Now that next gen is here, diminishing returns is a real problem

[allenmaher]

The leap from SD to 720p 30fps was a very big jump visually but required about double the processing power, from SD to 1080p 60fps is about an order of magnitude leap. While all three consoles of the next gen will occasionallly reach that, it will be a struggle depending on the other processing demands of the game.

The leap then to 4k gaming is almost another order of magnitude. Considering that high end graphics cards do this by throwing a crap ton of processing power at the problem (250+W of power). Consoles should not expect this any time soon. Console processors are designed to be lower power consumption devices, by their very nature. Processor speeds now improving by at most 10% per generation and power consumption dropping by about a quarter to a third at best each time the processors shrink to smaller and smaller half pitch differences. But the current processes at 22-32 nm face diminishing returns as they drop to 14 and then 10 then 7 then 5 will face diminishing returns unlike the huge jumps we had from 286 to 386 to 486 processors for instance.

So you either have massive multiprocessor huge power consumption devices or incremental improvements... Consoles are more closely following the incremental route, hence why 7 years brought us from mostly 720p to mostly 1080p. The next great leap will be slower in console format, power guzzling overclocked PCs with massive GPUs like the titan... well, they are taking the other approach.

Plus there is a limit to what the eye can differentiate.... Especially in color depth and frame rate.
http://www.cameratechnica.com/2011/11/21/what-is-the-highest-frame-rate-the-human-eye-can-perceive/
http://www.swift.ac.uk/about/files/vision.pdf

By the way the 5 nm half pitch distance is estimated to arrive in 2019 and steps beyond that well they are very hard to achieve. The end of the line with current tech is about 15-20 years (2 console gens?) After which we have nothing planned... yet. So yes diminishing returns are a certainty.

The throw more cores at it solution is also a dead end (this is especially true for the cloud which has network latency issues)...
http://memorabble.net/memos/1G