I like how you linked two articles from the tail end of last gen (2010-2011), when the consoles in question came into existence before the standardized framework that exists in modern GPUs. You'd probably be held back less by a PS3-equivalent tablet chipset than an actual PS3.
When the PS3 released, its GPU and CPU both used 90nm process nodes. By approximately 2010, the GPU was at 40nm and the CPU was at 45nm. The PS4, in contrast, released with a 28nm chipset and recently shrunk to 16nm. The difference between a 42% decrease and a 50-55% decrease might not seem like
that much, but in combination with the fact that
die shrinks are becoming more difficult and taking more time the smaller the process gets, current-gen consoles will probably hold their own against PCs for longer than last-gen consoles did.
Another compounding factor is the introduction of ridiculously massive, ridiculously expensive PC chips near the end of last-gen. Such chips still exist, of course, but having something that already exists scale up alongside everything else is different from introducing massive monsters that trounce existing chips in the first place. The market for those chips seems to have settled on being "gamers who love having way more power than they'll ever need and using it for supersampling/ridiculous framerates," so they're not even a real consideration in the development of high-end settings anymore.
Oh, almost forgot RAM. The Titan X, the most over-the-top chip out there today (three years after the launch of the consoles), has 12GB of video ram, in comparison to the 8GB shared pool that consoles have available. PC cards had half again as much RAM as the total pool available on console all the way back in 2007 (the 8800 GTX), with PS3 not even being able to dedicate more than 256MB of its RAM to its GPU. At three years into last gen, PC cards included twice as much RAM as the entire console RAM pool.
I'm sure there's someone out there who'd love to see what his Titan X could do at 1080/30, but there's no actual market for that. There
is a market for 1080/30 console titles with graphical effects maxed and a market for 4k/144 supersampled ridiculousness using high-end cards. As such, it makes all the sense in the world that developers would choose to create a 1080/30 base product on the most successful console and scale up from there, including PC-exclusive graphical options more for the sake of R&D than for an expectation of immediate return.
There's nothing unethical about exclusives as long as they're not literally paid-for, and they've got significant advantages over non-exclusives on performance grounds. It's not a coincidence that Sony studios like Naughty Dog were able to shame everyone in terms of what they accomplished on PS3-level hardware.
Even with the existence of half-gen hardware like the Pro, there's still advantages to building for two or three unique targets rather than infinite possible combinations of settings and hardware.
Modding is cool, but I don't think it should be universally required. I mean, the ability to code in completely absurd nonsense of the sort that you mentioned would be outright antithetical to the nature of some games.
Game preservation is highly important to me (I specifically mentioned it when I answered that FFXV survey!), but you don't need PC ports to preserve games. =P The SNES was emulated by fans long before Nintendo even thought twice about selling ROMs, and the same will happen for the PS4. RPCS3 is already a thing, even if it's in its infancy, and PS3's architecture was as strange as it gets. And, in the worst case scenario... you can always just play PS4 games on PS4, the way people still do with SNES games?
As for paid online... I agree that it's nonsense, which is why I refuse to subscribe. =P Thankfully, I'm not all too fond of multiplayer games in the first place, so it doesn't affect me that much.
A lot of people don't want to be forced to deal with optimization and troubleshooting for an essentially unique system, garbage physical releases, and a choice between expensive assembly costs and the need to put expensive electronic parts together yourself. =P
Did they even try to re-analyze the base PS4 version? They use it as a point of comparison, but there's no indication of whether they're just comparing to old data.
Sorry for the late reply didn't feel like typing one, until I read the post.
>You also need to take into account the fact that tech doesn't really advance at the same rate anymore.
Look at Ryzen, look at Intel 8-Core CPUs, look at the GTX 1080, Titan X Pascal PC hardware accelerates and a much faster speed than the consoles can manage the PS4 is lesser than a budget build right now 300-350, hell even a 250 dollar PC can outperform it., and you won't have to pay for online thus making it cheaper, and the PS4 Pro got chumped by PC's back in 2014, and the Xbox One Scorpio is going to get ROFLSTOMPED by mid ranged PCs before it even comes out, it's probably below an overclocked 1060.
>With regards to consoles, the core limitation on the amount of power in the box is heat/energy/die size -- the developers figure out how to maximize the performance of their chips within the heat/energy/die size limits required by a console-sized box on a console budget, with maximum performance improving only when the performance-to-heat/energy/die size ratio increased. The bulk of such improvements came from process node shrinkage (with some smaller gains being made in between process node shrinks).
Yes by limiting their games scope, by limiting their games world, by dropping down the frame rate, resolution, amount of AI on screen, this is optimization, optimized PC games exist to.
>Another compounding factor is the introduction of ridiculously massive, ridiculously expensive PC chips near the end of last-gen. Such chips still exist, of course, but having something that already exists scale up alongside everything else is different from introducing massive monsters that trounce existing chips in the first place. The market for those chips seems to have settled on being "gamers who love having way more power than they'll ever need and using it for supersampling/ridiculous framerates," so they're not even a real consideration in the development of high-end settings anymore. Even budget builds back then could outperform consoles
And, of course, you can't forget 4k and 144hz screens, which serve as a fantastic excuse to eat up most of the surplus power PCs have available. Back in 2010, maxing out resolution and framerate would maybe quadruple the amount of processing power you needed. Now, you'd need ~20x the amount of processing power in a base console to do that.
>There
is a market for 1080/30 console titles with graphical effects maxed and a market for 4k/144 supersampled ridiculousness using high-end cards. As such, it makes all the sense in the world that developers would choose to create a 1080/30 base product on the most successful console and scale up from there, including PC-exclusive graphical options more for the sake of R&D than for an expectation of immediate return.
Even budget builds outperformed the consoles in 2012 which is near the end of the generation it was less than 400 bucks, and only slightly more expensive than the 500gb PS3 Superslim model, and it outstrips both consoles in terms of computional power.
It's not just computation power, it's also a lack of input devices which caused games to be simply being dumbed down for the controller input. Hell that's probably the reason why consoles don't have Star Citizen hell the developer said they couldn't handle it. That's not even getting into the unethical nonsense that Ubisoft tried to pull with Watch Dogs
"Game preservation is highly important to me (I specifically mentioned it when I answered that FFXV survey!), but you don't need PC ports to preserve games. =P The SNES was emulated by fans long before Nintendo even thought twice about selling ROMs, and the same will happen for the PS4. RPCS3 is already a thing, even if it's in its infancy, and PS3's architecture was as strange as it gets. And, in the worst case scenario... you can always just play PS4 games on PS4, the way people still do with SNES games?"
Wrong on so many levels
1. We still don't have a working Xbox emulator, so it's erroneous to believe that it will happen with the PS4, things don't work out that way, while I believe it will happen, doesn't mean it's going to, doesn't mean it's guarnteed
2. SNES will die, they will degrade over time files do not, consoles can die, and one day every SNES, every PS4 will die, for PCs that's not the case as PCs will always be useful, PCs will always have a place, the PS4 will not you have BC to the extreme, consoles you do not, they will go away, they are finite boxes, and some games simply will never get ported over to the next gen, or will be featured for backwards compatibility. Not to mention some games get de-listed (Hi Deadpool, hi Marvel vs Capcom Origins).
3. Also I should add that console exclusivity( ie barring from PC), would mean forcing gamers to deal with issues that the console has (hi framepacing on bloody borne), without having a good option, also no the PS4 Pro isn't a good option especially in comparison to any PC that is close to it's price it's a underclocked 480 that's less powerful than a RX 470, a CPU that is less powerful than an Athlon X4 845, and 8GB of RAM, it doesn't magically make frame pacing go away, increase the frame rate to something acceptable an actually 60+ FPS, especially for those that have high-end rigs, or are planning to get high-end rigs one of the biggest pluses about PC Gaming is that you can play your old games not newer hardware, and it will be 100x better than the last time you played it, especially when the mods are involved. Only PC Ports can do that unless you want to tell me otherwise. Thus being a scummy short sighted business practices.
4. I should also add that the PS4 online services will die thus you lose your digital games, Physical games will be lost to disc rotting, on PC this will never be the case since torrents exist, which means if one way to get games is barred two more grow in it's place. For example let's say I bought a game called happy slappy on the PS4 digitally, the game gets delisted, and my hard drives gets shreked well good buy my game, let's say I buy the game on blu-ray disc rotting is a thing, as well as wear and tear, so that game could be unplayable in years to come, now let's say I got happy slappy on PC, and the same scenario happens(ie. hard drive get's ogred), and the game delisted, you know what I can do I can sail the internet seas to find the game, obviously after downloading tons of porn, because plot?
"A lot of people don't want to be forced to deal with optimization and troubleshooting for an essentially unique system, garbage physical releases, and a choice between expensive assembly costs and the need to put expensive electronic parts together yourself. =P"
Optimized PC Versions exist, I really never had to troubleshoot my system, most modern games automatically detect your specs, and run the game accordingly also if you want you can choose to leave it on Normal settings, I just download the game on Steam, and it runs, looking up best 300 dollar PC is not rocket science. Also you don't have to assemble it yourself, you can get someone to do it for you, hell some stores even do it for free if you buy the parts there. Also no point in physical releases if you have to install the games on the disc anyway, and they are cheaper, and developers actually get money as opposed to buying used which I will say is worse than piracy, because at least with piracy one gets the game for free, if he/she likes it they will go out an buy it, if someone buys something used the likelihood of them buying a brand new copy is almost next to none.
>Even with the existence of half-gen hardware like the Pro, there's still advantages to building for two or three unique targets rather than infinite possible combinations of settings and hardware.
There is only one target that's the PS4, the Pro is going to be held back, the game can't be a completely different game on the PS4 Pro than it is, on the PS4.
"Oh, almost forgot RAM. The Titan X, the most over-the-top chip out there today (three years after the launch of the consoles), has 12GB of video ram, in comparison to the 8GB shared pool that consoles have available.
In other words, there's far less need for expensive PC-exclusive graphical options now than last-gen. Not all PCs are significantly better than consoles power-wise, and even the ones that are tend to have much of their extra power dedicated to improvements that are effectively free to developers (higher framerates, higher resolution, higher draw distances, tesselation, anti-aliasing).
" The Titan X has 12GB of Graphics RAM dedicated for games, the Xbox One and PS4 do not have 8GB dedicated for games
PS4 it's 4.5-5.5 GB so it's going to be sharing that between the weak ass CPU, and the mediocre GPU(1.84, Bermuda GPU), now the Xbox One 5GB of RAM for games 3 for the operating system, that's shared between a shit tier GPU, and mediocre CPU. It's also going to hold back the Scorpio, because developers can't decide to make a game that's only possible on the Scorpio which in my opinion I wish they could. If you want to compare the consoles memory in terms of games, best to use a GTX 1060 6GB, RX 470 8GB, or even a RX 470 4GB, and this one takes a steaming dump on the PS4 Pro at base, overclocked?, not to mention most CPU's have higher single thread than the PS4/PS4 Pro. Also current gen consoles holding themselves well against PC's
>Modding is cool, but I don't think it should be universally required. I mean, the ability to code in completely absurd nonsense of the sort that you mentioned would be outright antithetical to the nature of some games.
Did you just say options are a bad thing? Holy shit, do you know that mods can drastically improve a game right? On an objective level, graphical detail, and frame rate are only the tip of the iceberg.
>There's nothing unethical about exclusives as long as they're not literally paid-for, and they've got significant advantages over non-exclusives on performance grounds. It's not a coincidence that Sony studios like Naughty Dog were able to shame everyone in terms of what they accomplished on PS3-level hardware.
Ikkin this is not 2011 the Cell doesn't matter anymore you know that thing that was a bitch to code for?, I'm talking about x86 machines, so porting between the two shouldn't be as hard. Also when I talk about exclusives being unethical I'm talking about console exclusives, PC exclusives are a reason, because consoles can't run these games, for console exclusives(I mean games barred from PC, doesn't matter if a title isn't on Xbox, or isn't on PS4 as long as it's on PCs these consoles blur together with no objective superior behind them, they have the same life span and preservative capabilities, as opposed to the PC which if I listed all the objective superiorities behind in in this post, I'd be here for a week.
