Business Insider - When most people think of "next-generation" gaming graphics, they envision crisper textures, added realism, detailed environments, and a sharper resolution.
Resolution plays a huge role in the overall gameplay experience, and it's fast becoming a low-hanging ceiling that effectively limits the "next-generation" Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles.
Here's an example.
"Titanfall," the parkour shooter with large mechs thrown into the mix, is arguably the biggest debut yet for Microsoft's Xbox One. But did you know that when it debuted, there were regular old Xbox 360 games running at a higher 1080p resolution? Keep in mind, the Xbox 360 launched back in 2005 — some eight years before the Xbox One.
"Titanfall" ran at only 792p when it shipped, which is a significant drop compared to the 1080p HD quality most people are accustomed to by now.
In an age where we're beginning to see a push for 4K "Ultra HD" displays, which promise four times the resolution of 1080p HD TVs, it's tough to call anything "next-generation" when it's pumping out games at a lower resolution than the mobile games in people's pockets.
It's not just the Xbox One that's hampered by too little horsepower. While Sony's PlayStation 4 does have beefier hardware, it's still running into similar issues, just less frequently.
One of the biggest games at this year's gaming expo, E3, was the medieval roleplaying game, "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt." The game will be released in 2015, but even a full year and some change after the Xbox One's release, the development team still can't promise 1080p HD graphics.
"We will hit 900p no problem," executive producer John Mamais said in an interview with Cinameblend. "We'd like to get it up to 1080p on Xbox One. That's our goal. Whether we can do it or not I don't know. We've got to squeeze everything we can out of the hardware."
The graphics bottleneck stems from the graphics cards nestled within the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. The graphics card inside the PlayStation 4 is more powerful than the graphics card inside the Xbox One, but they're both vastly underpowered when compared to even mid-grade gaming PCs of the last couple of years. Read More
