Why PS4 won't be cutting edge, and neither will Xbox3 - or Why Nintendo might win next gen

[DanneSandin]

Tachikoma said:

DanneSandin said:

 

Well, you don't give me much to argue against... I'm no developer and know nothing about teach, so I'm in over my head right now... I based my argument all around financial aspects, since that's something I at least can understand and get my head around.

But this really intrigues me! By the sound of you, PS720 will be quite more powerful. Would you mind telling me how much more powerful they'll be? And please remember that I'm to teach-head, so use as simple words and explanations as possible ^^ What I'm most keen to know is if we'll see another "Wii situation", where 2 consoles are 20x stronger than Nintendos...

And what option did you vote for ^^

DanneSandin said:

 

I have to say that after watching the latest ND, I have to bring this whole statement into question... Have you seen the XenoGame trailer? It's perhaps not leaps and bounce a head of the graphics found on PS360, but as far as open worlds goes, it's at least on par with the bestout there - and it won't be released until late 2013 at the earliest (which means about 9 months of polish - minimum). And the trailer has better texture than Red Dead Red, and XenoGame is an EARLY game for Wii U, whereas Red Dead Red wasn't. I don't buy into that you're opting to use 1024x1024 on textures for the Wii U, and I think that trailer shows how wrong you are.

But that isn't to say that PS720 won't have 8192x8192 textures, mind you.

Upon release of both, yes the WiiU will be positioned much less powerful than the others, in more or less the same power-gap seen by the Wii.

Yes i have seen XenoGame but it's really not that technically impressive, from a developers perspecive, the overall look is fine in small screenshots and videos, but on the big screen it's on par with (at best) a PS3/360 game, and at worst, on part with a poor ps3/360 game, the textures we use for each console are based on the recommended values given in the SDK, we can use higher providing we are willing to make sacrifices elsewhere to make room in memory, but in general no - i seriously doubt xeno uses anything over 1024x1024, theyre in all probability overlaying one 1024x1024 texture with another containing alpha to break up the repitition of the texture, or using a detail texture for terra maps that is 2048x512 superimposed under the terrain map which will be made up of several 1024x1024 textures painted in to give the effect of a diverse and detailed land map.

Of course if you throw in some 2d foliage sprites you break up the repition even more.

But generally, no, i watched the XenoGame trailer and I can say, hand on heart, that if that's the champion of the WiiU graphics department, when the competitiors release later this year the WiiU will be undoubtably in the same power gap placement as the Wii has been this generation.

Well, I'm not especially teach savvy, so I can't argue anything in your post, and I can hardly understand half of it. But I'll just say that this probably is a relatively early build of the game, and it won't come out until the end of this year, or perhaps even next year. This will of course mean that Monolith will have quite some time left to refine it. Xenoblade looked a lot better when it released than the first footage we saw of it, so I'm expecting this to be true this time around again.

And I still don't think we'll see a similar situation as Wii vs PS360 this gen; assuming the Wii U costs ca $250 to manufacture, excluding the gamepad, PS720 will costs a whole lot more if we're to have another Wii situation. And as I stated in the OP, Sony can't afford to lose too much money on the PS4. Even losing $50/sold console will hit them hard, so we can expect the PS4 to be sold around $400, and lets just assume it also costs $400 to manufacture; that's a $150 difference between Wii U and PS4 then. Surely, that won't allow the PS4 to be miles a head of the Wii U - power wise. Certainly not a Wii - PS3 gap anyways...