to explore might be asking for too much, but how about part of Europe? You could even take the Eurostar from England to France.

5. Open buildings
While we know current hardware has limitations which means it would be exceedingly hard to program a game of GTA 4’s size with fully interactive buildings, but we still wanted it. On the next generation of consoles we expect power to be a non-issue, so when we walk up to a shop front, we want to be able to go in it. Houses may have locked doors, but we want to be able to break in. It’d be a huge undertaking, but we’re talking about the next generation of the GTA franchise. The sky is surely the limit.

4. Destruction
GTA 4 features some great vehicle damage modelling, but the game world is missing real-world destruction of buildings and large objects. It’d be hard to build into a game that’s so story driven, but if you fire a rocket into a wall, you expect it to be damaged. If you drive a truck into the front of someone’s house in real life, that front wall would break up and your bonnet would be in someone’s living room. Realism in GTA 5 needs to be taken to the next level.

3. Near-real NPCs
As great as the NPCs are in GTA 4, they’re still not all that convincing as real humans. In the first GTA on the next consoles we want people to have lives and personalities, and to have their own goals in the game. GTA 4 is great at creating the illusion of realism, but look beyond the surface and you’ll easily spot things that show you’re still just playing a game. People should go to and from work, stop in the street to talk to friends, and hopefully drive far better than they do in GTA 4.

2. City needs to remember
In GTA 4 we’ve all run someone over and driven off without a care in the world or shot someone in the street and not blinked an eye-lid. What if the people remembered? That woman you hit with your car might have had some gangster brothers, who have now made it their life’s goal to hunt you down. That building you blew up caused a whole street to be blocked with rubble, and it takes the clean up crew a whole week to sort it out - the rubble doesn’t just disappear. The closed road resulted in a massive traffic jam on the adjoining road. Little things like this will make the game world far more believable.

1. Organic city change
Following on from the enhanced NPCs, the city needs to be able to change by itself. If that guy who you ran over and killed died, then his family might struggle for money, meaning they have to leave their house. The road had already become quite empty a few weeks prior after a few families moved out, so teenagers take it upon themselves to cause some damage to the buildings and add some graffiti. After a few short weeks the road changes completely and is almost derelict, with most the street being empty and barely a car going down it. In someone else’s game a property developer might come in and demolish a large area of land and build a supermarket. We know it’s pretty far-fetched, but it would be incredible.

2014 is a long way away, but what do you want to see in the next generation of the GTA franchise on the PS4 and Xbox 360 successor?

Ken Kutaragi announced his retirement last week, but it looks like the Father of the PlayStation will still have a bright future with Sony

Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. announced last week the plans of Ken Kutaragi to retire as Representative Director and Chairman and Group CEO at Sony and maintain a position as Honorary Chairman of SCEI. But those who thought that the “Father of the PlayStation” would not have his hands officially in the pie should think again.

Reports are that not only will Mr. Kutaragi continue working with Sony in its networking efforts, but he has also hinted at the future of a PlayStation 4. Who would’a thunk it? But Mr. Kutaragi has already suppoied PS3 designers with ideas to cut the costs of the PS3, and has also included design models for two years into the future. He has even started thinking of not only a PS4, but the PS5 and PS6 too.

Mr. Kutaragi stated that he plans on working with Sony a little more independently, allowing him to work in a much broader capacity. He is currently focusing on opportunities offered by the Cell processor.

Ken Kutaragi announced his retirement last week, but it looks like the Father of the PlayStation will still have a bright future with Sony

Shrugging off losses a year ago, Sony capped its Blu-ray sales driven PS3 comeback in recent months by posting a $277 million profit for its fourth fiscal quarter on Wednesday. Full year profits tripled to a company record $3.5 billion, and the company pulled in 29 billion yen ($276 million) for the January-March period, a strong reversal of its 67.6 billion yen ($647 million) losses during the same period a year ago.

Interestingly, while sales were solid in LCDs, digital cameras, and Vaio computers, they declined in mobile phones, CRTs, and — surprise! — sales of the PS2. Surprise, I say, because even though it’s outlived and outsold every other console I can think of pretty much ever, NPD’s still been reporting U.S. sales of around 200k units a month. That’s down from a year ago, and there’s no arresting the PS2’s descent from orbit, but you really have to hand it to Sony’s eight-year-old scrapper. I remember playing SSX, Dynasty Warriors 2, Kessen, Eternal Ring, Madden NFL 2001, Summoner, and TimeSplitters back in November 2000 and with the exception of SSX, which played great, and Madden, which at least looked as much, wondering “That’s it Sony? That all you got?” And here we are, nearly eight years later, staring at over 127 million PS2s sold worldwide.

Chances of the PS3 replicating that success? I’d say today almost zero. The PS3’s chugging along at 12.6 million units worldwide since its late 2006 launch. It’ll be lucky to sell half as many systems by the time the PS4 shows up (as early as 2010, by the way). Sony predicts it’ll sell another 10 million PS3s for the fiscal year through March 2009. That would make around 23 million. Compare that to the Xbox 360’s 19 million and Wii’s 26 million already today.

The good news (for Sony) is that the company seems to have its operating costs in hand. Operating losses were improved, from 113 billion yen ($1.1 billion) a year ago to just 4.7 billion yen ($44.7 million) this quarter. That’s largely the result of Sony getting its PS3 losses under control.

Speaking of PS3 losses, The Guardian’s Jack Schofield speculates Sony may be losing $260 per PS3 based on reverse engineering Sony’s figures in the context of its quarterly earnings report:

On Sony’s own figures, the games division made a loss of $130 for each PlayStation 3 shipped. Let’s assume that it’s making pots of money on the PSP and the PlayStation 2: the PS2 is now hugely profitable and still sells more games than anything else. These two platforms could easily have made a profit of $1.2bn in the year. In that case, the total PS3 loss would have been $2.4bn shared between 9.24m PS3 consoles, or $260 per PS3 — including any attached Sony games. Hm, is that a reasonable guess or not?

Of course we already speculated as much back in November 2006, though Nikko Citigroup suggested in January this year that Sony may have halved its production costs, from $800 down to $400 per unit (and who knows, perhaps less than that five month later).

Note that Sony’s openly warning it’ll actually take a 20 percent spill later this year due partially to the strengthening yen. As the yen gets stronger, export costs are likely to brutalize international Japanese manufacturers.

What’s it all mean for you at the sales counter? According to Lazard Capital analyst Colin Sebastian (by way of Next Generation) Sony management is now considerably less enthused about a PS3 price cut in 2008.

During its earnings call, Sony management indicated the company is now more focused on achieving profitability in the PlayStation segment and rolling out online services (e.g., PlayStation Home) rather than chasing unit market share vs. Microsoft and Nintendo.

Importantly, management comments also suggest that a price cut is less likely on the PS3 this year, at least in the near term.

$400 for the entry-level PS3 for the next seven months? Don’t bet on it. Speculation about price cuts on a in-no-way-cheap $400 piece of hardware can put buyers into standby mode, so of course Sony’s going to ix-nay an ut-cay at the analyst / media level. Sony may in fact be thinking it can rest on its Blu-ray laurels and hit that “10 million sold” number based on video sales alone. That would be a mistake, especially with game sales poised to bypass video sales (it’s already blown past film) in the near future.

That said, I don’t think there’s much chance the price on at least one of the models won’t drop in time for the holiday season 2008. A $300 or even $350 40GB PS3 could put Sony past Microsoft at a point where coming in second (to Nintendo’s Wii) is just as important as finishing first.

Eventually, we’re going to have to stop calling the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii “next-generation consoles” because before too long, a whole new generation will be upon us (time travels fast, friends). And according to GameSpot and Pacific Coast Securities’ Evan Wilson, we can expect that next generation to kick off in 2010.

Wilson was talking about EA’s ambitious revenue predictions, and then he moved into his expectations for the new set of consoles that will become available in due time. He thinks Nintendo will launch theirs first (presumably, in 2010), followed by Microsoft a year later…but interestingly enough, Wilson made no mention of a PlayStation 4. He moved on to say the next set of Nintendo and Sony portables will drop in 2010 as well, although he didn’t specify whether he was talking about whole new systems or just new versions of the DS and PSP. But getting back to the consoles, does it strike anyone else as a little strange that Wilson picked 2010? That’s only two years off, after all, and perhaps the reason he didn’t mention the PS4 is because Sony keeps saying the PS3 is at the start of a 10-year life cycle.

So if he’s correct, it means we’ll see something like the Xbox 720 or the Wii2 in a couple years time, and the PS3 will just continue along for another six years? Wouldn’t Sony be more inclined to produce another competing system earlier? Well, we know the PS3 hasn’t fully realized its exceedingly high potential, so perhaps the PS3 is capable of producing software on par with Xbox 720 titles. Oh well, we’ll have to see what transpires over the next few years…and the waiting is half the fun.