I left this article thinking: why the fuck don't these people who crow about graphics just build/buy a damn gaming PC? It isn't hard and it's not hideously expensive like it used to be and they seem just as dedicated to gaming as any scruffy PC guy. So, Forbes, being Forbes just kind of came out with another article which highlights why I like their writers so much:
I've noticed a huge shift once the PC and consoles smashed their markets together. When I was a kid, consoles were consoles: there were a lot of high-skill games, but they were simple concepts to implement. Arcades were in the same boat even though they were crushing PC and consoles in graphics for many years. But now we're at a stage where people can play both and the comparisons are obviously going to be made. It's nice to have a choice on where I get to play X game, but I'll never understand the new crop of gamer growing up thinking a console can actually compete with well made PC games except in the 3 areas the author mentioned. If anything, the constant dumbing down of mechanics and gameplay (look at what was scrapped for D3 to make a console port possible) gets even more tiring when some kid crows about how much better all around his proprietary platform is.The rumors are swirling. Battlefield 4 will be 720p on Xbox One, and the rarely-seen 900p on PS4. Call of Duty: Ghosts will be basically the same, but 1080p on PS4. The list of next-gen game rumors and speculation over frame rates and resolutions goes on and on. And nobody’s talking thanks to various contracts, NDAs, and so forth.
As Paul mentioned earlier, if there is a difference in resolution for the Xbox One and PS4 versions of a game like Call of Duty: Ghosts, most people probably won’t notice or care. The better textures and animations will make next-gen games look decidedly better than their current-gen counterparts regardless of their resolution. On a big-screen TV the difference is certainly going to be hard to spot.
To be honest, I was among those who believed next-gen signaled the dawn of 1080p as a standard in video games. But if this doesn’t turn out to be the case, I’m not sure it will actually matter.
More to the point, if you’re the type of gamer who really cares about resolution you should probably not be too attached to consoles to begin with. There are videos out there already showing Battlefield 4 running in 4K resolution on a gaming PC. That’s four times 1080p, all packed into one (very expensive) desktop monitor playing on a (very expensive) gaming rig.
I’m sure it looks awesome, too, though my 1080p desktop monitor can’t really show me how good a 4k game looks on an internet video. Then again, I did see the Battlefield 4 reveal played on a decked out gaming PC and projected onto the big screen. And it was monumental, graphics-wise. It’s not every day you get to see (alas, I didn’t get to play) a video game at a movie theater.
But I digress.
The point is that consoles aren’t really about graphics. The Xbox One and PS4 will make games look much better than they do now, but they still won’t hold a candle to gaming PCs. In two years graphics cards for PCs will leave the new consoles well in the dust.
Consoles are about three things: convenience, exclusivity, and the couch. They’re convenient because they simply plug and play. There’s no fuss. All games made for a console simply work without fiddling, drivers updates, and so forth. They have exclusive games that can’t be found on other platforms, and they are designed to be played in the living room or at least away from a desk on a television.
PC gaming is much more diverse both in terms of what’s on offer and how and why people play. And one of its benefits is being able to buy cutting edge hardware and display games at ridiculous resolutions with graphics settings pumped to the max.
To make a long story short, this is why I don’t think that any minor differences in hardware power between the Xbox One and PS4 will matter. If there turn out to be major differences, maybe I’ll whistle a different tune.
In the meantime, consider building yourself a PC. It’s fun, not terribly expensive, and you can play some really amazing looking games at resolutions much higher than 1080p, let alone 720p. I think both next-gen consoles will have great things to offer, and both will likely be plagued with launch issues.
It’s really more about the games than about their graphics, in my humblest of opinions, even though I enjoy amazing graphics just as much as the next gamer.
Someone mentioned how PC gamers are pretty pissy when it comes to consoles. I grew up on console and PC and even I'm mad. I'm mad (well, I was mad years ago, now I just bitch because I'm on the Internet) because with the shared market for both, the weakest system and it's control schemes are what's going to be optimized for. And this overemphasis on graphics makes me roll my eyes. Good graphics shouldn't even be a thing these days: AAA games should look good and have fluid animation and be expected to not brutalize the player. Maybe then developers could start writing some decent AI. But the current gen feels like slashing the tires on a Corvette so your Civic can compete with it in a race, then spending more on Toyo Tires stickers than performance upgrades.
