Now i got in a discussion with a few people on steam a while back about this, but more and more signs keep popping up and I'm thinking that well, it's gonna happen.
My bet: Most next gen consoles will not do a major graphics push, but rather a push for 3D gaming.
Why do i say this?
All three companies have have dabbled with a form of 3D. Nintendo and Microsoft have dabbled with headtracking, a form of simulated 3D, while Sony has dabbled with both head tracking and stereoscopic 3D. Sony has even gone as far as demonstrate a few games with stereoscope and keeps getting countless rumors of 3D coming for the system in 2010.
The problem i see with this generation going 3D is that games can run up to 40 percent slower. A lot of you might not know, but 3D gaming is already available for PC users, something which I actually use. Games usually run at a 22 percent loss of frame rate on my system. (which beleive me is not much when your getting 70 FPS in Crysis and 200 FPS in Aion) So if ps3 is running games at 30 FPS, your game has a high chance of running at 24 FPS, which is a big knock on the gameplay. Unless the Cell has some hidden use in there then I just don't see most games being able to run it at a decent frame rate.
We know a lot of big budget games for HD systems can break a company if it doesn't sell well enouph. Another major push in graphics so soon is just deadly for the industry right now. You don't have to do jack squat to your games to make it 3D. No updates, no special programing, no nothing. With 3D drivers, they do the work. Case in point lets take an old game i just beat recently. Red Faction 2, a game from 2002, runs perfectly fine in 3D without an update to help it out. However what developers can do it MINOR optimizations for 3D. There are 3 problems that usually arise. 1.) Crosshairs can be off in FPS 2.) sometimes shadows don't render properly 3.) sometimes water doesn't render properly. These fixes are extremely easy. For the first problem with cross hairs, in the game Left 4 Dead valve released a tiny update that made the crosshair not duplicate. For the shadows, the game borderlands just released a quick fix for shadows, and crysis also released a fix for their water. These as far as i know are the only things that really need to be bothered with.
So they build that stronger system, developers keep making the games there making with maybe a slight graphical increase, and the industry normalizes and catches up.
So a lot of people are wondering about the 3D TV issue. I don't think a lot of you guys realize that most HD TV's are actually 3D ready. As long as it's 120 Hz or higher your set. Basicly.....don't buy your HD TV from walmart and you're set most likely. Most walmart HD TV's run at 60 Hz which is why they're so cheap. Well....cheap in terms of an HD TV.
So once again to clarify. The extra power being put out by most systems next gen will mainly support 3D vizualization in the consoles rather then graphics.
CURRENTLY PLAYING: Warframe, Witcher 2
