So me and a buddy of mine were talking tech as we often do and we started discussing next-gen consoles.
We all know the specs and software and supported features and as we were talking about this it became painfully obvious how behind technology wise next-gen consoles already are...and they haven't even been released yet! This generation is supposedly going to last 10 years...TEN YEARS...yet speed wise they are already behind MOST computers on this forum.
Ya know, when the PS3 and 360 came out they had some pretty nice state of the art technology. The 360's GPU was actually a head and FASTER than any desktop GPU at the time. Now we look at current consoles and they have CPU's that are slower than a ~3GHz i3 (based off of Kabini reviews) and GPU's that are lower-mid to mid range in comparison to desktops.
HOW IS THIS GOING TO LAST 10 YEARS?! I mean, you've got games like DRIVECLUB on the PS4 running at 1080p at 30 FRAMES PER SECOND. In a time when we are moving into the 4K resolution realm isn't 1080p dying? Is a next-gen console running 30fps kind of ridiculous?
Now I hear you screaming, "BUT THEY WILL GET BETTER CAUSE OF UNTAPPED POWER!!!". Well, you know what? I'm not buying that this time.
With the current gen consoles they were truly pretty unique at the time. Unified shaders, PowerPC cores, Cell processor, ESRAM, etc meant that developers really genuinely had to LEARN how to code for these platforms. This generation though...yeah...that simply isn't the case. We're dealing with x86 processors, known GPU architecture, known software and OS's (in the case of the Xbox One it's using Windows 8 for fucks sake).
So the whole games will look a lot better 3-4 years down the road...I'm just not too sure about that. I mean, developers are already having a seemingly hard time hitting 1080p at 30fps...you REALLY think that there is THAT much room to improve? Improve over what? Take a game like BF4 that was said to run at 1080p at 60fps. How exactly do they plan to achieve this while still having crisp visuals and truly next-gen graphics? How do they plan on keeping this up in the future when engines become more evolved and even low-end gaming PC's have blown past next-gen consoles (which it could be argued they already have).
So in my opinion as PC gamers we will benefit for a little while but I see the whole "consoles are holding PC's back" coming A LOT sooner than we think. Now I know Sony and Microsoft couldn't afford to pump Intel 4770k's and Nvidia Titans into the new consoles but...come on! My nearly two year old PC can ALREADY play next-gen games without a problem (Metro Last Light, Crysis 3, etc). What's this say about the state of next-gen console ports?
I don't know ya'll...I am excited for next-gen because it's about fucking time and it'll give us PC gamers some proper DX11 graphics and features but damn...next-gen is already last-gen tech wise.
Am I the only one that finds this sort of unsettling?
We all know the specs and software and supported features and as we were talking about this it became painfully obvious how behind technology wise next-gen consoles already are...and they haven't even been released yet! This generation is supposedly going to last 10 years...TEN YEARS...yet speed wise they are already behind MOST computers on this forum.
Ya know, when the PS3 and 360 came out they had some pretty nice state of the art technology. The 360's GPU was actually a head and FASTER than any desktop GPU at the time. Now we look at current consoles and they have CPU's that are slower than a ~3GHz i3 (based off of Kabini reviews) and GPU's that are lower-mid to mid range in comparison to desktops.
HOW IS THIS GOING TO LAST 10 YEARS?! I mean, you've got games like DRIVECLUB on the PS4 running at 1080p at 30 FRAMES PER SECOND. In a time when we are moving into the 4K resolution realm isn't 1080p dying? Is a next-gen console running 30fps kind of ridiculous?
Now I hear you screaming, "BUT THEY WILL GET BETTER CAUSE OF UNTAPPED POWER!!!". Well, you know what? I'm not buying that this time.
With the current gen consoles they were truly pretty unique at the time. Unified shaders, PowerPC cores, Cell processor, ESRAM, etc meant that developers really genuinely had to LEARN how to code for these platforms. This generation though...yeah...that simply isn't the case. We're dealing with x86 processors, known GPU architecture, known software and OS's (in the case of the Xbox One it's using Windows 8 for fucks sake).
So the whole games will look a lot better 3-4 years down the road...I'm just not too sure about that. I mean, developers are already having a seemingly hard time hitting 1080p at 30fps...you REALLY think that there is THAT much room to improve? Improve over what? Take a game like BF4 that was said to run at 1080p at 60fps. How exactly do they plan to achieve this while still having crisp visuals and truly next-gen graphics? How do they plan on keeping this up in the future when engines become more evolved and even low-end gaming PC's have blown past next-gen consoles (which it could be argued they already have).
So in my opinion as PC gamers we will benefit for a little while but I see the whole "consoles are holding PC's back" coming A LOT sooner than we think. Now I know Sony and Microsoft couldn't afford to pump Intel 4770k's and Nvidia Titans into the new consoles but...come on! My nearly two year old PC can ALREADY play next-gen games without a problem (Metro Last Light, Crysis 3, etc). What's this say about the state of next-gen console ports?
I don't know ya'll...I am excited for next-gen because it's about fucking time and it'll give us PC gamers some proper DX11 graphics and features but damn...next-gen is already last-gen tech wise.
Am I the only one that finds this sort of unsettling?