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[E-Cat]

At face value, it would seem that we're now in a post-generational world where every game is set to support every platform, regardless of power. But to me, this raises some of unanswered questions.

For example, consider Xbox Scorpio: ~6 TFLOPS, which is roughly 4x more TFLOPS than Xbox One. A developer would have little difficulty porting a 1080p X1 game to Scorpio; just up the resolution to 4K (=4x more pixels), which would already eat up most of the power difference.

Alternatively, the developer could choose to lock the game at 1080p/60fps on Scorpio while adding better anti-aliasing, lighting or post-processing effects. This would probably require a bit more time and manpower, but still be doable.

But think further - what about the inevitable Scorpio 2, launched around 2020 under this new model? Such a console would likely exceed the X1's specs by at least an order of magnitude (~12-15 TFLOPS). It would also more than likely adopt a completely new CPU architecture (Zen) and memory (HBM2).

Traditionally, such an order of magnitude leap has signaled the beginning of a new generation and waning support for the old hardware. Now, why is that?

"Wherever you have an order of magnitude performance difference, you can't really scale. We can scale down in performance by a factor of three by going to a low resolution, dropping some textures, and things like that. But to scale by a factor of 10 -- you can't design a game with 10 times the detail and then scale it back to something that looks decent on the consoles. You'd end up looking much worse than a console game that was just designed for the console specs. So they have real scalability difficulties there."

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4035/from_the_past_to_the_future_tim_.php?print=1

In other words, by trying to design a game that is meant to scale over an order of magnitude you'd wind up looking poor and unoptimized on every platform, not really taking advantage of the strengths of any of them. Not having exclusive games, or more importantly, games that fully target the power level of your new console, is not a very appetizing value proposition and kind of makes the upgrade pointless to begin with.

But, you may ask, isn't this kind of what's already happening on the PC market? Multiple tiers of gaming rigs that span enormous differences in power? True, but the PC is an open platform. Consoles, on the other hand, are closed platforms. Each game is tailored for its specific hardware with known specs, which helps optimize the code for a smooth, aesthetically pleasing experience. Take that away, and you take away one of the most appealing aspects of console gaming. Uncharted 4 would not have run like it did on PS4 on a PC w/ an 1.84 TFLOPS GPU and 8 gigs of memory.

What do you think will happen in such a situation where there are, say, three tiers of Xbox hardware on the market simultaneously? Will all games be mandated to support all three platforms (Xbox One, Scorpio 1, Scorpio 2)? Will some elite AAA developer cut the cord with the original Xbox One, but still provide compatibility for both iterations of Scorpio, where Scorpio 1 games would run at 30 fps, as opposed to 60 fps plus additional bells and whistles on Scorpio 2? What about cutting-edge 'Crysis' type titles that will only run on high-end PCs and the latest console iterations? Are Sony/Microsoft opening up a whole can of worms here when it comes to consumer choice clarity?

 

[katkombat]

Console gens aren't dead. They'll be back.

 

[The End]

It's going to be weird for a little while to be sure.

Let's put it this way:

If the (frankly, dozens) of PS4 games I own will carry forward to Neo/PS5/Whatever, why would I buy a new system that can't play all of those games.

It's why windows gamers don't use linux.

 

[Alpolio]

They're just killing this gen early. It was seriously underpowered. They all suffered from the Wii syndrome.

 

[Clarkus Darkus]

I just wanna play games man, As a console gamer life was alot simpler when the focus was on games and not this TFOPS jargen. We'll have too many consoles on the market at the end on 2017.

 

[mikeyvids]

I can imagine a graphic included on titles listing the compatibility with resolution & fps performance on each iteration. Along with a warning of what it isn't compatible with within 5-10 years.

 

[Grewitch]

Let me know where the graves are, I'll pay my respects.

I don't think it's a problem at the moment, they're just trying things out and anyways, they said all games will work on the next tier console, so if they keep to do that, no problems.

To early to say generations are dead. Nothing has been settled yet.

 

[mrmickfran]

This gen was a mistake.

 

[Guevara]

A shit show

To see if we can play a game, we're gonna have to consult charts

 

[Tal Shiar Agent]

Console gens aren't dead. They'll be back.

I hope this bites them both in the ass and realize they can't do smartphone like iteration shit with consoles.

 

[georly]

If they're adopting the Iphone or PC model where you upgrade GPU/CPU and ram every couple years, with incremental OS upgrades, I'd think almost every game would be backward compatible, unless they used some OS/Hardware specific functionality that doesn't exit. I'd think some games would work on the OLDer models, but up to a point.

I think it's less exciting to do incremental upgrades than to have all-new systems, but it's also more practical and beneficial (if backwards compatibility remains a thing).

You'll still get a PS5, but in reality, it'll just be a PS4-2. Or that's the hope, anyway.

 

[ChrisInCali]

I just wanna play games man, As a console gamer life was alot simpler when the focus was on games and not this TFOPS jargen. We'll have too many consoles on the market at the end on 2017.

This is how I feel. This generation has put way too much focus on hardware, and the actual games have suffered. I still play tons of games on older systems because, you know, they're good games. I don't care about the graphics anymore. Focus on developing software.

 

[Razzorn34]

They certainly aren't dead. When the general populace rejects this notion of buying a new expensive ass console every few years, they'll be back.

 

[E-Cat]

They're just killing this gen early. It was seriously underpowered. They all suffered from the Wii syndrome.

But they're NOT killing this gen. All Scorpio games are still required to support Xbox One.

 

[dcb2821]

I just wanna play games man, As a console gamer life was alot simpler when the focus was on games and not this TFOPS jargen. We'll have too many consoles on the market at the end on 2017.

It can still be simple, keep playing games on your current console, you dont have to upgrade right away. Im glad we finally have the OPTION to do so earlier, instead of being stuck with 8 year old tech at the end of a gen

 

[Breads]

x86 // consoles turning minipcs (x1 is this already) // maximum compatability I say

And it would have been a long time coming too.

 

[Hatty]

I hope generations die, what an archaic system. I hate buying a new system and leaving everything behind. Having to reset with every new generation seems foolish

 

[Giolon]

But they're NOT killing this gen. All Scorpio games are still required to support Xbox One.

Until MS decides otherwise.

 

[Slythe]

But they're NOT killing this gen. All Scorpio games are still required to support Xbox One.

I think this is a pretty significant bit of info that dropped. They are still calling project scripio "part of the Xbox one family". I think once we get a box that's outside of that family it will mark the true end of this generation.

 

[Curufinwe]

But they're NOT killing this gen. All Scorpio games are still required to support Xbox One.

Link?

 

[foltzie1]

It depends, but likely No different than on iOS.

A spectrum of compatibility punctuated by the occasional hard line that knocks out older models.

That or after this experiment the companies go back to having harder lines with each console release.

 

[goldenpp72]

Eventually newer tech will be too advanced to run on old consoles, they will at some point cut off the 'xbox one' line, but it might be awhile.

 

[ModBot]

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