Resolution-gate part 2? Sony sort of lies about Killzone resolution.
This news is interesting indeed.
Honestly though, more than anything I'm downright impressed with the tactic. Blending lower res frames to deliver a 1080p experience. Honestly, these sorts of moves may even, in theory, help push this generation of consoles to 4k support for some titles. Sure, it may not be "true" 4k. But if you bought that giant, expensive 4k TV you probably don't care as long as the games have better resolution than on a 1080p TV.
That aside, this exposes something I hinted about in the past about this new round of consoles. Expectations have outstripped the progression of the hardware. One of the reasons many of the new games, even those which aren't ports from last gen consoles, aren't showing the visual finesse everyone expected is because it isn't just graphic quality which needed to improve with the times. Things like higher expectations on resolutions and frame rates are MUCH harder to hit than improved graphics. In part because the more the graphics improve, the more difficult these elements are to achieve.
Prediction. 3 years from now the Xbox One will be seen as the superior platform. Right now we are at or near the cusp of what the more traditional elements of these systems can deliver. In this realm PS4 is king. It has the faster traditional components. Microsoft's tiling functionality and ESRAM combined with the ability to offload some processing to Azure however mean that the Xbox One has somewhere else to go once we're past the cusp. The PS4 doesn't. Or at least Sony has never mentioned the existence of anything to parallel either of those aspects.
Today developers are unaccustomed to using the ESRAM and tiling functionality. But, if you watch the lecture Microsoft did on this feature you should realize quite quickly that once game studios get used to working with this new pool of memory, the 32MB of ESRAM on the Xbox One won't seem as small as people complain that it is.
But, I am off course now. I'm not trying to turn this into an Xbox fan post. Because, in reality, the Xbox One suffers the same way the PS4 does. Sure, tiling can help Microsoft to an extent. And I think in the long run, that once studios actually know how to use it, it will place them on top, but likely not by much. That doesn't mean that 3 years from now every Xbox One game will be running smoothly at 1080p and 60fps. At the same time developers are learning how to use the systems to their fullest they will also be cramming more into games. Consuming everything they free up.
At the end of the day however, I don't truly believe the average person cares about any of this. I sit 5-6 feet away from a 42" LCD TV. The games could be in 480p and I likely wouldn't notice or care. At 720p on the average consumer TV, from their couch likely no one notices the difference. But then maybe I'm just a freak. I still play the games for the sake of the game. Graphics quality is nice, but secondary. In reality, I don't think I'm an anomaly there. I think the average consumer, even the average games consumer, doesn't actually give a damn about resolutions and frame rates.
So, just as I think the original Resolution-gate was a waste of breath. I also think this out lash against Sony is ridiculous.
Both Microsoft and Sony could have easily built consoles that spit out 1080p games for breakfast, but they would have cost a lot more. You can't complain about the cost of the hardware AND the performance. Remember the tear downs of these systems? Not including the shipping fees and the sellers cut these companies were making almost no margin. They aren't ripping you off. Simply put, the performance you see is about the best you can get for the amount of money the device cost.
Honestly though, more than anything I'm downright impressed with the tactic. Blending lower res frames to deliver a 1080p experience. Honestly, these sorts of moves may even, in theory, help push this generation of consoles to 4k support for some titles. Sure, it may not be "true" 4k. But if you bought that giant, expensive 4k TV you probably don't care as long as the games have better resolution than on a 1080p TV.
That aside, this exposes something I hinted about in the past about this new round of consoles. Expectations have outstripped the progression of the hardware. One of the reasons many of the new games, even those which aren't ports from last gen consoles, aren't showing the visual finesse everyone expected is because it isn't just graphic quality which needed to improve with the times. Things like higher expectations on resolutions and frame rates are MUCH harder to hit than improved graphics. In part because the more the graphics improve, the more difficult these elements are to achieve.
Prediction. 3 years from now the Xbox One will be seen as the superior platform. Right now we are at or near the cusp of what the more traditional elements of these systems can deliver. In this realm PS4 is king. It has the faster traditional components. Microsoft's tiling functionality and ESRAM combined with the ability to offload some processing to Azure however mean that the Xbox One has somewhere else to go once we're past the cusp. The PS4 doesn't. Or at least Sony has never mentioned the existence of anything to parallel either of those aspects.
Today developers are unaccustomed to using the ESRAM and tiling functionality. But, if you watch the lecture Microsoft did on this feature you should realize quite quickly that once game studios get used to working with this new pool of memory, the 32MB of ESRAM on the Xbox One won't seem as small as people complain that it is.
But, I am off course now. I'm not trying to turn this into an Xbox fan post. Because, in reality, the Xbox One suffers the same way the PS4 does. Sure, tiling can help Microsoft to an extent. And I think in the long run, that once studios actually know how to use it, it will place them on top, but likely not by much. That doesn't mean that 3 years from now every Xbox One game will be running smoothly at 1080p and 60fps. At the same time developers are learning how to use the systems to their fullest they will also be cramming more into games. Consuming everything they free up.
At the end of the day however, I don't truly believe the average person cares about any of this. I sit 5-6 feet away from a 42" LCD TV. The games could be in 480p and I likely wouldn't notice or care. At 720p on the average consumer TV, from their couch likely no one notices the difference. But then maybe I'm just a freak. I still play the games for the sake of the game. Graphics quality is nice, but secondary. In reality, I don't think I'm an anomaly there. I think the average consumer, even the average games consumer, doesn't actually give a damn about resolutions and frame rates.
So, just as I think the original Resolution-gate was a waste of breath. I also think this out lash against Sony is ridiculous.
Both Microsoft and Sony could have easily built consoles that spit out 1080p games for breakfast, but they would have cost a lot more. You can't complain about the cost of the hardware AND the performance. Remember the tear downs of these systems? Not including the shipping fees and the sellers cut these companies were making almost no margin. They aren't ripping you off. Simply put, the performance you see is about the best you can get for the amount of money the device cost.
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