A console which isn't redundant when it is shipped? The specs for this thing do just make it look like a rubbish PC.
Considering consoles don't need that much specs because their games are much more optimized for the hardware i think we will finally see a nice bump in PC gaming specs requierements. Also, unified memory is the shit!
A rubbish PC? Perhaps for general use, but not for gaming. Both have GPUs that are a little better and a little worse than a 7850. The 7850 is the de facto 1080p king with a single gb of vram. But they don't have a single gb of vram. Both have rather interesting memory setups that open the door to gaming at more than 1080p. It's not a stretch to say that 4k (or near 4k) gaming was in mind when these consoles were designed. So I find it a little irritating that you point out that eight is less than sixteen, so the consoles must suck. Unsurprisingly, it's more complicated than that. If you look past shallow spec tables, you can see that not only do these consoles match reasonable current gaming PCs (like every console at launch), but these consoles are a look into the future of gaming PCs.
They are a look because we'll have to curb down the PC stuff so that consoles can keep up. Also Xbox is a remote that works through voice
Even if a console was ever created ahead of an entire generation of pc's it will be out of date in a few years time, and be left behind. Because of Microsoft's no modding policy. Where a pc you can take the parts out and replace them over time, and you can keep doing this long as you want to.
Now that they are going to x86 architecture I am sure things can be done to mod the shit out of it without MS knowing.
Well I guess it would make it easier to put the xbox's OS into a disassembler and alter the binary code.
Yes, 4k of shit. Basic math: a*b = area = pixels there are to draw 1920 x 1080 = ~2M 4096 x 2160 = ~8M It's not 2 times as many pixels but 4 times as many pixels to draw. If best graphics card there is now can't push 8M pixels with something interesting in them then console won't do that either. Face it, console were usually a lot ahead of good PCs at debut, Xbox 1 and PS4 are just mediocre today, 1 PC GPU iteration later they'll be pathetic. There's no fucking way really high-end GPU can be fitted into such a tiny and crappily ventilated box as "gaming console". You'll get your lower than HD res gameplay or 30 FPS or some other trade off. I'd much rather buy good PC, 5 m HDMI cable, wireless controller, plug it into TV and laugh at consoles. The never ending story of PC gaming "dying" is just a myth caused by misrepresentation of sales. Lots of sales moved to online stores, while console sales that appear so huge are so because most of them are bought in traditional stores. PC already won because consoles will be x86. Last of all, technical inferiority of consoles is visible more clearly than ever because architecture is the same and comparison is almost trivial.
I don't know what "generation" means. I was told that Xbox 360 was next-gen, wasn't it? Is Xbox 1 next-next-gen? What more can I ask? Amount of RAM that doesn't fucking suck if lifetime of this new "innovation" will be another 8 years. 8GB of RAM costs $60 or something like that, one has to be practically retarded not to get more. Oh, I forgot they added 32MB of cache (SRAM, your CPU caches are made out of SRAM not DRAM). PS4 has higher bandwidth ones ("5133 MHz", marketing MHz that is) so they at least have some kind of excuse.
The only thing we can do is wait and see, it would be interesting to see a console actually perform better than whats expected of it. Because it certainly sounds a lot better than its previous console, but it also sounds like a huge fucking scam especially with no backwards compatibility and you have to pay a fee to use used games. Frankly it appears people stopped caring about bad press nowadays, everyone is now trying to top each other on who can be a more horrible person. They seem to forget that we are the ones who give them money, and there is only so much you can do to consumers before they snap.
Consoles tend to be released with noticeable jumps in hardware performance, because if one company releases a console with a big graphics jump, the other companies want to release something too so they get a bit of the upgrade market. If they don't, they think they will lose out because everyone already bought the first released new console and won't want to buy another new console. A generation is basically a jump in performance for consoles. Next-gen is when you are talking about the generation after the currently marketed and supported generation.
Consoles are already sold at a loss the first years of their lifecycle so it's reasonable to limit the hardware costs whereever they can.
Ugh, why do I even keep trying. What I meant was that WiiU is not a serious competitor here, and I highly doubt people would want to stay "current gen" for yet another 8 years.
It was a throwback to the older console wars. And to be honest, if I were to get a console, I'd get the Wii U.
The Wii had the most sales in the current generation, I doubt the Wii U will lag behind Sony and Microsoft.