Could 9th gen consoles be $500 USD?
- Thread starter dten
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Silent_Buddha
Legend
OTOH both console makers and software developers want this to happen, albeit much more so for software developers.
Cost of development would go down dramatically if they didn't have to redo things each generation to account for wildly divergent architectures. For console makers, it's a way to prevent there being an opening for users to jump ship to a different platform.
With traditional generations, every time there is a new generation, it represents a good time for a user to jump ship to another platform as all their vested money is now worthless. With rolling generations, a player's investment in a platform continues with each new generational node, presenting less incentive for that user to jump to another platform.
Also, interesting is that it makes it much easier for consumers to invest in multiple consoles as their past investments remain relevant going forward without having to keep a multitude of consoles hooked up. This is assuming good support for back catalog titles which Microsoft appears to be taking seriously at the moment. This means that it's far less likely for a consumer to completely dump one console when they start using another console at the start of a rolling generation versus a traditional generation. IE - even if they switch to play most of their games on the new console by a different manufacturer, they still have their previous console that they can buy titles for.
In other words, it becomes less about the hardware, which is low or negative margin anyway. And more about high profit software margins for the console makers. Who cares if a consumer owns your latest hardware node release if they are still playing your exclusives? The user remains engaged with your platform meaning that it's easy for them to resume spending on your platform at anytime.
IE - I see little to no drawbacks for anyone. Although I guess over time it may get hard to fully support back compatibility. MS has a lot of experience in that area with software compatibility layers combined with a few hardware restrictions. Sony on the other hand have traditionally relied much more on hardware compatibility going so far as to including the previous generation chip in a new generation device.
Regards,
SB
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
I don't see any evidence that Sony want this.
Don't expect architectures to remain static for long, they simply don't. That's the whole purpose of software APIs - to bridge this. If Microsoft or Sony are now married to compatible architectures in future consoles then hardware will stagnate in a cycle or two because AMD will veer off and left that crap behind. Just look back at Nvidia's and AMD's past architectures, there's not a lot that stays static for long.
I agree with most of this but not the worthless bit. You can sell on your investment to part finance your new purchase - unless to banked heavily in digital and don't want to sell your whole account, which is probably most people. Whether divested ecosystems are good for consoles long term is debateable. The more digital baggage you accrue the less likely you are to leave it behind, even if your upgrades options aren't great.
The generational burning and starting over does at least incentivise manufacturers to try their hardest to grab new customers. If they know their customers are unlikely to jump ship and their competitors aren't either, why bother trying hard at all? Look at Apple and Android phones. What was the last really cool feature in either hardware or software? Or Windows or macOS? Users are mostly too invested in their platform to leave.
This could easily become the future of consoles.
I don't want a PS5 in 2019.
You and me both lol. Okay so 399 is going to work as long as it's further out.
What year is PS5 . They will more than likely buy a pro or xbox one x long before those consoles hit esp if they buy a 4k tv
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
Not everybody jumps on every opportunity to upgrade, hence teh relatively low sales of Pro and X. Most people are not driven to chase the highest level of performance on consoles in the same way they're not buying a new mobile phone every year. Why buy PS5 over Pro? Well that's the question and until PS5 is out and people can see what it offers, it can't really be debated. Tomorrows unknown Product X is generally always better than todays real Product, but not always.
If 9th gen consoles are AMD based, it's highly likely that the platform holders will support cross compatibility at the dev environment level. Games can of course target only the newest hardware but how many publishers will risk it until a user base is established? And if 9th gen exclusive games don't look or play substantially better, it'll feel like they are holding the game hostage to get you to buy their newest machine. In reality, that's what they've done historically but it's been under the narrative or guise that you really needed the new machine to make that game.
Nothing like. 20% of PS4 owners will upgrade to a mid-gen console if you're lucky. Everyone else is happy to sit with their years old console until the next real new generation. Even more so if they shell out on a 4K TV - traditional income families only have so much spending money.
Sigfried1977
Legend
We're so far past the point of diminishing returns in terms of visuals now that I'm not sure a 6TF machine is gonna deliver anything your average consumer would consider a worthwhile upgrade. Same shit, except now we get our settings bumped from medium to ultra (if we're lucky), and at a higher resolution. I know I wouldn't. Especially not for 500€. Or at least not right away.
I think the easy next-gen tech to differenciate a next gen machine is tessallating and displacing all geometry to near pixel sized or sub pixel sized tris. If they can get that done for everything on screen consistently with every title, kind of like the introduction normal-maps were the most obvious gen-defining feature of ps3 games, the ps5 might be more easily differenciated.
Although even that migh not be enough considering how high poly things already are right now through sheer bruteforce...
Although even that migh not be enough considering how high poly things already are right now through sheer bruteforce...
That can’t be worded right. Every wave of games the graphics envelope is pushed. 4K + HDR is a noticeable difference in quality over its 1080p SDR counterpart. With added ultra settings you’re getting a lot of difference over the base units.
When they announce exclusives for 6TF machines I think this difference will really be pronounced.
Sigfried1977
Legend
HDR is essentially free and works just fine in 1080p as well. And having played plenty of 4K games at work now, I still think it's a ginormous waste of precious resources. When I compare Uncharted 3 to Uncharted 4, or Dark Souls to Dark Souls 3, I see a pretty considerable leap in quality. When I play ASS Creed Origins on my OG PS4 and compare it to the same game on a monster PC, I see the same bloody thing and more or less need DF to point me towards the fact that the draw distance is a teeny, tiny bit further out on the machine with 8 times the flops under the hood. Unless you're obsessed with counting pixels or frames per second, this "leap" just isn't very exciting. At least to me. Maybe throwing more polygons at stuff would be an answer, but then meshes are absurdly dense at this point already.
Games didn't just look sharper going from one generation to the next. They looked fundamentally different. You also didn't need a pin sharp display to see said difference. At least to me, that's what's always constituted a generational leap.
Games didn't just look sharper going from one generation to the next. They looked fundamentally different. You also didn't need a pin sharp display to see said difference. At least to me, that's what's always constituted a generational leap.
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Sigfried1977
Legend
I meant HDR works just fine on the Xbox One and the PS4. Don't need a Pro, or a One X, or a new generation for that matter. And seriously, what's so exciting about a new Playstation if it's barely surpassing the OneX? The machines share about 95% of their entire games library, so what would be the point?
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I’m trying to keep expectations real.
4 is in between 2 and 6.
$399 for Ryzen + a GPU that can double the TF of 1X with supporting memory is unrealistic in 2 years.
A device that is Ryzen and 6TF but with the latest GPU features and some custom ones are not. And the GPU features do make a difference. Moving to DX12.1+ feature is already a substantial upgrade that developers can take advantage of.
Sigfried1977
Legend
I'm simply speaking as a consumer here. I wanna be wowed at least a little bit. (and I don't expect the same kind of leaps we've seen in the past either) And if that's not possible within the next 2 years, then they simply shouldn't go ahead with a new machine as far as I'm concerned.
Yup and that's super valid. I agree with this entirely. But with respect to $500 USD. If you want to be wowed at least a little bit (in the near future) we're going to need 499, at least imo.
Polygons isn't the problem. I'd say the next step is uniform global illumination. Games lit like CGI will look far in advance of the still shonky screen-space efforts we have now. Proper soft-shadows and secondary illumination on everything will add a clearly improved sense of realism that current-gen can't match.
Sigfried1977
Legend
I'd pay 500. Paid just that for my PS3 after all. I doubt the majority would, though. Unless Sony somehow manages to become the Apple of console gaming that is.
And can I have some cloth dynamics, please
For me at least, that sort of high level secondary animation has always been the big separator between games and films. Besides the unified GI menthods Shifty's already mentioned.
