News and Rumours: PS4

I agree with this.

Hence stuff like destruction I believe would play a huge part next-gen

 

I'm unconvinced. We've had some 20 years of CGI trailers but we know what to expect from the real game. I still think games are measured by their peers in the console space.

 

You know Shifty, I think you have a point there.

Most of us don't really know what a top of the line PC really is capable of, because there's really not any software out there that truly pushes the state-of-the-art with PC graphics. Sure we can run a major title like Battlefield 3 or Crysis 2 and max out all the sliders and crank up the rez and the antialiasing, and make graphics chug that way.

But that's not really pushing the limits now is it? It's just more of the same, in a way. Epic has released a number of graphics demos, and the two most recent ones, the temple demo with the weather effects and day/night cycle, and then the Bladerunner-inspired one from last year whatsitscalled; THAT'S more like pushing the edge with graphics. But those demos aren't publically available from what I know, so most people haven't seen them.

...All this IMO, of course.

 

You got a point, on the other hand you have exclusive PC games like WOW and SWTOR which could push the GPU more. But they have to make sure their games run on low end machines as well.

They achieve this by making the games look bad..

Now with that being said, i would expect a game like SWTOR to run above 60 fps all the time on a top end GPU. But it does not. So to some extent, we are already maxing out the GPU on the PC's?

 

MMORPG's are a really bad example, the constraints they have to work under are somewhat unique. Lots of player created characters in view is something of an optimization problem.

I would bet both SWTOR and WOW (I know WOW is) are CPU limited by the thread that submits data to the GPU.

WOW has other issues, notably the way they breakup and submit terrain, and the fact they elect to do so much work on the CPU.

There is an issue in that the way you optimise for a min-spec box is very different than the way you would optimize for a high end machine, so in general you never really exploit the high end graphics fully, because of design compromises for low end.
Having said that it doesn't really impact the Crisis and Rages that are designed for the high end anyway.

 

You could have pong max out a gpu if you program it bad enough. SWTOR doesn't look like there is any reason why it shouldnt run 60+ fps on decent hardware. Maybe less than steller optimization?

Anyhow, I agree with Shifty. Most people will compare console games with console games and not with pc games. Besides the majority of people don't even have acces to a decent gaming rig so most don't even know how games running on high end pc's look. And even if they do, there is not such a big difference. I always game on my pc, pretty much everything on high, and I don't think there is a night and day difference between console games.

pc hardware is extremely underutilized. Most games just use the console base with some improvements. But if somebody where to make a game with a current 200~250 euro gpu as a base, games would look much much better. Not just better textures, more aa etc. No more geomity, more different textures, better lighting and shading etc.

Thats what we will see with next gen games as well, even if the hardware isn't going to be great compared to high end pc hardware. At any rate, gpu's will be much faster than whats in the ps360 so games will look way better and not just ps360 -> pc better.

 

....

Not really...BF3 being a great example, especially for a viewer not all that sophisticated about graphics.

 

You do realize that their willingness to "throw all that away" is based on just a rumor, right?

 

IBM already 'threw it all away', including the fast in-order chip design philosophy that eventuated as power 6.

 

My sister, who doesn't play games watched me fire up BF3 after seeing the advert showing PC footage maxed out on my PC. First thing she asked me was, "how come the one your playing doesn't look as good?"

Hence, you don't need to be "sophisticated about graphics" (whatever that means) to see a clear difference in graphical quality. If my sister who doesn't play games could see a difference, then a casual or typical console gamer definitely can

 

Of course, when they have suitable comparisons, and aren't educated to expect CGI instead of gameplay video. Plus next-gen games will look as good as the PC games for a good while because you won't get quite the bestestnest-ever PC graphics on show.

If PS4 launched end of last year for $400 with the sorts of low-balled rumour specs that these consoles are getting, and was playing optimised games at tv-advert quality, would we be having this discussion? If not, then if the same console launches next-year for $200, it's not any worse off in what it can do. It'll have just launched later and at a lower price point. Now if the other consoles launch with awesome gear, they'll have the tech advantage, but then there may be a price advantage to the lower box.

Or simply put, the expectation of the bestestnest-ever hardware going into the consoles is based on a history of that happening and launching at a premium price. As mentioned in various next-gen discussions, the tech roadmap doesn't comfortably support that if you ever intend to hit mainstream prices without losing $200+ per console. Putting in lower-spec'd hardware at a lower price is a way to address that, while still offering a next-gen improvement - just not as large an improvement putting in the baddest GPU going.

 

We understand the reasoning behind the possibility that the companies may decide to put lower spec'd hardware.
We simply dont agree on the notion that the typical Joe consumers wont have higher expectations. And we arent talking about CGI-movie quality expectations.

 

I don't know what they'll do, nor do I envy their task of juggling cost, features and release time frame.

If it's up to me though, I don't want next gen consoles to come out until they can do current gen average game CG in real time. In my mind, this has been the case from PS1->2->3. So, I'd hope the next wave of home consoles can at least do something like this in real time. Save some money for everyone if it's still not doable. I personally don't mind being stuck with current gen for another decade!

BTW, how far away are we from seeing, say, a USD400 console produce that kind of graphics real time?

 

On a slightly tangental note...

Well yeah you're probably right shifty, but i'd be intrigued to see eaxactly how much of an improvement you'd get with the currently rumoured PS4 specs.

The best current gen games look pretty phenominal, so if with only say a 6X increase in HW performance (for arguments sake), would you really be able to make your game look noticably and considerably better AND also include expected "next-gen features" like more sophisticated destruction models, animation, physics, AI and simulation features?

My gut says the HW won't be enough. So if Sony pulls a $200 box with the rumoured specs, and MS goes all guns blazing, then given the greater development emphasis on "next-gen features" like those listed above, the more expensive MS console would have the clear advantage to the point where if the Sony console can't keep up, and if those features becomes integral parts of the gameplay of those games, then the Sony console could even end up losing development support entirely down the line, especially given Xbox's proven ability to sell considerable quantities of 3rd party software.

I just think that the price of the box is only really important in terms of its relation to its competitor, given a reasonably meagre performance differential between the two. If at all there is a considerable gulf in HW performance then i truly believe that dev support, and thus consumer interest, will favour the more powerful box. This is all based on the establishement that graphics will be a less important factor (albeit still very important, however i'm accepting that we've hit a bit of a ceiling in terms of deminishing returns and dev budgets) in distinguishing games next-gen, which i believe it will.

In the end alot of graphics features can be faked, thus allowing the poorer perfoming boxes to keep up a bit, however physics and simulation will see a very noticable difference in quality given a gulf in performance between the next-gen consoles (and possibly even between console and PC). I dunno

 

What's setting Joe's expectations though? If it's the PC footage currently on TV, then the low-spec boxes should be close enough to that to be 'the same'. Certainly there won't be such a night-and-day difference that consoles will sit on shelves as console gamers migrate to PC because the new consoles look no better than the old ones, while the PC looks like a whole new technology.

No, but I think Joe Gamer doesn't expedct games to look like they do on the TV because they have bought many a game advertised with CGI. That has changed (at least in the UK) with subtitling of footage to tell people whether it's in-game or not. Although cut-scene graphics can still be misleading.

 

It would just be like this generation; only the PS4 would be the Wii, the Wii-U the PS3, and the Xbox the Xbox.

I don't think Sony would mind shifting millions of boxes in the same way Nintendo did. Only with better games from first parties and proven third party support.

 

Only without the innovative "never-before-seen-in-a-commercial-gaming-product" interface, they wouldn't shift tens of millions more than thier competitors.

Lets not be ignorant of the real reason the Wii sold the way it did now

 

Joe sets his expectations based on what he had seen and/or played so far and expect much much better than a mere enhancement of whats currently available. The PC footage currently on TV doesnt cut it as the next gen he is expecting to get in the future because he sees it as what is currently available now. The CGI on TV is irrelevant to him. It is relevant what he experiences when he puts the disk in

 

That and the fact it was dirt cheap at a time when people were just starting to feel the bite from the economic meltdown.

A next gen tag with a previous gen price will still have an impact.

 

We don't know exactly what the hardware pcs can do with with levels processing shaders 10-20 (2 Gpus/SLI etc) times higher than current game consoles,thanks to software that are unused/subutilized your full potential, but I have the impression that even next generation console has 10 times the power of current consoles will not sufficient to show significant results in less than three years,unless they set resolutions to 720P.

Consoles with 5/7 times more power than ps360 even at 720P,honestly i have the impression we wouldn't see something much much higher than Uncharted 3 and others betters graphics console today.