Shadow1980 said:
I assume you're talking about diminishing returns. While this generation doesn't seem as big of a jump as that from the sixth to seventh generations, which in turn wasn't quite as pronounced as that from the fifth to the sixth, I've been quite surprised by some of what I've seen. Going back and playing some old 360 games, especially earlier ones, and then playing something like Driveclub, The Order, or Battlefront, or just seeing the footage for Uncharted 4, and I'm amazed by how much better things can look this generation when the hardware is properly leveraged. I knew at least one or two people who thought that last generation was going to be the last because there was no possible way games could look any better, yet here we are. There's still much than can be done to advance the boundaries of what games can do both graphically and in other areas. Better and more realistic lighting and animation, more sophisticated physics, better AI, better level-of-detail techniques to reduce or eliminate conspicuous "pop-in," and doing all these things at a stable framerate (likely a 60fps target given increasing demand among console gamers for said framerate) and perhaps even at a native 4K resolution. It's going to take very substantial leaps in computing power for "diminishing returns" to get to the point where there simply isn't anything more they can do to make things look any better.
If the rumored specs on the Neo are true, then it's really nothing more than the exact same core components as the base PS4, just souped-up (~30% increased to CPU clock speed, ~24% increase to RAM speed, and a boosted GPU of the same model). The most that's going to do is offer faster and/or stabler framerates without sacrificing visual details and with the ability to have everything run at a native 1080p. A nice improvement to be sure, but not generational. While that might entice quite a few people, I have serious doubts that it or future upgrades are enough to sustain healthy PS4 sales indefinitely. In fact, I doubt they'll be able to keep this generation of PlayStation lasting any longer than the previous. Also, there's still tons of room for true generational shifts in console power, and we're not going to get that with a PS4 Neo or PS4 Trinity or whatever. Eventually, Sony is going to have to release the PlayStation 5.
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I am not saying, nor do I think that nohing more can be done.... I am just saying that nothing more can be done that warrants a complete generational shift.
Let's look at this properly. Let's look at where fabrication processes will be in say another 4-5yrs. If we are lucky, then we will be talking about mainstream 7/10nm fabrication. That basically means you can cram around 80-120CU in a GPU. that's basically having a GPU that's 6 times more powerful than whats in a PS4 today if you are trying to sell a box that costs no more than $400.
Along with all the stuff that is likely to improve.... you are still looking at hardware that at best will only marginally run games at 4k@30fps considering what games are likely to be then. and maybe native VR games at 1080p@120fps. There will no doubt be other hardware improvements like RAM types, memory bandwidth, io types....etc. But those has more to do with efficiency than pure performance.
All I just described will give you a much better looking U4 running at 4k@30fps stable; but not much else.
Now look at it from the platform holder perspective. Is it worth throwing away a 100M strong install base just to make hardware whose games can still be played on the outgoing console but at lower specs? If you were a hardware manufacturer and you knew that even if you made the next box 10 times more powerful.... at the end of the day it will amount to nothing more than higher textures, higher resolution, more stable/higher framrate....etc would you throw away your already 100M insatll base?
When you could just make a more powerful box and still sell the exact same games to everyone.
That's what I think is happenning now.
There are teams of people at Sony or MS that work all these things out. That are paid to think 10years ahead. And if you put yourself in their shoes and look at what's happening in the industry now, you will see where I'm coming from too.
in previous gens there will be hardware that will come out and put everything else before it to shame. And that's usually cause it's adopted this new shift in tech that just makes things impossible to do without it. Now? we can just look at the PC and see what hardware 8 times more powerful can do. We can extrapolate and see what hardware needs to be to do certain other things. All these considered, I think they also see that the smartest thing to do is stop the generational thing and start making incremental upgrades to the hardware which adds new features or performance but also doesn't risk losing an already established user base.
