A number of weeks ago, rumors of an upgraded PS4 began cropping up all over the place offering significant performance boosts to the initial PS4 design along with 4K compatibility. Now, anonymous insiders are reporting that Microsoft is working on their own big console upgrade, dubbed "Scorpio" and "Xbox One-Two".

This supposed upgrade's target performance is nearly 4x that of the current Xbox One, with sources saying 6 TFLOPS compared to the current console's ~1.5 TFLOPS. The inside source also claims the upgraded Xbox, like the rumored PS4 Neo, will be backwards compatibility with current Xbox One games. The reports claim this upgrade isn't likely to show up until 2017, with a Slim model of the current console possibly being announced this E3.

Source

How will these mid-generation console upgrades effect console gaming in general? Will these mid-generation upgrades prove a poor idea, effectively dividing owners of current consoles? Will developers bother supporting the older consoles when a newer, more powerful option is out there? Who's to say. Personally, I'm not necessarily against these upgrades as long as the respective companies offer big trade in bonuses for the old hardware, and as long as game developers continue supporting the old consoles as well.

 

[KSP]

That is how it's done
you just answered yourself. "My tv has built in upscaling" meaning color fill. Also, it's new has better frame refresh than your prior tv likely. So it appears to look better to you than before. Because it is newer with better hardware.

No the native 4K content looks NIGHT and DAY.

I'm not talking just better, I'm talking blows my mind better. Like literally I was watching a documentary and was like I was actually there.

Again, all that 4K conjecture is just that conjecture.

I look with my eyes and I see the HUGE difference.

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Conjecture? I've just mathematically proven that you're affected by cognitive dissonance. I can't spot individual pixels on my TV unless I'm 2 feet away from it, let alone 6. Your brain is tricking you into thinking that there's a huge difference in clarity when there isn't, provided you're using the screen correctly. 4K makes sense for future VR where the screen is directly infrontvof your eyeballs, not so much with televisions because you view tgem from a distance. The cost versus return analysis of 4K is not favourable right now, I will take steady 60FPS over 4K *anyday*.

No. Its much clearer. Native 4K. I don't care what you say. My eyes tell me otherwise.

Same content in 2K vs 4K, 4K looks better on a 4K screen.

Also its 1 to 1 pixel mapping at 4K.

 

[Foxi4]

You're not listening to me. Of course it looks better in the grand scheme of things, I mentioned that at the top of my post - the more pixels the better. What I'm saying is that the returns are diminishing and investing in higher resolution is stupid when you can use that horsepower to render more accurate models, use better textures, add more bones for more realistic skeletal animation or use more complex particle effects. It's like rendering a cube - it has 6 faces, each face takes 2 polygons minimum, you only ever see 3 faces at a time with culling, so effectively you can render a perfect cube with a maximum of 6 polygons at all angles. You can also render the cube with 600 polygons for no reason, but it will look exactly the same. You can make tge cube look better with good lighting, shading and mapping though, so do that instead.

 

[Yil]

Lets wait and see when they come out whose right.

Everything we're saying now is conjecture. And I'm not one for conjecture. I'd rather wait and see when the product is real. We'll know then if they can do 4K native.

Also most 4K TVs have upscalers built in, so right now when I play Witcher 3 on PS4 its looking pretty good. But its still not 4K good.

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Thats all conjecture. I judge with my eyes.

I have a 49" 4K TV and I can tell the difference from 4K and 1080p like night and day.

Again, conjecture amd reality are two different things. I used to beleive in all that conjecture about 4K being a waste, etc, etc. But then I went out a bought an 4K TV and started to watch some 4K content and realized that it looks much better. You don't even need to try to look for the difference, 4K is just clearer. Its like looking through a window at a real life location.

Don't believe me, buy a 4K TV and start to watch some 4K documentaries, and you'll see the difference.

I am talking about rendering at 4k and downscale them to 1080p.
I know about the experience and how 4k are barely more expansive than 1080p if over 45''.

 

[smileyhead]

It's starting to look like Android at this point...

What do you mean?

 

[DinohScene]

What do you mean?

New hardware revision every year.
With some hardware revisions adding no improvements but pointless additions yet sell with a pricetag of 600 to 700 quid.
AKA Samsung Galaxy....

If this is going to turn out anything like Ouya, the console market will die quickly.

 

[sarkwalvein]

And all this discussion is pointless because neither the Xbox 1-2-3 scorpion edition, or the PS4k neardenthal, or the Nintendo no execute would support 4K gaming with state of the art last gen graphics, and probably no console will for the next 10 years or so.

 

[Yil]

And all this discussion is pointless because neither the Xbox 1-2-3 scorpion edition, or the PS4k neardenthal, or the Nintendo no execute would support 4K gaming with state of the art last gen graphics, and probably no console will for the next 10 years or so.

What if AMD cease production of 32/ 28nm? They have to stick with Polaris then.

 

[smileyhead]

New hardware revision every year.
With some hardware revisions adding no improvements but pointless additions yet sell with a pricetag of 600 to 700 quid.
AKA Samsung Galaxy....

Android is an operating system, not a phone. Of course new phones running it are coming out every now and then.
Also, Samsung's Android is shit. I suggest you don't count that as actual Android.

 

[Yil]

Android is an operating system, not a phone. Of course new phones running it are coming out every now and then.
Also, Samsung's Android is shit. I suggest you don't count that as actual Android.

Actually 7 edge is faster than 820 equipped smartphones.

 

[DinohScene]

Android is an operating system, not a phone. Of course new phones running it are coming out every now and then.
Also, Samsung's Android is shit. I suggest you don't count that as actual Android.

You know what I mean when I say Android.
The phones and tablets which they just keep on pumping out.

I got an S4, first thing I did was flash CM to it.
Fuck stock android and their bloatware.

Fact is.
Pumping out hardware revisions which got 200 Mhz extra clock speed, a bit less battery usage and such isn't something you can do when you're manufacturing a game console.
Those things are supposed to be powerful and last for quite a while.
Having Xbone v2 only games just carves up the userbase.

 

[KSP]

You're not listening to me. Of course it looks better in the grand scheme of things, I mentioned that at the top of my post - the more pixels the better. What I'm saying is that the returns are diminishing and investing in higher resolution is stupid when you can use that horsepower to render more accurate models, use better textures, add more bones for more realistic skeletal animation or use more complex particle effects. It's like rendering a cube - it has 6 faces, each face takes 2 polygons minimum, you only ever see 3 faces at a time with culling, so effectively you can render a perfect cube with a maximum of 6 polygons at all angles. You can also render the cube with 600 polygons for no reason, but it will look exactly the same. You can make tge cube look better with good lighting, shading and mapping though, so do that instead.

That we can agree on. In gaming, you have a point.

But in film and documentaries, 4K beats 2K hands down.

 

[Yil]

That we can agree on. In gaming, you have a point.

But in film and documentaries, 4K beats 2K hands down.

But even the slowest card can eventually finish rendering.

 

[sarkwalvein]

But even the slowest card can eventually finish rendering.

Please don't say that.
My C64 castle master nightmares are coming back.
With me preparing and drinking a milk shake between frames.

 

[KSP]

New hardware revision every year.
With some hardware revisions adding no improvements but pointless additions yet sell with a pricetag of 600 to 700 quid.
AKA Samsung Galaxy....

If this is going to turn out anything like Ouya, the console market will die quickly.

Completely agree. It'll kill the console market.

Multiple SKUS with various performance tiers and various patches for each console and various reviews for each console configuration.

They are killing what has become a vital industry for gaming.

Its like reinventing the wheel. Nobody asked for this, nobody wants it, and they insist on doing it just cause they can.

The console industry is robust because its simple, ruin that simplicity and you ruin an otherwise health industry.

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Please don't say that.
My C64 castle master nightmares are coming back.
With me preparing and drinking a milk shake between frames.

My Voodoo will do The Witcher 3 in 8K right after the ice caps melt and refreeze and melt again.

 

[Yil]

Please don't say that.
My C64 castle master nightmares are coming back.
With me preparing and drinking a milk shake between frames.

It will finish before the computer breaks.
But seriously though, newer cards are beasts.

Completely agree. It'll kill the console market.

Multiple SKUS with various performance tiers and various patches for each console and various reviews for each console configuration.

They are killing what has become a vital industry for gaming.

Its like reinventing the wheel. Nobody asked for this, nobody wants it, and they insist on doing it just cause they can.

The console industry is robust because its simple, ruin that simplicity and you ruin an otherwise health industry.

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My Voodoo will do The Witcher 3 in 8K right after the ice caps melt and refreeze and melt again.

You know newer ps4 have better wireless than the original, right? And slightly higher clock too.

 

[KSP]

Yeah better wireless, thats exacly what I wanted to spend an another 4bills on. Don't you hate it when the PS4 takes a milisecond longer to connect to PSN.

 

[DjoeN]

I just want 4K from now on
(Just because i just bought an ultrahd 4k Samsung tv )

 

[Foxi4]

That we can agree on. In gaming, you have a point.

But in film and documentaries, 4K beats 2K hands down.

This isn't a thread about documentaries though, it's a thread about the Xbox One and a half. I'm negative towards 4K in context of the thread.

Rendering in true 4K requires an insane amount of horsepower and all it provides is a crisper image - for me slightly, for you noticably, but that's besides the point. That same horsepower could be used to just make nicer-looking games. There's a reason why the PS4 and the Xbox One are sometimes having trouble rendering at a constant 1080p@60FPS, and it's not because they're a "modest upgrade" over the PS3/360 - they're about 7-8 times beefier. The reason is that the games are just so much more complex, and you can see it. I'd argue that that's a better use of hardware than pushing 4K for no reason other than bragging rights, especially with UHD content being so rare anyways. The difference between HD and 4K in console games, to me, is smaller than the difference between Low-Medium and Ultra detail settings which stands out immediately like a sore thumb.

Right now we have some YT videos and some nature documentaries, great. I'll upgrade when there's actual stuff that uses 4K, and that's still a few years ahead. Even new blockbuster movies aren't distributed in 4K as a standard because next to nobody owns a 4K-capable machine - it's just cost prohibitive. There isn't any *pre-recorded or pre-rendered* 4K content, expecting real-time 4K today is asinine and a waste of money, even on PC.

I also disagree with the "different tiers" narrative - the entire Game Boy line was based on incremental upgrades and everyone loved it. Give users some adaptation time in-between releases, make the price right and nobody will complain. There already is a platform with vastly different configs that works fine - it's called PC gaming and it's doing fine with this thing called graphics settings. The difference with consoles is that it'll have optimized presets rather than sliders, woo-hoo. It's the same architecture, it scales fine. Games would still be optimized, it's nothing like the PC landscape with thousands of options, it's two SKU's.

 

[DinohScene]

This isn't a thread about documentaries though, it's a thread about the Xbox One and a half. I'm negative towards 4K in context of the thread.

Rendering in true 4K requires an insane amount of horsepower and all it provides is a crisper image - for me slightly, for you noticably, but that's besides the point. That same horsepower could be used to just make nicer-looking games. There's a reason why the PS4 and the Xbox One are sometimes having trouble rendering at a constant 1080p@60FPS, and it's not because they're a "modest upgrade" over the PS3/360 - they're about 7-8 times beefier. The reason is that the games are just so much more complex, and you can see it. I'd argue that that's a better use of hardware than pushing 4K for no reason other than bragging rights, especially with UHD content being so rare anyways. The difference between HD and 4K in console games, to me, is smaller than the difference between Low-Medium and Ultra detail settings which stands out immediately like a sore thumb.

Right now we have some YT videos and some nature documentaries, great. I'll upgrade when there's actual stuff that uses 4K, and that's still a few years ahead. Even new blockbuster movies aren't distributed in 4K as a standard because next to nobody owns a 4K-capable machine - it's just cost prohibitive. There isn't any *pre-recorded or pre-rendered* 4K content, expecting real-time 4K today is asinine and a waste of money, even on PC.

I also disagree with the "different tiers" narrative - the entire Game Boy line was based on incremental upgrades and everyone loved it. Give users some adaptation time in-between releases, make the price right and nobody will complain. There already is a platform with vastly different configs that works fine - it's called PC gaming and it's doing fine with this thing called graphics settings. The difference with consoles is that it'll have optimized presets rather than sliders, woo-hoo. It's the same architecture, it scales fine.

The problem is that the PS4 and Xbone aren't cheap, unlike the GBC and GBA back then.
PS4k and Xbone-Two or whatever their going to be named aren't going to be cheap as well.

I'd rather have a 1000 quid console then having to spend 600 every few years for some extra horsepower.
If that's going to be the thing, everyone would migrate to PC gaming.

 

[Foxi4]

The problem is that the PS4 and Xbone aren't cheap, unlike the GBC and GBA back then.
PS4k and Xbone-Two or whatever their going to be named aren't going to be cheap as well.

I'd rather have a 1000 quid console then having to spend 600 every few years for some extra horsepower.
If that's going to be the thing, everyone would migrate to PC gaming.

Of course they are, especially if you trade in the old one. With inflation accounted for, paying the price difference between the new and the old system is about the cost of a Game Boy. All they need is a 4-5 year lifespan of each iteration with 2 years of an adaptation gap - it's effectively the same span of time as a console generation, except you never lose game compatibility.