Next-gen Games Consoles Predicted to Cost More or Offer Smaller Performance Uplift

[Count von Schwalbe]

Ever noticed game releases tend to be more optimized at the end of a console generation than when nice new powerful consoles are available?

Maybe less performant consoles would help with optimization even on PC.

Doubt it will happen though, more likely consoles will become thin-client machines for game streaming, with only an upscaling chip in them.

 

[Vya Domus]

It's not like we're in desperate need of a performance uplift anyway, the current gen can already game at 4k60 and probably half the user base is still using them with older 1080p TVs.

Very rarely do games run at 60fps and almost never at actual 4K.

 

[trsttte]

Very rarely do games run at 60fps and almost never at actual 4K.

That's the old debate of upscalling and fixed framerate and so on but the console is technically speaking outputting 4k60 for a significant number of games (performance mode instead of visual as well but again, whatever). We don't need a big performance leap to reduce the ammount of upscalling and to eliminate perfomance/visual priority settings.

 

[Vya Domus]

but the console is technically speaking outputting 4k60

That does not mean anything.

The matter of fact is the vast majority of games still don't run anywhere close to 4k60.

 

[Onasi]

That's the old debate of upscalling and fixed framerate and so on but the console is technically speaking outputting 4k60 for a significant number of games (performance mode instead of visual as well but again, whatever). We don't need a big performance leap to reduce the ammount of upscalling and to eliminate perfomance/visual priority settings.

We’ve been here before. You give the developers more power and they will, inevitably, spend it on more graphical shinies which, in turn, will hurt performance and will lead to upscaling/checkerboarding/30 FPS as a compromise. Absolutely nothing stops the current consoles from having games that run at 4K60 natively without any tricks. They just need to look “worse”. But it has been observed by MS and Sony that pretty graphics sell systems, console players are okay with 30 frames and any upscaling techniques are not much of a bother to people playing on TVs 2 meters or more away. So… we are stuck in a vicious cycle. I remember how theoretically much more powerful the XBone and PS4 were compared to predecessors and yet Battlefield 4, a cross-gen launch title, still had to run at 900p.

 

[ZoneDymo]

Very rarely do games run at 60fps and almost never at actual 4K.

yeah bit imo that is also a rather insane target, who of us runs games at actual 4k that does not also have a 1000+ dollar (or way more then that) GPU?
That is just impossible to do on modern games.

 

[Bwaze]

The reason:

"A 12-inch wafer is a lot more expensive today than it was yesterday, and it's not a little bit more expensive, it is a ton more expensive," "Moore's Law is dead … It's completely over, and so the idea that a chip is going to go down in cost over time, unfortunately, is a story of the past."

Jensen Huang, Sep. 2022.

Also, they can blame it on AI hogging the manufacturing.

 

[Chrispy_]

With less console-exclsusive titles, and more cross-platform launches, the hardware race between consoles is back on again.

For a while it didn't matter if XBox was more powerful the Playstation or vice-versa because most of the good titles were only available on that platform. Now we have more of the better games being from independent studios and releasing on both consoles simultaneously, direct comparisons will be made between XBox and Playstation versions, with the superior quality/framerate option being the one that plebs buy because that's what The Verge said you have to get.