Rumor: Xbox "Lockhart" specs leaked, is $300

[Mr Puggsly]

goopy20 said:

Mr Puggsly said:

Developers can adjust resolution and graphics settings if necessary. Modern engines are generally designed to scale well, your last paragraph ignores that.

For example, some X1 games weren't just a resolution drop vs PS4. They also adjusted graphics settings if necessary. Meanwhile PS4 Pro and X1X sometimes have higher graphics settings along with resolution. You're suggesting console games don't benefit much from tweaking graphics settings, that simply is not reality.l

The odds of Series X and PS5 having 1080p content seems highly unlikely or rare if it ever happns. So we don't need to think about unlikely scenarios, most games next might be 4K or close to even on PS5.

Hence, you're creating unlikely scenarios to make Series S seem like a bad idea.

PS4 had 1.8TF and generally hit 1080p. PS5 probably has 5x the GPU power in practice. Therefore Sony could still hit 4K and still make significantly better looking games. Espeically when you consider X1X hit 4K in something like RDR2.

The ps4 pro and X1X didn't have totally different graphics settings. They were designed to be 4k consoles, not next gen consoles and anyone who doesn't have a 4k tv would hardly be able to tell the difference. Games on X1X could potentially look a ton better but developers didn't make any game that really made good use of the hardware. Instead the games were exactly the same as on the base consoles and all the extra processing power was used on 4k and/or 60fps. 

4k Is nice but it's a tremendous waste of resources on consoles as most people can hardly tell the difference unless they have a 65inch tv. That's why so few people upgraded to a mid-gen console. So if we're talking about things like Ray Tracing there's no way developers would compromise on that in favor of native 4k. Keep in mind that even a 2080Ti can barely hit 30fps in most current gen games with Ray Tracing enabled and native 4k. 

Fact is that developers will always have to make compromises if they're building an ambitious game and resolution is usually pretty low on the priority list. Just look at how many games are 720p on Xone, and is that really such a big deal? Not at all, because while Red Dead Redemption on the 360 runs at almost the same resolution as RDR2 on Xone, RDR2 does look a helluva lot better.

Your first is paragraph is wrong. There are games that actually have increased graphics settings on Pro and X1X. Its not just resolution and performance. They vary and some might be small, but they exist.

Some games actually increase graphics settings like textures, shadows, draw distance and other settings if you're using a premium console. 1st party X1X games for example tend to have increased visual settings and/or better textures than base X1.

Ray tracing isn't necesarily a crucial feature and many games may not use it because it can be very demanding. Next gen consoles might also use advanced image reconstruction techniques which make low resolutions look significantly higher. Developers have a lot of new options in the coming gen. Even something like ray tracing can be adjusted to be less demanding, as can many effects. Series S could lower visual settings to keep resolution higher if developers feel they should.

It's certainly possible Series S could have content in the ballpark of 720p if developers are really pushing PS5 and Series X GPUs hard. But as you pointed out, it would likely be exceptional visuals as was RDR2 for the 8th gen. Dynamic resolution has also been a great feature to keep image quality sharper.