BioWare Founder on PS4/Xbox One Upgrades: It'd Be a "Gigantic Pain in the Ass"

[Mr Puggsly]

SvennoJ said:

The percentage of console gamers that care enough about graphics to upgrade the console for that is very small too. Even among the hardcore enthusiasts that visit sites like these, 67% is still fine with 720p and probably more don't care whether their multiplats run slightly worse on XBox One.

A price cut will do more for the user base than an upgraded model. Bigger userbase more games with bigger budgets.

An upgraded model is not the same as a $50 expansion pack, and even for that price the amount of games that used it is actually quite low, about 16%. I skipped the games that required it back then, never used it.

Games are a lot more complex nowadays, no longer running fully from memory and limited by a lot more factors all working together. Even if you increase CPU/GPU/RAM and memory bandwidth, you're still stuck with streaming the data fast enough to keep up. Pretty much you'll need a whole new balanced machine and convince developers that the extra work somehow pays off.

I think a relatively large number would upgrade if the the performance and visual differences were signficiant. If many don't want to upgrade, that's fine too as all games should support the original hardware.

You do know the expansion pack was was released near the tail end of the N64's life, right? So 16% of library using it is actually not bad.

If the specs boost is easy to use than developers will use it. They shouldn't be forced to use it either. It would be an intersting experiment with low risk.