Is 900p okay? Is Xbox One a worthy 8th gen console now?

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captain carot said:Yeah, Dreamcast used the PowerVR that was released as PC graphics cards called Kyro. Don't know if you remember them, but a Kyro without HW T&L could be faster than a GeForce. Kyro was PowerVR series 3 though.

Thing about PC is as a gaming platform it needed about 15 years to really get on top. It had it pros like already decent 3D performance at least with an FPU though. But back then it was expensive and outdated quickly. That basically has changed within the last ten years. You still can play every game with a 100$/€ graphics card from 2010/11.

On the other side, console hardware is about maxing out what you have. Always has been. I remember seeing screenshots, not even videos, of Donkey Kong Country and at first thinking that's a next gen game. Like many did back then. At that time i already played on PC as well.

Now i've come to a point where looking what AMD or Nvidia are doing is interesting bu i just don't care anymore for the highest res or ultrahigh quality settings.

One of the most obvious problems with consoles is that when they start to design the hardware, it's largely guesswork about what tech will be available at the time the console is out. Two maybe the best examples of missing the targets are N64 and PS3. Not only was the release delayed, but also the performance ended up being lower than expected.

Yes, on consoles it's about maxing out what you have, but also balancing between cost and performance. For example, if you have an efficient GPU you either take advantage of it with smaller amount of faster memory or have more memory with slower clock speed, so it's either more stuff onscreen with smaller areas, or bigger areas but less happening on the screen. While on PC you can have the same (or "same") GPU and buy the amount of memory that you need with the needed speed, so you don't need to compromise.

I think PC have always been a gaming platform to an extent; it's just that the games have been so much different. You may remember back in the day when we had computer- and video games. Computer games were more complex and slower paced, and video games were simple and fast paced arcade. From mid 90's to mid 00's you could say FPS and RTS were the two genres that kept PC as a gaming platform afloat. Recent rise in PC gaming popularity seems to be caused by flash-games and, now that the PC games are on consoles too, the fact that you're able to play the same games on steady framerates and high resolution. The downside is that consoles are holding PC games back.

DKC was pretty amazing, it used the same gimmick as Mortal Kombat by using pre-rendered objects (however it was made possible by the number of colours onscreen SNES was capable of) DKC 2 was much more polished, but I think DKC was still the better looking of the two, maybe it was because of attempting to make a more realistic world (made of plastic models).