I'm not really concerned in the slightest. For one thing, the 7th generation of consoles was already capable of producing truly beautiful games. Titles like the Last of Us were very pretty. I still remember watching in awe at the giraffe scene, for example and games that were made in 2007 like the original Bioshock are still highly playable and enjoyable whereas realistic titles from the ps2 are almost all eye-gougingly bad. That current consoles like the ps4 are ten times more powerful than that is meaningful.Hairless Mammoth said:
One thing you've got to understand is that our ability to render physics far exceeds our ability to render physics in real time. Even if you slapped the greatest computer together that money could buy, we could still turn the physics up enough to make it take hours or days or longer to render certain scenarios. Metal Ball smashing through a transparent glass horsie? Bam, hours of processing. So the way developers do it now is to go ahead and utilize what's left for physics while leaving some padding for processes that run away. So of course developers can utilize everything right away, that's never been hard to do. The thing that will make a difference is seeing new game engines developed specifically for this generation. Even though the hardware isn't unique, the jump in available resources should mean different methods of utilizing those resources. As new engines become available we will see more efficient uses of the hardware in meaningful ways and you will be able to tell a difference between end of console life games and current ones. I seriously doubt we'll ever see a transition as significant as the beginning and end of the 7th generation again, but such a significant difference isn't as necessary now that characters are largely on the upside of the uncanny valley if not altogether across using 7th generation devices. Some day, the processing required to process a game should as trivial to computer as word processing. Believe it or not, but word processing once took up the majority of computers resources. But eventually physics, lighting, character modeling and AI will have reached the necessary threshold of processing and our computers should continue improving. Perhaps improving to be able to render entirely new methods of digital interaction like actually immersive multi-sense VR.
In any event, 10x the past generation was a large step and well worth $400. It will be interesting to see if the ps4's use of GDDR5 actually ends up making a difference when we talk about resolution. Even in an x86 environment we've never really had machines that were able to reduce the latency enough to make GDDR5 function perfectly fine as DDR3 while still being high bandwidth RAM. Will the difference be noticeable? Maybe, we don't know yet.
However, at the end of the day, I'm simply not concerned about 1080p vs 4k, especially not on my TV. On a monitor, 4k or at least 1440p makes sense, you're only a few feet away from it. But for anything over 1080p (including 1440p) to matter you have to be 6-8 ft away from the TV if it's a 55 inch display. Again, that's for a 55 inch TV. My 42 inch TV? I'd need to be sitting around 2-4 feet away. The distance you're currently sitting away from your monitor.
That's just not going to happen. I sit comfortably 10 feet away on my comfy couch with a beer on the coffee or side table. Why would I care if it's in 4k when even 1440p wouldn't make a difference that far away even if I had a 55 inch display?
Look, I also own a powerful computer. I get why that's 4k capable. But you guys imposing this on consoles just doesn't make sense. Especially not for $400. The consoles are the right power for the right price. The alternative would have been to release a $600+ console for not that much more power.