Gemüsepizza;247881992 said:
PS4 Pro/XB1X and Switch were different situations. PS4 Pro / XB1X were always limited by their focus on current gen. And Switch was limited by it being a Nintendo console. Next generation for Sony/Microsoft is a completely different beast.
That's a fairly uncharitable descriptor. The Switch is limited by being a
handheld, and it's still an obscenely powerful handheld that can run
PS4 games without too many compromises or that much effort, in many cases, though that's considerably easier if you're working with an engine like UE4 or Unity, but still. And that's despite using an off-the-ship mobile chip from 2015, albeit one made by Nvidia. The Switch's successor is likely going to be an absolute
beast of a handheld device, if the Tegra Xavier's specs are of any indicator. But that's for another topic.
The exact amount of power in the PS5 is inevitably up in the air, but I'm wondering how that power will be used. Sony and MS have been pushing 4K
hard as of late, and I sincerely doubt they'd want devs to go back to 1080p as the standard. But 4K is also incredibly intensive in terms of rendering requirements, and would greatly reduce the capacity devs would have to improve graphics in other ways, making the power gains on paper look much less impressive in practice aside from nicer but not that impressive image quality improvements. And mandating roughly 4K rendering would give Nintendo and Nvidia an opportunity to release a PS4+ level system that could potentially play the same games but in 720p/1080p and with relatively worse graphics (but not massively compromised) on the go. But not mandating/heavily encouraging 4K rendering would severely undermine Sony's 4K push, mainly because devs prefer to cut back on resolution in favor of shinier bells and whistles most of the time, and I doubt there won't be devs who'll by happy to sacrifice 4K support because 1080p is "good enough". It's a nasty catch-22.