A lot of spec-talk about both consoles now - you guys seem to be experts in the area so I just want to ask you a simple question. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Is it not so that today it is a problem that developers almost never use the potential of, what you call, the mid-range graphics card because new ones are being released every morning? Aren't both the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 specs good enough to create wonders with, with a little knowledge about what they actully work with? Doesn't these specs mean that we can save a lot of money and still have good looking games with great physics, and at the same time developers will know what they work with and don't have to try out new hardware everyday?

Just wondering. I'd love to know.

All the hot secs you can handle.

PlayStation 4, yes...expect high-end PC graphics and performanc, with the added bonusses of console gaming.
Xbox One...is a different story, expect inferior multiplatform ports and mid-range PC visual flare/performance.

You could say we are \puts on sunglasses/...the secsperts.

But, to answer your question, I think it only makes sense for the latest technology to be utilised and to push the envelope for graphics and physics and whatnot. I wouldn't think Nvidia and AMD would be too pleased if they didn't have the most cutting edge game engines to show off their shiny new graphics cards.

It's the closed environment of the consoles really that have always been their main strength, and why we get the likes of Halo 4 that, (and I might not be entirely correct here) probably couldn't be possible on a PC of the same spec.

the easiest way to solve optimization problems is more hardware.

I love secs.

But if there's a degree on your wall, I haven't seen it.

I would expect the games will look the same on either machine so there's no need to worry about specs.

There are games that you can't run well on their highest settings with mid-range cards. Far Cry 3 and The Witcher 2 are both pretty good examples. It's not that it's difficult to utilize that potential - it's that PC's are so far ahead of the current consoles that the settings on even mid-range cards look and run exceptionally better. Yes, developers do get to use the potential of good cards when they include DirectX 11 features and higher resolution textures, among other things.

The PS4 and the Xbox One will look pretty damn good, yes, but you must remember that consoles are different. They are made with playing games in mind, and optimized as much as possible for the purpose of playing video games.

To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what you're asking. Are you wondering if developers can save money with the extra power afforded by next generation consoles? I think the answer to that doesn't exist at this point. I think that publishers and developers are both looking for ways to make games without spending as much money and without losing those great graphics that we're all expecting, but whether it will actually be cheaper to make a AAA game next generation has yet to be seen.

If Halo 4 were ported to the PC and you tried to play it on a similarly-spec'd machine from 2005, then it probably wouldn't run all that well because of just that. You'd have to limit the framerate to 30, lower the resolution to 1280x720, etc., and that's not really acceptable for PC games.

It's spelled "sex" and consoles don't really have one. I guess you could change that with special peripherals though.

I guess this is an anti-PC gaming topic phrased as a question? I would say that more and better hardware isn't the way to create wonders, since there have been spectacular, inspiring video games being released since at least the '80s. More and better hardware does, however, enable developers to do a greater variety of things with their games for sure. The SNES has some of my favorite games ever, but if I said that since there are SNES games that I love and think are more or less perfect, all games henceforth should be able to run perfectly on a SNES and there's no point in owning a more powerful system, that would seem insane, right? By the same reasoning, why insist that if a game can't be experienced with uncompromised visuals except by people with an i5 or better and a 570+, it's not an experience worth having at all? I mean, do you think it's some huge burden put upon developers to see what new tech can do? Would you believe that some of them may even just want to make their game look as good as possible regardless of how many people can actually play at those settings? This extends beyond visuals too: it would be crazy to say that a developer shouldn't make a game at all if it wouldn't play well on a standard controller, right?