From Pretty Good Gaming:
The Country Caller also has coverage of this story:
4K and HDR are the two buzzwords that have been circulating in the tech world and now, in the gaming world as well. The launch of Xbox One and PlayStation 4 Pro brought those two technologies in to the console space.
Showing the difference introduced by the two standards can be difficult, and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) acknowledges as such. In a recent podcast with Major Nelson (via SegmentNext), Xbox’s Albert Penello talked about the two standards and how it is challenging to market them simply because showcasing them requires the right display technologies.
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4K presents four times as many pixels as 1080p, but to actually perceive a clear difference, one must own a 4K display first to see all those pixels sharpen up the image as we go from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160. High-Dynamic Range (or HDR) is probably even more difficult to showcase, just because the displays until now have been SDR in comparison. HDR improves the range of colors that the TV can produce. For example, if you get 10 shades of gray with a standard TV, you get 50 shades of gray (no pun intended) with an HDR display. You simply get colors that are true to life. The luminosity of the screen can allow dark scenes to show more depth and hidden details, and bright scenes can be brighter.
This is the underlying problem; you cannot show the difference when the tech required to demo isn’t available at the consumer’s end. “You have to fudge things a little bit to show the differences,” said Albert Penello. TV manufacturers have been marketing 4K HDR TVs by ramping up colors and making scenes more pop in comparison shots.
So, basically, they're using bullshots to sell 4K gaming. And why not? They've been using bullshots for years to sell all of their games, so why not their game systems?
4K gaming is not going to be a thing. I mean, it's not actually even available, except on PC, and since PC gamers don't seem to be in any rush to buy $1400 monitors, that means that 4K isn't going to become a widespread phenomenon the way HD did. That's because HD adoption was driven by legislative fiat in the U.S., when every broadcaster in the land was required by law to switch from analog broadcasts to HD broadcasts.
Makers of HD televisions reaped an enormous windfall in when everybody replaced their old, analog TV with an HD TV, but that wasn't a natural result of market forces; everybody in NA did not just wake up and want HD television sets. Everybody in NA, faced with the need for an HD TV if they wanted to keep watching television, bit the bullet and bought one, mostly with borrowed money.
4K does not have an equivalent legislative force pushing it, which means that consumers, almost all of whom have recently bought HD televisions, have no need for 4K, especially since there's almost no native 4K content to display on them. HD TVs are good enough for now, which means that only early adopters, the very wealthy, and those whose HD TVs are needing replacement, are in the market for 4K at all.
That's not a recipe for mainstream adoption, and without mainstream adoption, you've got a chicken-and-egg situation again: a small 4K customer base means that it doesn't make sense to make 4K content for them, especially given all the added costs involved; and a lack of 4K content means that there's no real desire on the part of consumers to buy expensive 4K displays.
This is a problem for consumer electronics companies, who need for revenues to go up year after year, and who can't sell huge volumes of HD equipment anymore because everybody has it already. Their solution to this problem is, apparently, lies. I wish I could say that I was surprised, but I'm not surprised.
This is a problem for consumer electronics companies, who need for revenues to go up year after year, and who can't sell huge volumes of HD equipment anymore because everybody has it already. Their solution to this problem is, apparently, lies. I wish I could say that I was surprised, but I'm not surprised.
You don't need a 4K display for gaming. You don't need to buy a new console to drive the 4K gaming experience, especially since those consoles aren't rendering in native 4K anyway. Nobody needs any of this shit, in exactly the same way that we didn't need 3D displays a couple of years back, and don't need VR displays now.
The result, in all three cases? A passionate but very niche market for specialized content which requires the specialized hardware, followed by declining interest, and eventual irrelevancy. It's already happened to 3D displays, of course; it's happening to VR right now, and I predict that it will happen to 4K, too.
The result, in all three cases? A passionate but very niche market for specialized content which requires the specialized hardware, followed by declining interest, and eventual irrelevancy. It's already happened to 3D displays, of course; it's happening to VR right now, and I predict that it will happen to 4K, too.