What do you guys think? Will PS5/XBone2 try to render all those pixels or will they stick to 1080p and try to max out the graphics at that resolution?
I doubt it. Lets look at the PC. You need multiple GTX980Ti or Fury X cards to get the majority of games playable at around 60fps when running 4k. I don't see that type of power being available in an APU format suitable for use in a console. If they decide to go with a discreet GPU in the next round it will increase the size and power requirements not to mention cooling. I think it would take something just short of a miracle for consoles to be able to output 4k and hold 60fps.
As for it becoming common I don't know. People keep their TVs for a long time these days and some people have just recently bought a large 1080p set because 4k is still overly expensive.
This is only true due to dev's pushing IQ for 1080p PC's. If they chose to, they could simply have lowered IQ and pushed 4K. The question is, what looks better, higher graphical visuals at 1080p or lower visuals at 4k? That will always be a compromise.
There are many people with 4K monitors that prefer medium settings to 1080p at high. But it is a personal preference. It does appear the dev's prefer higher visuals at 1080p or even 720p to higher resolutions, or they wouldn't bother with upscaling to 1080p on consoles.
PC's will always require multiple GPU's as long a dev's continue to target their high end settings towards 1080p with high end GPU's.
You're asking what unannounced consoles from an unannounced time in the future will be doing...we're talking 5-10 years down the road in a time where we've got the big-time companies aiming for power efficiency, and the current chip supplier's in complete turmoil and working on a new CPU core.
This answer's just a complete crapshoot, really a wish list. It's also obviously a developer question, not a hardware one. We've seen these consoles push visuals over resolution and framerate. We've seen them cut back on one thing to promote the other several times. I doubt any of the major developers will have some wild swing in philosophy to change that, either. Some will still favor resolution, some frame rate, some will sacrifice one for the other, some might sacrifice both for other things.
Microsoft and Sony will probably market them as "4k consoles", it's a good buzzword. It'd be crazy to require the games to be at 4k however.
I'd rather if they pushed more for VR (make it standard with the console even), but that's me just dreaming.
I doubt they'll push for 4k. As opposed to HDTV where people HAD to get to replace their old TVs, 4k is optional and, honestly, outside the tech circles (like us), it's not important at all.
I disagree about the 2-3 years for the next console thing. Many of the anticipated exclusives we know about aren't even coming until next year. It will definitely be longer than that. Especially since we haven't had a game that maxed out the potential of the systems yet. To be honest I find the games right now to look very good and I don't feel the need for any graphics upgrade at all. I'm quite pleased with what they've been able to do so far.
Agreed. THe thing that gets me annoyed is what I feel are marketing-driven graphics requirements. Like "oh we HAVE to hit 1080p/60fps in this game, so we are going to cut our poly/fx budgets in half, pull a bunch of LOD tricks so that everything renders at half quality when its 10 feet away from the player" etc. etc. it's just like at what point do you say "enough is enough" let's render an honest image.
It's funny because you know 4k TV's will be pretty common by then. And a lot of PC gamers will be running 4k. So when the next gen consoles come out all the kids will be like "Oh man, but will it do 4k" and so then like Microsoft got pressured into doing 60fps on Halo 5 they will be pressured into pushing 4k resolutions and so they'll have to resort to a bag of tricks again in order to deliver on that. It just seems like the console makers face a really uphill battle with trying to deliver low-TDP units that produce "impressive graphics" while simultaneously keeping up with the resolution race.
I doubt it. Lets look at the PC. You need multiple GTX980Ti or Fury X cards to get the majority of games playable at around 60fps when running 4k. I don't see that type of power being available in an APU format suitable for use in a console. If they decide to go with a discreet GPU in the next round it will increase the size and power requirements not to mention cooling. I think it would take something just short of a miracle for consoles to be able to output 4k and hold 60fps.
Give it 3 and I think we'll see 50" OLED 4K sets for $500.
5 years time and the luxury sets will be massive 8K 100"+ 21:9 sets that can bend/unbend in a curve or could roll/slide up sorta like projector screens (or garage doors, where when they slide to the ceiling they could give off a star or aurora image).
I'm very skeptical that it'll be even 5 years from now. I give it 2-3.
What I find funny is how people act like the current consoles are a failure for not rendering at 1080p flawlessly, and say they'd rather them push other things, and that's exactly what they've done. Game worlds have grown immensely in size and local detail during these consoles. That hasn't translated to better games necessarily, but they absolutely have not just thrown out everything to try and achieve relatively pointless render resolution targets. They absolutely have many areas they could and need to improve on (AI, physics is still not advancing that much in mainstream games), but they're doing other things that are interesting and resolution has become mostly meaningless. And I'm not even someone who is a big fan of this "every game is an open world game now!" movement, but there's things they can do to make that much better in the future.
They will, which is exactly why we'll see new consoles sooner than the 10 years that a bunch of people seem to have convinced themselves of.
This goes back to the fact that a game looks better on Very High at 1080p than it does on medium at 4k. I (and many others as evident in previous posts on the forums) want more effects at 1080p than less fidelity at a higher resolution.
Just look at high polygon count models for example. I do not want lower amounts of characters, less and worse physics effects, worse texture quality, lower quality animation. To push resolution you need lower effects and an overall worse looking game because there is only so much horsepower available. If you want that why upgrade at all? You could just keep turning down settings.
There HAS to be another console generation, though. I think it would behoove Microsoft to make its last generation turn the Xbox brand into a Steam Machine experience. That way, they can probably just give you a modular system and release incremental upgrades and make it just function like a PC for Dummies experience. We have Google's Project Ara phone, IDK why Microsoft couldn't try something like that, and make the Windows/PC and Xbox gaming experiences identical. That way, the console can have adjustable graphics (with software to auto-tweak it for users by reading hardware), and it can have longevity without an all-new console release.
That's probably impossible, given the stupidity of the masses with technology, but it's what I'd like the end the consoles with. "Xbox Infinity," because its core can last forever.
TDev's target 1080p for their high IQ, and make it look as good as possible and then it is impossible to get good performance at 4K without multiple GPU's.
At some point, dev's will reach a point where they feel a higher resolution will look better for the performance hit than higher IQ settings, and 4K will finally become the target. Until then, upscaled 1080p will be the closest we get.
Ya, I am not sure who is predicting 10-year life cycle for current consoles before they are replaced.