I've been thinking about the power of the console lately and considering how fast technology has already leapfrogged it. Considering the system is essentially a pc, the next console should be backward compatible with current games if they continue on that path.
So if they wanted to do a mid-life update without segregating the user base too badly, I have been thinking a lot about nVidia's Dynamic Super Resolution technology.
Lets say they release a PS4.5 a couple years from now with a GPU that can do 4k. They could still support people with 1080p TVs and older PS4 games by super sampling the games at 4k, then rendering them at 1080p. People lucky enough to have 4k TVs would then just run them at native resolution.
The games could be coded with auto selectable resolution so if you put the game in the original PS4, it would only render at 1080p. Something similar to how games work on mobile. If you have an Iphone 4, you can still run some Iphone 5 games, just not that great. Or if you have an older PC, newer games can be run with less detail.
I'm pretty sure its much more complicated than this but it has me hopeful that they will iterate the system more frequently this time around. I personally don't have a problem buying a new console every 3-5 years. As much as I would like to see another 7-10 years life cycle for this console, it can barely manage 1080p/30fps most of the time.
I know the problem with this is that some games would want to take advantage of the new horsepower and would only work on new system though. And eventually they would stop supporting older gen hardware like how Apple makes newer versions of iOS not compatible with older hardware. But this at least would give publishers a way to support the previous generation at the same time without charging us for remasters...
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