Rumors of Xbox not wanting to continue their hardware are now confirmed to be false.
I feel like we hear this every single time though. “Largest tech leap in a hardware generation” very much means “we’ll bump the graphics a little, we’re still targeting 30fps though”
30/60fps is always a developer choice. Not related to hardware capability.
That being said, every generation console makers will make the most powerful hardware they can for the price point they are gonna charge. It’s not exactly like Microsoft have any secret sauce here. It’s the same amd/nvidia hardware choices for the price point they think they can sell at that anyone can make a machine with.
I don’t know why you were being downvoted. It’s true. FPS is the developers decision. If a game had like 9 pixels on screen, they could make that game do ultra high framerate.
Developers usually prefer better graphics over framerate however. I just hope that more games allow the choice between graphics, framerate, and a balance between the two… like with Hogwarts Legacy.
It’s funny that you enjoy these settings.
Personally I hate these as I’d just want to play the game the way the developers wanted me to play it. I hate that PC influence.
I guess everyone is different 😅
So you hate that PCs are more capable and can display better graphics at higher framerates and have rationalized it to yourself that worse graphics and framerates on a console are “how the developers intended”.
I can understand not wanting to tinker with settings and just load a game up and know what to expect in terms of graphics and framerate, but I just cannot disagree more with what you are saying here. Building games to console limitations and not even giving the option for fidelity or framerate just seems like a step backward.
30/60fps is always a developer choice
Yes, a choice to code and optimize the game properly or not is always the creator’s choice.
I’d argue this generation actually did deliver performance-wise, most games release with a performance mode that targets 60fps whereas the PS3/PS4 generation felt mostly stuck to 30FPS.
Honestly, that’s fair. Maybe I was being a little too harsh, plus this gen did come with more customizable settings (IE, setting to “performance mode” or “fidelity” mode)
And often, the fidelity mode is close to or sometimes native 4k, whoch is impressive for a console. Remember when full 1080p was the push?
Well, yeah, this gen is pretty much last gen but 60fps.
Except when it tries to do fancy UE5 features or raytracing then you get that 30 fps with smeary FSR
Up until recently I think most TVs weren’t 60Hz
TVs have been 60Hz as standard for a long long long time. We’re talking multiple decades.
Even in the CRT days, almost all TVs (in North America, that is) were rated at 60Hz.
"And what we’re focused on there is delivering the largest technical leap you will have ever seen in a hardware generation,
Pretty sure that is said by at least one player in the console game every time they announce new hardware.
Honestly, I don’t think I’ll own another console at this point.
PC will have my focus.
Console are great for the audience that doesn’t want to pay the prevalent PC/GPU premium at this stage.
proceeds to buy $70 games
Except you definitely make up for it and probably pay more (depending on what hardware cost your comparing to of course) on the consoles. All three consoles have subscription-based services that are more or less required. Some of the controllers for the consoles are as much or more than a keyboard or mouse. You rarely see a price decline of any of the games (especially Nintendo), and certainly nothing as near as what you’ll find on PC.
So consoles are a cheap upfront cost that’s recouped overtime. I’m not saying that consoles are definitely more expensive, but the true cost of ownership is somewhat muddled.
I don’t really agree with that, at least outside of niche situations. The upfront cost on a PC today puts the cost for playing on consoles much cheaper up front such that it would take years to make up the difference, even if you were paying for Game Pass.
My point isn’t some pedantry over PC vs Console and cost nit-picking. Its that consoles aren’t a bad deal. It’s OK for people to own and play games on a console, and they work well for a lot of people.
I’ve been putting together PCs for a while now and the idea that they’re more affordable for playing games than on consoles is becoming more and more of a misnomer. You can thank the major part duopolies for that. I don’t think console companies aren’t greedy or somehow noble, but consoles are still fill a gap and enable people to play games.
They’ll pay it anyhow. They just won’t get a GPU for it and be stuck with only what’s on their specific platform.
I don’t even need the giant GPU. I just need the open platform to keep playing the games I already love.
At this point, unless the PS5 shapes up and offers exclusives that matter, I will probably do the same.
After the Helldivers 2 release Sony started talking about getting more aggressive with PC releases, so I think we’re going to see a lot less console only releases.
PCs are brilliant! But I like console
I play on both! I like pc for cheaper prices and some different games. I like my xbox to just “plug and play”, it is simple and I don’t have to keep verifying if it will run smoothly. My pc is kinda strong, but not super strong, so AAA titles a no go there
The biggest jump in the current consoles was the load times. I don’t think there’s anything the next gen could do to impress.
Ray tracing performance that’s actually good enough for games to fully ditch rasterized lighting and reflections
That sounds a lot like the jump from HD to 4K. Which is to say a lot less impactful than the previous jumps and tech. And something a lot of people might not even notice.
Are there other benefits to this? Like less work for developers?
A lot less work for developers, smaller game sizes, and map and game design no longer needing to be built around the onerous limitations of raster lighting and reflections.
Ray tracing is a bigger deal than most people realize. It feels like a gimmick because the games that support it today are still ultimately designed around rasterization.
Path-traced lighting in particular is a huge game changer, and means developers will no longer have to choose between rudimentary global dynamic lighting and very static and storage-intensive baked lighting. You can get the benefits of both without the drawbacks of either, assuming the hardware is up to snuff.
That is beyond optimistic for consoles. Maybe three or four more generations worth.
It’s possible with high end PC hardware today. Since when have consoles been 20 years behind PC?
Every new console since I’ve had the original NES is the largest technological leap…
Could I get paddles and gyro on the controller for my PC needs please.
Allow me to recommend the Flydigi Vader 3 Pro. It has Hall-effect sticks, gyro, back buttons, six face buttons, Xbox style trigger rumble and every button is mechanical. It also works on the Switch and Android
The big 2 vendors jumped on the Raytracing bandwagon too early and it shows.
Ray tracing was the hot new buzzword after CP2077 showed off what consoles couldn’t at the time.
Unfortunately the tech didn’t even mature on PC yet, at least not without upscaling and now frame gen to help get it to more pleasing framerates.
Ray tracing in this generation was a classical case of “biting more than you can chew”. Huge distraction.
Yeah I thought the same reading that.
Even in the very game, CP2077, as impressive as it can be, it can also be just as disappointing. It’s still a nice technical marvel, but it’s not at all the gamechanger it wanted to be.
And there’s games such as A Plague Tale Requiem where the baked lighting looks flat-out better in most scenes than the raytracing, since unlike the “realistic” raytracing they hand-crafted it to be unrealistic but fitting for the tone and atmosphere of the scene. So I turned it off again.
I’ll be honest, so far the only game where RT universally made me go “I’ll leave that on, that’s awesome!” is Riftbreaker. And it has a comparatively minor effect there, but at least a purely positive one (CP2077 I prefer at native rez over RT + DLSS which gets a weird pseudo-blur even with carefully tweaked resharpening, it’s just part of how it renders I think as other games don’t have this issue).
And all for prettier shinies. No offense, but SSAO/Cubemaps are still damn pretty looking and cheaper in terms of resources. For me, 2077 still runs like ass with raytracing even today.
