Why Videogames won't Look Much Better on PC because of Xbox One and PS4

Sony's and Microsoft's new consoles are about to launch this November just before the 2013 Holiday season. What does this mean for gamers? Well if you're a console gamer you'll get your much anticipated Next-Gen console at this time and it will be great. If you're on the PC on the other hand you won't see much of a difference and I'll tell you why.

-Chris Zele

Reason 1: The Next Gen Consoles have Low-End Hardware

The Xbox One and PS4 both run an AMD APU aka Advanced Processing Unit which combines the processor and graphics card onto a single chip. The problem with the APUs being used in the Next-Gen Consoles is that they are using AMD's Jaguar cores which aren't very high end as they are equivalent to Intel's Atom processors. Yeah does Atom ring a bell the processor that powered all of those shitty notebooks from yesteryear and yes it's that bad.

Reason 2: Games Cost a lot of Money to Make

Big budget games from developers like Square Enix, Ubisoft, and Rockstar need to sell millions of copies to break even as development costs can be 60+ million dollars. The result of extremely high development costs has made it so developers/publishers have been closing down left and right. THQ is the biggest company to close down in recent memory and it looks like Square Enix may be the next company to implode as its recent titles haven't sold very well. 

What does the last paragraph have to do with PC gaming? Our take is that PC gaming is not going to get better because developers are going to cut back on dev costs because they have been going into debt recently. Devs will most likely scale back costs and make lower fidelity games or games that look marginally better than they do now for PC users. Case in point, have you taken a look at the newest Battlefield 4 trailer? It looks the same as Battlefield 3, so visually it hasn't gone anywhere from the last game and this is likely the case for other upcoming games.

Reason 3: The New Consoles aren't Upgradeable

When PC gamer's want to upgrade their rigs they do so whenever they please. If you're an Xbox 360 or PS3 gamer your hardware is locked down and you can't add more RAM or upgrade the video card or CPU. The Next-Gen consoles will hold back PC gaming just as the previous consoles have done before. I just don't see the new consoles pushing gaming into the next generation with their lack of upgradeability. PCs can see a large boost in performance when their video cards are replaced but the consoles will see no such boost and will be left in the dust in no time.