That's a bit pessimistic. There are already some proof of concept realtime RT demonstrations and additional tech to facilitate it is gonna be introduced in the very next gen already. Of course it won't be the full experience but realtime RT is no longer just an idea, there is already consumer hardware on the way, which means it's not far off to be implemented in mainstream games.

Lots of AAA games go for new tech, even if just optionally, like tessellation or hair works. I predict that there will definitely be at least one AAA game within the next 5 years that will use realtime RT.

Unless you are talking about consoles. No idea where that shit will go.

MS is no stranger to coprocessor design and looking at the custom chip they created for HoloLens coupled with an Intel Atom Chipset, I could easily see them performing the same thing with the next gen system. With multiple engine studios saying they will support DX12 Ray tracing, now would be a perfect time to invest in a custom chipset to showcase the tech and maybe bring it into the now.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/22/microsoft_hololens_hpu/

I'd rather have 60fps than Ray Tracing.

I personally would like to have every graphical option and performance so I can choose on a game basis.  Not all games need 60fps.

If we are looking at just using current CPU/GPU tech I would agree.  This is always the advantage of consoles is there ability to marry custom design we would not see within a traditional PC setup.  Looking at how MS created their own custom coprocessor for Hololens which pretty much is exactly what they can do for Ray tracing.  The HoloLens coprocessor handles all the 3d environment, tracking and other calculations and pretty much hands that data to the CPU already cooked.  The same thing can be done with Ray Tracing where the coprocessor would handle all of the scenes cooked and hand it off to the GPU for final output.  The cost of such a chip would be pretty cheap or cheap enough to stay within the 500 budget.

The way I am looking at this is that MS has the tech, they now offer the software solution and have support for major engine developers and publishers.  You have a good 2 to 3 year span of time games to come out with the tech and showcase the work.  4K 60fps I do not believe provides enough wow factor to move the goal post for MS over Sony.  If you are going to go big then go big or go home.

You aren't getting enough power into a 500 - 1000 USD box to perform real time ray tracing at an acceptable quality level.
Not this generation, not for the next gen.

Go look at the real time ray tracing demos from GDC.
If 3000USD+ GPUs can only barely do it, on today's games, how much compute power, memory, memory bandwidth, ect, is is going to take to do it on games that are vastly more graphically complex.

1080p30, with a still scene and 8th gen level visuals (with ray tracing on top).
They are using a hybrid approach (raster/ray trace), and they have thousands of dollars in GPU at their disposal.
I don't think Microsoft/Xbox could afford to build and sell a box capable of running tomorrow's games with ray tracing properly utilised.
Maybe for some effects like screen space reflections, that have issues normally, they could use ray tracing to help fill in the gaps.

You're not getting the full ray traced experience.
Not a full resolution, and/or 60 FPS.
Not in a game changing manner, not on consoles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkhBlmKtEAk
https://www.remedygames.com/experiments-with-directx-raytracing-in-remedys-northlight-engine/

"Ambient Occlusion"
"Single ray per pixel on 1080p is roughly 5ms"
That's on a powerful (or multiple powerful Volta GPUs).
This is only one portion of the rendering, so no, you're not getting this at 1080p or 4k next gen.
Ray tracing will be for high end systems, like high end PCs, with one or more high performance GPUs.

An FPGA or ASIC designed for ray tracing at this kind of quality, would be very expensive, and power hungry, and memory hungry, ect.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AQc27o4Oqg
Next gen games are going to be more complex than this, and adding ray tracing on top, is going to be extremely difficult for hardware to do, for the next 5 - 10 years.

It would be possible next gen if the games run in 720p, yet to do ray tracing for 4K, no way. Ray tracing looks great and can simplify game design as well I would think. Yet it's so power hungry the games will look a lot less detailed. The tomorrow children used ray tracing, looked great, nobody played. (game wasn't that fun)


The current battle for resolution pretty much rules out ray tracing as a viable technique for now.

One can only dream but I think tech won't be viable at a console price,

I would love to see a $2000 console lol. But that would be such a niche market.

True, its a reach but I see MS laying the foundation now so by 2020, we could well seem some games using Raster and Ray Tracing together.  A Halo or Fable game with true global illumination would look pretty good if MS could accelerate Ray Tracing to perform that part of the graphical output.

MS would not need to ditch the AMD CPU + GPU combo.  The good thing about having a discrete coprocessor is that it can just plug in like an audio chip or any other specialize processor.  This is where writing to an API aleviate all of the extra coding a developer would need to do in order to  work with such a setup.  The API would decide how to send what data to the coprocessor to crunch.  Allow it to cook the scene then send it back to the CPU/GPU for output.  No need to break compatibility since we are talking to the API and not the mettle here.  Since Ray Tracing is in DX12 with support for current gen GPUs, compatibility is still retained even if a coprocessor is not used.