Next gen gaming consoles

[Scuba_Steve]

Did they suggest an RRP?

No, 20th is Sony's announcement & there's been no official word it is a next gen release announcement. But given history (PS1, PS2, PS3) I think we can expect around $1k NZD @ release.

I do have some questions though.... Rockstar's announcement this week to push GTA5 back to September... related? If there's a PS4 version, I'll pay the horrific new adopter price for the PS4 no questions asked. What's the maximum texture size going to be... 4096 x 4096?

I'm wondering about the GTA thing too, could be to get a PS4 ver ready. Be good if they released the PS3 & PS4 ver on the same disc, save holding out till I can afford a PS4.

Have PCs ever taken the back seat performance wise?

Or do you mean per dollars? I used to think PS3 was expensive gaming, until I build a top teir gaming PC

I do wonder what the extra power is going to get though, consoles are generally only hooked up to fullHD display, so uber GFX isn't needed with current gen games, unless they start making next gen games which use them for uber physics...

Yes every time a new console is released PC's take the backseat & they'll mostly stay there for the 1st 4yrs with a bit of leap frog here & there. It's usually at 4yrs that the Devs have maxed out the potential of the GFX chip whereas the PC can carry on buying upgraded GFX cards each year
GFX isn't just Res, I assume the increase in power will be to drive the split 3D systems, better more detailed texture, better physics, more variety of GFX (something the current consoles still best even the latest greatest PC GFX card on thanks to direct coding). But you are right this next gen should be able to stop trying to best the GFX & gen back to making games instead of "art"

[bogan]

Yes every time a new console is released PC's take the backseat & they'll mostly stay there for the 1st 4yrs with a bit of leap frog here & there. It's usually at 4yrs that the Devs have maxed out the potential of the GFX chip whereas the PC can carry on buying upgraded GFX cards each year
GFX isn't just Res, I assume the increase in power will be to drive the split 3D systems, better more detailed texture, better physics, more variety of GFX (something the current consoles still best even the latest greatest PC GFX card on thanks to direct coding). But you are right this next gen should be able to stop trying to best the GFX & gen back to making games instead of "art"

PCs in general take a backseat yes, but the available hardware for PCs will still outperform that used in next gen consoles, it's just not many people have it; hence my per price comment.

No its not just res, but in general everything scales with res, so you can put all the fancy FXAA and AO, particles etc, but unless its driving a big screen, even mainstream GFX like the 660 won't be too taxed. What do you mean by direct coding making the consoles still best? Console GFX simply does not outperform PC gfx. If anything consoles are what holding PCs back cos devs won't realise the full potential if they have to develop for console as well.

[Scuba_Steve]

PCs in general take a backseat yes, but the available hardware for PCs will still outperform that used in next gen consoles, it's just not many people have it; hence my per price comment.

No its not just res, but in general everything scales with res, so you can put all the fancy FXAA and AO, particles etc, but unless its driving a big screen, even mainstream GFX like the 660 won't be too taxed. What do you mean by direct coding making the consoles still best? Console GFX simply does not outperform PC gfx. If anything consoles are what holding PCs back cos devs won't realise the full potential if they have to develop for console as well.

price, consoles continually out perform, but in the 1st few years consoles play leapfrog with PC gfx too

direct coding to HW far outperforms having to go through API's just look at PC GFX cards they're probably round 50x more powerful than those in console by now but they're only pulling round 4x the performance.
What I meant with the 1 part where current consoles still outperform even the best PC GFX setup is current gen consoles can handle around 20,000 different "objects", even the best gaming PC's max out at 5,000 (or 2-3,000 without performance hit) hence why alot of bricks, grass, trees, people etc are just repeated & look the same (PC's can replicate the same object over & over far in excess of consoles). This is because they have to go though DirectX if they too could direct code then yes, they would far outperform consoles in variation as well, but given then choice people have in PC setups they can't direct code so performance takes a hit with API's.
As for "consoles holding back PC's" thats bullshit. The only ones holding back PC's is PC gamers like SMOKEU who doesn't like to pay for games & the majority of PC gamers who can't handle what PC's are capable of. Why on earth would you make a game only 5% of the PC gaming market is capable of running?

[bogan]

price, consoles continually out perform, but in the 1st few years consoles play leapfrog with PC gfx too

direct coding to HW far outperforms having to go through API's just look at PC GFX cards they're probably round 50x more powerful than those in console by now but they're only pulling round 4x the performance.
What I meant with the 1 part where current consoles still outperform even the best PC GFX setup is current gen consoles can handle around 20,000 different "objects", even the best gaming PC's max out at 5,000 (or 2-3,000 without performance hit) hence why alot of bricks, grass, trees, people etc are just repeated & look the same (PC's can replicate the same object over & over far in excess of consoles). This is because they have to go though DirectX if they too could direct code then yes, they would far outperform consoles in variation as well, but given then choice people have in PC setups they can't direct code so performance takes a hit with API's.
As for "consoles holding back PC's" thats bullshit. The only ones holding back PC's is PC gamers like SMOKEU who doesn't like to pay for games & the majority of PC gamers who can't handle what PC's are capable of. Why on earth would you make a game only 5% of the PC gaming market is capable of running?

Yeh, I'm still not seeing it happen even in the first few years. Direct coding is beneficial, but offset by production costs and TDP. Spend 4x as much on a computer, and it'll make up for a consoles specific purpose design, and then some. Here a comparison for Oblivion 3 months after PS3 was released http://www.gamespot.com/forums/topic...vs-ps3-vs-x360

Is 2-3,000 objects really not enough? Anyway, consoles look worse at lower resolutions than a PC is capable of. To conclude the 'current situation' http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...arison-gallery those are screenshots from FC3 across xbox 360, pc, and ps3 at HD res. PC's look better, and can display at QHD with higher frame rates.

There's a number of reasons to why devs are developing for consoles instead of computers, then porting across; but the bottom line is if they were developing for better consoles, the ported product would be better too. Hence consoles holding PC games back.

[Scuba_Steve]

There's a number of reasons to why devs are developing for consoles instead of computers, then porting across; but the bottom line is if they were developing for better consoles, the ported product would be better too. Hence consoles holding PC games back.

That argument still doesn't fly, there are PC only games. They don't have all this fantastic GFX you reckon they would have, also PS3 Gen is the 1st Gen it was done console -> PC the rest was PC -> console
Hell about the only PC games to ever try & build "PC GFX" are Crysis & possibly Metro 2033.
Anyways if MS has their way you'll be gaming on an Xbox in the near future anyways, rumour has it they wanna kill PC gaming & absorb it into the Xbox (& make the Xbox upgradeable like a PC but with proprietary MS parts) With Windows becoming nothing more than a metro interface

[steve_t]

I've been waiting ages for PS4 but now wondering if it's worth waiting to see what Valve's Steam Box has to offer

[bogan]

That argument still doesn't fly, there are PC only games. They don't have all this fantastic GFX you reckon they would have, also PS3 Gen is the 1st Gen it was done console -> PC the rest was PC -> console
Hell about the only PC games to ever try & build "PC GFX" are Crysis & possibly Metro 2033.
Anyways if MS has their way you'll be gaming on an Xbox in the near future anyways, rumour has it they wanna kill PC gaming & absorb it into the Xbox (& make the Xbox upgradeable like a PC but with proprietary MS parts) With Windows becoming nothing more than a metro interface

There will always be a spectrum, look up some Crysis 3 videos if you want to see just how good PC games can be. With the industry standard essentially being console, its really only the best who push the envelope in the PC environment, like crysis and metro 2033. Put it this way, do you expect the quality of PC games to show the biggest increase in years once the next gen consoles come out, or stay much the same?

[Scuba_Steve]

I've been waiting ages for PS4 but now wondering if it's worth waiting to see what Valve's Steam Box has to offer

Yea I'm a bit confused about what they're trying to achieve there?
Are they just trying to give people a cheap setup box guaranteed to run games that pass a "steam cert" or something?
Then there's Ouya which seems to be doing just that with Android games.
I guess "casual gaming" is becoming where the moneys at in more recent times, but are these devices really filling any void, or just creating their own void to fill?

[SMOKEU]

As for "consoles holding back PC's" thats bullshit. The only ones holding back PC's is PC gamers like SMOKEU who doesn't like to pay for games & the majority of PC gamers who can't handle what PC's are capable of. Why on earth would you make a game only 5% of the PC gaming market is capable of running?

I have been bitterly disappointed with several modern games, up to the point I uninstall it after an hour at the most. With some games I'll download a torrent, try it out, and if I like it and the game has good multiplayer features (like BF3), then I'll happily pay for it.

My moderately overclocked single 2GB 6950 was released in December 2010, and yet it can handle all modern games at 1080p, although I do have to turn the graphics down to medium or medium - high settings on many games, so you don't need a super expensive system to handle modern games unless you want to play everything at 1080p+ with high graphics settings. Most desktops built in the past 2 years with a reasonable GPU can handle modern games.

[Akzle]

y'all realise pirating console games only requires a DL DVR drive and some linux awesome, eh?
else install linux to your console and rip them straight to the HDD.

[Headbanger]

Yes every time a new console is released PC's take the backseat & they'll mostly stay there for the 1st 4yrs with a bit of leap frog here & there.

Never happened, Even a modest gaming PC was running games at a higher resolution's then what the current generation of consoles run at on the day of their release. 720p upscaled is nothing to be proud of, Neither is the halving of the frames per second.

[Headbanger]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest your pc gets outperformed by a console because of all the shitty apple software you run......

[bogan]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest your pc gets outperformed by a console because of all the shitty apple software you run......

Can I go out on the other limb and say mine performs heaps better because of the awesome apple software I run then?

[Scuba_Steve]

Never happened, Even a modest gaming PC was running games at a higher resolution's then what the current generation of consoles run at on the day of their release. 720p upscaled is nothing to be proud of, Neither is the halving of the frames per second.

Does happen, I saw my mate piss away a fuck load of moneys on the latest & greatest 8800GTX (round 1500$) & intel CPU (round $1k) just before the PS3 release, come forward a year he was due a replacement as they no-longer "cut the mustard"
But if we go back to PS1, no PC was capable of it's GFX. It took till round 3DFX Voodoo II -> III before PC's caught up with the PS1, but then PS1 did bring polygons to the table a whole new era of gaming.

And top end machines aren't "modest gaming PC's", you do understand (as I've mentioned before with PC gamers holding PC gaming back) most gamers aren't running particularly good specs, just look at Steam survey results. They show majority of gamers running dual core 2.3-2.7 CPUs, Intel G31/G33 GFX & 4-8Gb RAM with the most common dedicated GFX being 6100
Your "modest gaming PC's" account for around 10-20% of the PC gaming community

[imdying]

You mate could have used an 8800GTS (<$700) and the next CPU down (<$500) and have 95% of the result though.

The Steam stats are skewed by a large percentage of their users being stuck on the family white box; they're not gaming PCs perse.

The reality is, if you want the best graphics at the best frame rates, you're stuck on a PC. Have a look at Gran Turismo 5... it's a mostly detail-less world that allows very few cars on the track at once. GTA4 is another example... get a few explosions on the screen and it's goodbye frame rate, the number of NPC/vehicles on the screen is small, and that's at only 720p.

The best thing about consoles is you just pop the disc in and off you go (ok, except for the 200MB patch it wants to download, after another 100MB system patch, but for the most part it holds true).