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Microsoft and Sony Are Debating Over Whose Console Really Offers 'True 4K' (arstechnica.com)
Sony's PlayStation 4, which will go on sales in two months, comes loaded with rendering pipeline and some proprietary upscaling techniques that can improve lower resolution base signals to take fuller advantage of a 4K display. Microsoft is seemingly upset with how Sony is marketing this, and it is not shying from telling people that no amount of upscaling can fill in those missing 4K pixels and the hardware inefficiency to produce native and "true 4K" images that the Project Scorpio, its gaming console that is coming next year can. Microsoft has also said that any game that it will launch during the Scorpio timeframe will "natively render at 4K." But the debate is anything from over because Microsoft keeps reminding everyone that the processor and GPU in its upcoming console is more powerful. As ArsTechnica explains: With Scorpio, Microsoft seems to be arguing that every first-party game at launch will be able to generate and render nearly 8.3 million pixels (four times as many as a 1080p game) at an acceptable frame rate (i.e., at least 30 times a second). That would be quite an achievement. As we noted back at E3, it currently takes pricey, high-end PC graphics cards like the Nvidia GTX 1080 or the AMD R9 Fury X -- cards that run $300 or much higher -- to "barely scrape by" with a native 4K, 30fps game. And those PC cards seem to have significantly more raw power than what is being claimed by Microsoft -- 9 and 8.4 teraflops, respectively, vs. a claimed 6 teraflops for Scorpio (and 4.2 teraflops for the PS4 Pro).Microsoft's head of Xbox planning, Albert Penello said, "I know that 4.2 teraflops is not enough to do true 4K." In an interview with Eurogamer, Penello adds:I think there are a lot of caveats they're giving customers right now around 4K. They're talking about checkerboard rendering and up-scaling and things like that. There are just a lot of asterisks in their marketing around 4K, which is interesting because when we thought about what spec we wanted for Scorpio, we were very clear we wanted developers to take their Xbox One engines and render them in native, true 4K. That was why we picked the number, that's why we have the memory bandwidth we have, that's why we have the teraflops we have, because it's what we heard from game developers was required to achieve native 4K.
Penis length comparison, rather.
Seriously, anyone giving a shit about higher resolution? What I care about is sensible gameplay and fun. You remember fun? Try to put it back into games and I'll bother buying some again.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Meanwhile most console gamers have already picked a side and will probably just upgrade whichever system they've already invested in.
This seems like a lot of whining from Microsoft considering they marketed the XBOX 360 as a 1080p machine, though almost all the games rendered in 720p (the PS3 had many more games rendering in higher resolutions that generation). Since the PS4 Pro will play 4K video and render at higher than 1080p (then do some extrapolation tricks), I’d say Sony can call it a 4K Box.
Letter To Iran
Not many people have 4k sets, HDR isn't standardized, and by the time things get sorted out and these end up in peoples' homes, the next generation will be upon us and ready to fully exploit 4k.
4K TVs are outselling 1080p ones. HDR may not be standardised but from a console perspective once it has been it can be resolved by a simple firmware update.
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OK, for the pedants. But for the real world "full HD" was 1920x1080 (called 1080p) and 4 times that is indeed 3840x2160. That is exactly 4 times the pixels, so it is indeed 4k.
No, that would make it "4X". The suffix "k" means "thousand," and neither dimension of 3840 nor 2160 is >4000. What people call 4k should be called 2160p or UHD. "4k" is made up marketing hype that doesn't mean anything.
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