Will new gen consoles be able to keep up with PC graphics when released?

[Pray To Jesus]

Or would it be behind immediately?

 

[Bman123]

simply put no

 

[dagamer34]

No. But I don't really even think that's the point anymore. With the success of the Wii, Kinect, and Move, the goal now seems to me to get experiences that aren't possible on a PC or smartphone.

 

[zerocool84]

Right when they are released they are nearly on par but with an immensely smaller resolution. This coming generation doesn't look like it though as the new Xbox and PS from the rumors won't be that powerful. You can't change things on a console so in a few months they get eclipsed.

 

[arredondo]

Right now, "The Last of Us" on the six-year-old PS3 rivals the majority of PC games. Same is true for the next God of War release on that system.

I think the consoles will be fine next gen.

 

[2timer]

No. But I don't really even think that's the point anymore. With the success of the Wii, Kinect, and Move, the goal now seems to me to get experiences that aren't possible on a PC or smartphone.

Mmm, that may be true, but all the press I've read on E3 2012 suggests that smartphone and especially tablet gaming took a big chunk out of Nintendo's marketshare. Nintendo posted losses for the first time in decades. Either they need to create games for hardcore gamers (not likely) or they need to team up with a manufacturer like HTC and release a Nintendo phone!

 

[I4AT]

Extra polygons don't come free, and I don't mean in terms of performance, I mean actual dollars. The better the hardware gets the more it costs to pay competent artists to hand craft every little asset.

We're reaching a point where the capability of the hardware is going to be at the mercy of the budget. And with more and more publishers moving away from the PC as their main development platform, the question won't be whether next gen consoles can keep up, it'll be is there anyone left that gives a damn to put the resources necessary into a PC game to make it any better?

 

[lamedude]

I guess it depends if MS's $99 Xbox with contract program works. MS could do a $500 Xbox at $199 with 3 year commitment. But focus groups will see this beast and say RRoD 2.0 then MS will switch to parts with only double digit TDPs.

 

[BrightCandle]

Consoles are always designed to be cheap. They get some cost savings from including it all in one singular box and they get some extra performance from more direct hardware access and known configuration but fundamentally they are designed on cheap hardware. This means no matter what you can always design a PC much faster than a console.

Whether games can utilise the extra performance on offer from a PC is another matter, and one that has increasingly become a big complaint from PC gamers.

 

[Anarchist420]

Right when they are released they are nearly on par but with an immensely smaller resolution.

I disagree. Very few console games this generation have used decent AA for example.

Anyway, to answer the OP's question... no. We have DX11.1 hardware now while Nintendo's going to use DX10.1 HW and the hardware mipmapping/filtering is likely to not be good knowing AMD. Also, the devs aren't going to turn on all the available hardware features because there won't be enough RAM for a satisfactory frame rate.

 

[zerocool84]

Right now, "The Last of Us" on the six-year-old PS3 rivals the majority of PC games. Same is true for the next God of War release on that system.

I think the consoles will be fine next gen.

That's because majority of PC games are console ports. Yes it looks pretty good and I'm very excited for that game but it the graphics really aren't that good on it. Going to be slightly better than Uncharted 3 graphics which weren't that good.

 

[purbeast0]

That's because majority of PC games are console ports. Yes it looks pretty good and I'm very excited for that game but it the graphics really aren't that good on it. Going to be slightly better than Uncharted 3 graphics which weren't that good.

yea, uncharted 3's graphics were AWFUL...

/sarcasm

 

[zerocool84]

yea, uncharted 3's graphics were AWFUL...

/sarcasm

They were. For console games they were good but in general they weren't. Tons of low quality textures everywhere.

 

[Veliko]

They were. For console games they were good but in general they weren't. Tons of low quality textures everywhere.

They weren't 'awful'.

 

[zerocool84]

They weren't 'awful'.

Well I never said they were awful, just not great and definitely not comparable a non console port PC game because of how low resolution everything is and how low rez so many of the textures were. I thought God of War 3 still looks better than Uncharted 3. I played GoW3 after U3. Part of it could be that GoW3 is a much darker game so it's harder to see how low rez the textures are compared to a brighter game like U3.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Right now, "The Last of Us" on the six-year-old PS3 rivals the majority of PC games. Same is true for the next God of War release on that system.

I think the consoles will be fine next gen.

There is no way the last of us rivales PC games simply because it's most likely running at 720p. Consoles have tricks that increase performance at the cost of image quality. The majority of console gamers don't even realize it's happening.

 

[borisvodofsky]

It really depends. If you put a current $600 PC gpu into the console, then it can hang for at least 5 years. No problem.

However, they'll never be able to build a console like that.

 

[BrightCandle]

Most modern console games don't even run at 720p let alone 1080p. Halo runs at something awful like 520p, its barely better than a DVD. These are the sort of shortcuts they take to get the games even remotely running reasonable, but I guess few people actually notice because of the distance from the screen and the general blurriness from the console AA that hides all the problems.

There is just no way the minor improvements from direct hardware access will result in the next gen of consoles performing better than the high end in PCs, its just not going to make that much difference.

 

[dagamer34]

Mmm, that may be true, but all the press I've read on E3 2012 suggests that smartphone and especially tablet gaming took a big chunk out of Nintendo's marketshare. Nintendo posted losses for the first time in decades. Either they need to create games for hardcore gamers (not likely) or they need to team up with a manufacturer like HTC and release a Nintendo phone!

The 3DS wasn't that great of a product and launched with some rather crappy games. They also priced it WAY too high at $250. Magically sales improve when they got a better lineup of games and dropped the price to $170. However, I still think it was a poorly designed product because it lacked a 2nd circle pad, had horrible battery life (3-5 hours compared to 9-14 for the DS Lite) and is clunky.

Perhaps the super casual gamer prefers playing on their smartphone, but Nintendo posted losses because of their own mistakes. And don't even get me started on how the Wii is doing...

 

[dagamer34]

Most modern console games don't even run at 720p let alone 1080p. Halo runs at something awful like 520p, its barely better than a DVD. These are the sort of shortcuts they take to get the games even remotely running reasonable, but I guess few people actually notice because of the distance from the screen and the general blurriness from the console AA that hides all the problems.

There is just no way the minor improvements from direct hardware access will result in the next gen of consoles performing better than the high end in PCs, its just not going to make that much difference.

It's important to point out that 8 years ago, I don't think 1080p screens even existed to the regular consumer. I remember gaming on a 1280x1024 17" LCD monitor was amazing back in 2004, but these days you can get a 1080p monitor for $120.

Going from 720p to 1080p is more than 2x number of pixels and desktop GPUs are now judged by that standard instead of something lower like 1024x768.

 

[HeXen]

You guys put way too much emphasis on specs written on paper. The 1 single awesome thing about developing for proprietary hardware is that you can get far more out of it.

If the past is anything to read into, then the first batch of games will look as good as the few very high end ones on PC, like BF3 and Metro last light. This will crossover into there being more and more PC games with such graphics, afterwhich PC graphics will gradually accelerate, turning faster graphical cycles than the consoles.
Consoles generally look better and better each year and PC's will just cycle a bit faster.

 

[showb1z]

You guys put way too much emphasis on specs written on paper. The 1 single awesome thing about developing for proprietary hardware is that you can get far more out of it.

If the past is anything to read into, then the first batch of games will look as good as the few very high end ones on PC, like BF3 and Metro last light. This will crossover into there being more and more PC games with such graphics, afterwhich PC graphics will gradually accelerate, turning faster graphical cycles than the consoles.
Consoles generally look better and better each year and PC's will just cycle a bit faster.

You can't read into the past though. Back when PS3 and x360 came out, their videocards were actually almost up there with pc hardware.
If the rumors are somewhat true now, they will be using a mid/low-end card that will be 3+ generations old by the time the consoles come out.
So yea, no chance that's gonna look anywhere near as good as a pc, proprietary or not.

 

[Oyeve]

There is no way the last of us rivales PC games simply because it's most likely running at 720p. Consoles have tricks that increase performance at the cost of image quality. The majority of console gamers don't even realize it's happening.

Because it looks good enough and is fun. Who cares if its just 720p?

 

[Dankk]

Because it looks good enough and is fun. Who cares if its just 720p?

People who want to take advantage of their 1080p sets? It's not an unreasonable demand, considering PC gamers have been playing comfortably at a native 1080p for years now.

Right now, "The Last of Us" on the six-year-old PS3 rivals the majority of PC games.

Er... maybe. It also took six years for a dedicated PS3 developer to actually squeeze that much visual fidelity out of the darn thing. I wouldn't expect that level of efficiency and optimization during the PS4's launch.

Remember the PS3's whole fiasco of having poor developer support, and even worse graphics than the 360 on launch, despite being the more powerful system? The PS3 was (is) hard to develop for, and only in the past couple years have we finally seen games take full advantage of its power.

I think consoles will be fine next gen.

And nothing more. Which is perfectly OK. Historically, consoles have never been more powerful than your typical gaming PC, even on launch. Fortunately, graphics in general have become so good that we're beginning to reach a threshold anyway, and most console gamers seem content with that they're getting.

 

[fatpat268]

I primarily game on the PC nowadays, but I can't wait for a new gen to start. PC games are inherently tied to console development nowadays, so any boost in console horsepower will translate to the PC, regardless if it was already capable.