Pachter doesn't often do shows in the middle of the week, but this time he has with a 13+ minute special that talks about the PlayStation 4. He has had a chance to sit down with six different developers who are currently making games for the system and ask them a slew of questions that many have been wondering about. Essentially, the bottom line in how the system performs versus actually getting exact specs. If you don't feel like or are unable to watch the video above, we'll have a break down below.
Games Will Run in 1080p at 60fps
This is a big sticking point. While Pachter confirmed with them that the box can run games at 240fps, the simple reaction after saying it can is "why would we want to run games at 240fps". It's a fair point, because the 7th generation rarely ran games at 1080p and 60fps. In fact, most games still today are just running in 720p and locked in at 30fps. There is also the whole "how much can the human eye really see" when a game is running at 240fps - it's scientifically proven that at that fps we can't actually processor what we are seeing as fast as it's going. It doesn't necessarily make sense outside of "times when the performance dips". Like when you run a PC game at over 100 fps the nice part isn't how fast it's running, but that when things get hectic it only drops to 40fps, which means we visually can't notice any slow downs.
Still, when pressed further, it was all but confirmed here that games on the PS4 are going to run at 1080p while be locked at 60fps. This means there will be no frame rate drops as 60fps will be the locked in standard.
Games Will Look like Crysis 2 PC
An interesting comment is where Pachter thinks games will run at Crysis 2 PC level. While Crysis 2 on the PC at max settings does likely look better than Crysis 3 on the PS3, it does a telling job of showing that console wise, the PS3 may not be a quantum leap over what we currently have. Naturally, this could imply that the Wii U could stay relevant despite not being nearly as beefy.
That isn't a bad thing however. The days of quantum leaps with each generation may be behind us, and now we get to look forward to simply better overall performance. Locked in at 1080p with 60fps is a vast improvement over the inconsistencies of the 7th generation. The Wii U wont be able to deliver on that same locked in ordeal, so it will be interesting to see how multiplatform games function on the Wii U compared to the PS4.
