WizardStan
Mega GP Mania
- Joined
- May 24, 2008
- Messages
- 16,731
You know what I miss? When game companies actually competed on games. Nintendo had some games, but Sega (and later Sony, and even Microsoft in the early days) had different games, and rarely did they cross platforms. Now it's not really so much about what games you can get on each system but how good a cross platform game appears visually on each.
The XBOne could be more technically capable, better CPU and memory and all that, more features, but because companies are pushing for cross platform compatibility none of those features are likely to be used. But graphics? Graphics are easy to make cross platform compatible, even if it means lowering the resolution.
So what you have are two machines with different hardware and different capabilities, one will be better at some stuff while the second will be better at others, and it's literally come down to who has the fastest rendering engine. XBox could be way better for AI, or networking, or maybe it can handle larger maps or whatever but none of that matters: it would all be reduced to lowest common denominator.
Make no mistake, the PS4 also has things that make it superior to the XBOne that probably won't be used, my lament is that developers are no longer competing to actually make use of these features, making a game that will absolutely only run on one system or the other because it takes full advantage of the system to really blow you away.
And I can't blame them for it, either. With all this new technology comes added cost, games are bigger, teams are bigger, they need to reach the widest audience to make the most money. It's an inevitability, so long as Sony and Microsoft are stuck in their cycle. Nintendo saw the cycle and broke out of it. For better or worse, no one can look at a WiiU and make a direct comparison on graphics alone against the PS4 or XBOne.
They could have done it, demonstrated that there was a trade off and added some features that took advantage of the camera in the XBone. I don't know what they would do, simply that they could have done something so it's no longer a straight up comparison between graphics. If things don't change, it's going to be just Sony, with no competition, and that's a terrible future to conceive.
The XBOne could be more technically capable, better CPU and memory and all that, more features, but because companies are pushing for cross platform compatibility none of those features are likely to be used. But graphics? Graphics are easy to make cross platform compatible, even if it means lowering the resolution.
So what you have are two machines with different hardware and different capabilities, one will be better at some stuff while the second will be better at others, and it's literally come down to who has the fastest rendering engine. XBox could be way better for AI, or networking, or maybe it can handle larger maps or whatever but none of that matters: it would all be reduced to lowest common denominator.
Make no mistake, the PS4 also has things that make it superior to the XBOne that probably won't be used, my lament is that developers are no longer competing to actually make use of these features, making a game that will absolutely only run on one system or the other because it takes full advantage of the system to really blow you away.
And I can't blame them for it, either. With all this new technology comes added cost, games are bigger, teams are bigger, they need to reach the widest audience to make the most money. It's an inevitability, so long as Sony and Microsoft are stuck in their cycle. Nintendo saw the cycle and broke out of it. For better or worse, no one can look at a WiiU and make a direct comparison on graphics alone against the PS4 or XBOne.
They could have done it, demonstrated that there was a trade off and added some features that took advantage of the camera in the XBone. I don't know what they would do, simply that they could have done something so it's no longer a straight up comparison between graphics. If things don't change, it's going to be just Sony, with no competition, and that's a terrible future to conceive.
