straight from gaf. Beat me and rape my chickens if old.

The newest games consoles look underpowered and are very similar to PCs. That's because the business is changinghttp://econ.st/1dK4ljh

Both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 will go on sale in time for Christmas, and Microsoft and Sony are already competing vigorously to convince potential buyers of the merits of their respective machines. But veterans of such battles will notice a curious absence. At previous console launches, executives have boasted about their boxes’ whizzy technological innards. Sony in particular was a dab hand at this sort of thing, coming up with names like “Emotion Engine” and “Reality Synthesiser” for the chips that powered its previous consoles. But this time neither Microsoft nor Sony seems very keen to talk up the technical prowess of their new boxes.

To be sure, compared with the current generation of machines, graphics will take a leap. But the truth is that the new consoles will be merely catching up with the current state of the art, rather than defining it. Both consoles have about as much raw computing power as a reasonably fast desktop PC and are, for all intents and purposes, ordinary PCs in fancy boxes. Indeed, their technological guts are strikingly similar. That is because of the way the gaming industry is changing.

Power underwhelming
Going with a general-purpose PC chip will limit the new machines’ performance. But there are good reasons to make that trade-off. One is simply that the cost of designing chips has risen dramatically as they have become more complicated, says Jordan Selburn of IHS iSuppli, a market-research firm that specialises in computer hardware. At the same time, the benefits of customisation have shrunk. These days, most of the innovation in graphics processing is confined to two big companies, AMD and Nvidia. It makes sense to leave the job to these specialists.

It also makes life easier for the firms that create games. Mastering the intricacies of a custom-made chip can take programmers many years, a problem that was particularly acute with the unusual chip that powered the PlayStation 3. The new consoles’ PC-like architecture will make developing games much more straightforward. It will also make it easier to create games that run on both new consoles and on PCs too, and to release them simultaneously. Game prices have not risen for many years, even in nominal terms, but the cost of creating them has ballooned. Simultaneous release on multiple platforms maximises the potential market.

Besides, ever-snazzier graphics are only one area in which gaming firms can innovate, and one in which returns are diminishing. The first games with elaborate, three-dimensional game worlds, such as “Quake” and “Tomb Raider”, were revolutionary when they appeared in the mid-1990s. These days, extra graphical power is used for more subtle features such as more accurate lighting or more realistic-looking hair. With each new generation of consoles, the improvement in graphics is less dramatic. This means console-makers must find other ways to convince gamers to upgrade

"Both consoles have about as much raw computing power as a reasonably fast desktop PC and are, for all intents and purposes, ordinary PCs in fancy boxes"

Very true.

Why do these guys think that "power" is only good for improving graphics?

Also, I think he missed the PS4 reveal.

Steam results show the majority of PC gamers don't even have PC's as powerful as next gen consoles.

He hits it right on the head, for what the average joe on the street will think. People who really look close, like most people on these type of gaming threads will know the other obvious reasons. But this is what M$ is counting on, nobody(average joes) will know the difference.

This is why i didn't get excited at the ps xbox reveals. After playing hdtwins for over 5 years.. i started having generation fatigue. So in 2010 i built my first pc for under a 1000 including monitor and desk. My pc is just as powerful as these newer consoles. Kudos to ms for bundling kinect atleast that's revolutionary hardware.



I also agree about the customizing chips portion. Sony/ms needs to stick to use standard chips if it works for them. Production costs will be lower, pc devs will know the architecture. Upside is, pc gonna have those same games on steam sales.

Or even if they do, they just may be tempted to buy a pc or laptop instead, that despite being much weaker, can play games "with the same graphics".

While this is all true, I think that consoles are far more appealing for their ease of use, not their graphics. With the new batch of consoles people are going to get updated graphics with the same ease of use that they are used to. You're average Joe isn't going to want to check to see if his PC can handle the game, or if his drivers are updated, etc.

Example:
I installed Battlefield 3 last night. I went to play an online match, which involved me pressing the play button in Origin, which took me to a webpage that let me pick a server, which then launched the game client. But I kept getting kicked because PunkBuster (3rd party software that is integrated into the game) was not up to date, so I had to leave the game, go the the PunkBuster website and download the installer so that I could patch it up. Then I finally got to play a match.

EDIT: I also had to make sure my graphics card was up to date before playing (it wasn't)

On the PS4/X1 its going to go:
Put disc in system, press start button, start playing match.

What I personally don't like about Xbox and PS 4 is that they are too similar. They are really almost the same consoles. But the average PC games doesn't play with powerful hardware, people seem to forget that. The loudest one (in this case the PC "Master Race" lol) isn't always representative.

yep, apart of some mandatory installations, that's true, but the average joe can't see why battlefield 4 on ps4 is better than on ps3.