So I'm wondering, and have been since 1996, when I pondered what 4K resolution should mean to consumers and since then have remained perpetually dismayed by the lack of forward progress with the release of each new Xbox.
There's been progress yes, and it is roughly on the timeline set out by the NHK who have said they wanted 8K out by 2020, and Sony is doing their part... but outside of Sony.. there's no 4K console. All you have are graphics cards from Nvidia powering PC rigs and that's about it.
We're still not really pushing the limits of what games should be at 2K. All that's been happening is higher resolution. Physics, like smoke, fire, how much you can put into a scene, how detailed shit can be.. that side of things has only grown incrementally.
Like in Ark.. what if it was more like Battlefield and Crysis. They are pushing it to be more of an eSport... and I get that.. but the game itself could be so much better but there aren't many studios left like Crytek and DICE making games that could run on a more expensive console. Or just calling it a premium console. I've wondered if that's because there just isn't one out there and that there isn't one because console means budget and that's never changed.
As much as Sony tried with PS3 and got hit in the face with a shovel because of it. No one wants a premium console. So no one should want a 4K console because it would be more expensive than a vanilla one, yet there are so many people saying they need one because current console games look like crap on their humongous curved screen monster TVs.
No doubt. Your monster TV needs a monster console.. even if that means a monster price.
If you can pay for it, you should be able to enjoy a much better experience.
Like all year long there's talk of 4K coming soon, and E3 is just around the corner so the answers will come soon.. but the media hyping up 4K is starting to put me over the edge. 4K shouldn't mean budget. 2K is budget and 2K, 1920x1080, isn't going away.
4K could be provided by something, but what should that something rip apart the potential for premium games while 2K remains viable?
And what if Nvidia could return to consoles? with a 4K part. AMD could still provide the CPU, which could do everything, while for gaming, you could get a graphics processor from AMD or Nvidia. The argument being that they can return to competing with each other to provide the best console graphics options for people that prefer one or the other. OR if what ends up happening is that there's a scale, everything runs at 2K, some players want 4K and premium people want 4K+.
With fewer than 20 million Xbox One consoles sold, what difference does it make to Microsoft?
With the lead on the market, could 10-20 million premium console sales inspire Sony to build one?
So if there's a premium 4K console for $1000-2000? You can get the best from Nvidia, you can get a desktop class i7 instead of mobile BS.. and you can get 32 to 64 gigs of RAM.
That's the hardware side. For that hardware side it would be preferable for AMD to release a graphics processor for a real 4K console that doesn't run at full power all the time. Desktop graphics have had the option of being turned off entirely for a few years now but it isn't implemented. There are technologies out there that will turn off your graphics card and just use integrated graphics. For console and mobile that would mean power savings but more importantly if they can be used at the same time that could mean the CPU integrated graphics component would run the consoles UI while the graphics processor is reserved for heavily lifting.
That again though is years old. Why aren't we running UI, like in VR, that actually engages the player.
While I was working on Home for Sony I really did enjoy the freedom that it provided to have a common social space between the console UI, and games/applications.
Home needs to come back. Home allowed people to go from that social space to games and apps and take people with them.
I'll never accept that it was shut down for a good reason, but with VR and 4K on the way.. and keeping on with the concept of a $2000 console, I'd love to see it come back MUCH better than it was before. It was better than I could have expected for something that was basically free, but it was also kinda garbage.
Also like Home, and these comparisons of consoles to high end phones.. I'm thinking that people would have to do financing on their console. Which store financing is something that I believe most of us have done for buying consoles.
And I think most of us have credit to cover a console.
And given the option of a console experience with better performance than even mid range PCs.. I think that Sony could erode the lower end to mid range PC gaming business. Steam PCs could have pulled people in, but for whatever reason...
Also, putting 8GB of RAM into the current consoles did so much for performance that they utterly outclass the previous generation and inarguably compare to PC gaming, versus the previous generation.
Of course though, it isn't enough.
I want to know what a console could do if it had 64 gigs of system ram and another 8 gigs dedicated to graphics. I mean besides just run 4K games like a beast.. what kind of games would they be and would they pull a premium audience?
Could they conform to Sony's as of yet to be confirmed rules that whatever games are released must run on a vanilla PS4.
What I'm getting at is that with these rules in place.. and if developers DO adhere to them AND embrace them.. the sky is the limit.
Running the same game, like Destiny, on PS3, Xbox 360, Xbox One and PS4.. with visible but nearly meaningless differences.. that's a door that's already open. But we're no longer talking transgenerational differences.. Sony might be telling developers that they can think ahead without having to wait for years. Microsoft started it with Xbox 360 games supposedly being forward compatible, and as we can see there are many games being re-released for Xbox One.