"Oh yes, I'm going there."
It seems like every other day, there's a brand new article which contains new information about the brand-new 'next-gen' systems. Sometimes there's news of a quote from one of the developers, or PR department. Then sometimes there's news on one of the new games.
But most of the time - the main news that circulates these two systems - are news of their respective technical specifications. Yes, whenever it something like: "Console XYZ is using an 'XYZ' GPU" or "Console XYZ has 'XYZ' amounts of RAM" - people lose their heads and start singing songs of praise and/or chants of "in yo face!"
It baffles me as to how much people care about the technical specifications of these systems...I mean good grief, you'd think they helped build the thing. But what baffles me even more is that all of this hulla-ba-loo is being generated over c o n s o l e s.
Consoles have never been the go-to place for pure raw power. Once the 'specs' of the respective system is finalized and the unit is mass produced - that's it. The on-board parts never change. Storage capacity might get an upgrade, and maybe a newer model might improve heating and noise issues but that's as far as "upgrades" go. You can't physically go into the unit and upgrade it's specs - simply because that stuff is all locked up.
That's why I don't get why this whole debate about which system is more powerful, has suddenly become center stage. Yes, these discussions have existed from basically since the beginning ("Blast processing" and "Genesis does what Nintendon't" - come to mind) ~ but still, console specs don't really matter.
Let me give you an example.
Let's say there's this nice, sleek sports car. It has a powerful engine, great gas mileage, beautiful, high-tech interior ~ yeah - all that good stuff. But let's say that you just let it sit there, each day, just admiring it's beauty, because you can't drive it. No matter how great the power and features of that car are - you simply don't know how to pilot it properly.
In like manner, console's are similar to cars. Doesn't matter how good they are - if they don't have the proper drivers (read: games) - then their horsepower means little to nothing. Don't believe me? Well - just look at history. For the past 5 generations; counting from the 3rd-gen (when Nintendo revived the Atari-slain gaming industry) up until now - the weaker console has taken the crown.
SEGA Master System < NES
Neo Geo < SNES
N64 < PS1
XBOX < PS2
PS3 < Wii
Even on the handheld field - the same game is being played:
PSP < DS
PSVITA < 3DS
My point is - everyday the war continues about which new system is more powerful, and because it's so powerful - it's sure to take the crown - but yet as history stands; console specs and pretty graphics don't ensure an instant victory - games do. Honestly - how many people who buy game consoles care about things such as: "How much RAM does it have?" "What GPU is it using?" "How many cores does it have?"
Am I saying that neither of the new consoles have great games? No, not at all! But what I am saying, is that people seem to be more concerned about what resolution the games, what FPS it runs at, and what specs the system that will be powering the game has - more than actually sitting down and having...well - fun.
Besides - let's face it - the graphics road is starting to come to a gradual close. Things have evolved quite a whole lot from the 8-bit area, but now we've basically hit the top. Why do I say that? Just look at games like the Last of Us, Battlefield 4, Killzone: Shadow Fall, Project CARS, and GTA: V. They're basically border-lining "photo realism". Although the graphics of the 8th-gen are set to look better than what we saw during the 7th-gen, how much more do you think it will progress?
If you're going to argue over the tech-stuff like that; you might as well just be a full-on PC gamer, as they're really the only ones who need to worry about things like that.
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