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Otter on 08 March 2020
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shikamaru317 said:
Otter said:

This isn't because Sony and MS encouraged it, its because the PS4's GPU is over 2x that of the PS4 and Xbox One X's is 4x that of the XboxOneS.

Developers are currently building games for PS4 and Xbox One, the pro consoles are not base development systems where graphic benchmarks are decided, they exist purely to produce higher resolutions output for games built around much weaker specs.

Next Gen systems however will eventually become base systems, developers will start at zero and decide how they want their games to look and run on them. For sure there will be 4k games and maybe Microsoft might mandate 4k on X1X for first parties if they go ahead with a cheap entry system but most developers have to decide whether they want to use a substantial portion of the compute power to render a resolution which most people won't notice much or will they produce a better looking game at half the pixel count which more realistically reflects their vision and is still crystal clear on any display, something everyone will notice regardless of how big their TV is, how far they sit away from it or whether its 4k or 1080p. 


In the end we will just have to wait and see but here are just a few examples of the graphical and physics leaps developers would want to put before native 4k/60fps.

And don't even get me started on 8k TVs, consumers don't care and neither do game developers. It will be a tick a box and nothing more for the rest of the decade.

Yes, and if Microsoft goes through with releasing Lockhart with a 4 tflop RDNA 2 GPU, the new baseline will be Xbox Series S/Lockhart once last gen support is dropped, a console with at least 4x the graphical and CPU power of the old baseline, base Xbox One (plus a huge storage speed improvement). It makes sense for devs to use that extra 4x power to improve graphics at 1080p compared to this gen, then scale up to 4K on PS5 and Xbox Series X. Some developers may choose to develop first for PS5 and XSX and then scale down for XSS, but most are probably going to do the opposite, because scaling up is easier than scaling down. In other words, most next-gen 3rd party games will probably be 4K on Xbox Series X and PS5. 

The focus will eventually shift to 8K, likely by the end of the gen. 8K tv prices are already down to where 4K prices were just a few years ago. MS and Sony won't be able to resist marketing their mid-gen refresh consoles as 8K (hell, MS and Sony are already marketing Series X and PS5 as 8K consoles even though the concept of any games actually being native 8K, or anything higher than native 4K on them is utterly ridiculous).

2 scenarios imo.

1) This happens and it slows the generation in terms of ambition which would be a shame. 

2) Series S is treated like an after thoughts and receives bad ports. We've already seen this with many Xbox One S games run poorly, very few third party titles reach 1080p (PS4 is seen as the target there), some are 720p like Red Dead 2 and Star Wars and many have notable performance/fps issues. Imagine this but even worse since 2 superior alternatives will be available from day one.

Both scenarios are completely avoidable. Don't release a console less than half the GPU power of your nearest and presently more popular competitor.

Also assuming the arrival of 8k TVs means 8k gaming is like assuming 120fps refresh means games are going to target 120fps in AAA games. Its not going to happen because the average person does not care or notice the difference, its a complete waste of resources. PS5 and Xbox Series X are already being marketed with 8k capabilities. They will upscale but nothing more. I imagine If mid-gen refreshes happen, the focus will be improved raytracing capbilities & more SSD space.

Last edited by Otter - on 08 March 2020