Playstation 4 - the future of design?

We at Deflux have a neat wee collection of gaming consoles, from Ataris and Nintendos and Segas to the smaller handheld games and Watches. Gaming culture has always been pushing the boundaries both in technology and in design, it is a culture where functionality and aesthetics combine to show us a new world, it tries to represent the future of things to come, a new train of thought, a break in what is the norm. Old consoles can be a crystal ball to a past where they were trying to predict the future through design and technology, it is a wonderful way of looking at a specific eras interpretation of what the future style would be. Looking forward from our current space Tai Chiem from Melbourne has given us a flash of his imagination through this concept Playstation 4.

Whether it will end up looking like this is not the point - this is an exercise in opening up our horizons and letting design deliver us to a new place, it is giving visual life to a new direction.
 

Another example the youtube video, this one a number of years old now, is this ad for playstation 9.
 

It is a beautiful thing when something is created to be completely different from the norm, when viewed it is a trigger for the human mind to start working. This is the inherent goal in all design to create something new no-one else has done, there is no point in representing the status quo - there is no future to that approach.