Why I'm Not Excited About The New Generation Of Consoles

It’s time that you can now test-drive the new Xbox One and Playstation 4 in the gaming shops, you can pick up the controllers, play the games on the huge sixty-inch 1080p LCD screens that they have them displayed on and look at the new sheen that the extra processing power of the new consoles brings.

I’ve not picked up a shiny new console at launch yet, but have watched and played quite a few games on one of these demo-units. Playing retail versions of game, the one thought that comes to my mind is “Hmmmm, haven’t I seen this before, like… One million times!”.

The new consoles may have better specifications, but as far as new games goes, it’s just more of the same. Sure Killzone Shadow Fall looks damn sweet,as does Forza Motorsport 5 but it’s just more of the same with a slight graphical improvement over the Xbox 360 and PS3, less frame rate-issues, better colours and of course better lighting and particle effects.

But graphics do not make a better game! Yes, they give you those “wow” moments, but in all honesty, the difference between the new Xbox One and Playstation 4 graphics and PS3’s flagship The Last Of Us is miniscule.

Until these new consoles give us new experiences, and what I mean by this is jaw-dropping moments such as never been-seen before, then I’m going to hold off buying one. We need far better games, with many new IPs, we need better graphics, we need better media capabilities unlocked on the machine.

It’s early days yet, however that said, the jump from Playstation to Playstation 2 was big, from Playstation 2 to Playstation 3 was a bit smaller, and the jump up from there seems to be smaller, and indeed gone backwards a step in some areas.

So, I'm not excited at the moment, a lot of the excitement I had at the announcement of the new consoles has faded and it will take time for something special to happen  with the new consoles before I feel excited again.

Android As A Desktop Operating System

There are numerous Operating Systems for desktop use, Windows 7 & 8, Mac OS, various versions of Linux and more. Android is currently a Mobile Device Operating System competing with the likes of Apple's iOS and Window phones.

Take a closer look at Android though and you'll see that underneath its mobile device skin, there is potentially an Operating System that could be used on a Desktop PC. It already does everything a PC can, and the advent of Android gaming consoles such as the Ouya shows that Android is more than capable of being shown on larger screens.

Imagine a world where your desktop OS and mobile phone was identical... oh yes, Ubuntu have already done that! So there's no reason at all why Android 4.4 KitKat could not be used on a desktop environment.

Let's think about this. Productivity suites such as Microsoft Office, these can be done with Google's very own Documents, so that would work perfectly. Music and video players, these work perfectly in Android so again no problem on a laptop. Then there's downloading things from the internet, again, Android is more than capable with even Torrent clients being simple to use.

As a web browser, Chrome works perfectly on an Android machine, and if you're not a fan of a Google browser or product then there are plenty of alternatives. As for storage, we all know you can easily attach a USB drive to your mobile device, so again there's no problem at all and Android can cope admirably.

So, what's stopping Google releasing Android as a desktop Operating System? It's not even as if Android needs huge specifications on a machine to run. Simple answer is, I have no idea, but I believe in the coming years Google will release an Operating System. They already have Google Chrome OS which works on Chromebooks, surely with a few tweaks it would be easy enough to get a complete Android system working.

There are USB stick based mini-computers that actually run Android on your TV. These work usually with Android version 4.0 or so using very low spec chips. They are basic, but prove that it is indeed possible for this mobile OS to work on a big screen.

How many years until Google release Android as a desktop OS? Let's just hope it's in the pipeline because potentially it'll be an Operating System that anyone can just pick up and use.