Sony's Next GEN plan

[zarx]

HappySqurriel said:

I don’t think there will be a major perceived jump in graphics in the next generation for the following reasons:

1. Console manufacturers will (probably) be releasing smaller systems that use less energy than either HD consoles; and are more reliable
2. Console manufacturers will be selling their hardware at more affordable prices ($400 maximum) while taking a more reasonable loss on them ($50 to $100)
3. The systems will be rendering at 1080p rather than 720p which will eat up additional resources
4. Diminishing returns on graphical investment ... Basically, if you quadruple the number of polygons per frame while quadrupling the texture data and quadrupling the complexity of the shader effects you will see a noticeable improvement in graphics; but the game will still have the same basic ascetic of a current HD console game.

well I agree with most of what you say I would like to add a few thoughts, first GPU processing power is roughly 10X what it was when the Xbox 360 came out so in two years a $400 console would be at least 12X more powerful thanks to the massive improvements in memory bandwidth between GDDR3 and GDDR5 great improvements COULD be made to graphics (and if console makers follow the current trend of using the GPU for more of the processing load with physics etc). But I think that the cost of creating the content will mean that there will be a smaller perceived jump in graphics but games will still look much better thanks to using methods that require less development time like anti-aliasing, draw distance and frame rate. So hopefully next gen we will see more games running in 1080p with 4-8X AA (or even 32X SSAA like Nvidia's high end DX11 Cards will be able to do) and 60 FPS.