PS5 And Next Xbox Shouldn’t Focus On 4K Resolution, Says Digital Foundry

In an interesting feature and video, Digital Foundry’s Richard Leadbetter has discussed the reason why both Sony and Microsoft shouldn’t focus on 4K as native resolution for their next-generation consoles.

In an interesting feature and video, Digital Foundry’s Richard Leadbetter has discussed the reason why both Sony and Microsoft shouldn’t focus on 4K as native resolution for their next-generation consoles.

According to Leadbetter, it made sense for Microsoft to do so with Xbox One X, as 4K was the clear difference that needed to be remarked between that model and other Xbox One consoles out there.

But with completely new hardware to be released on the market, it is more relevant – says Digital Foundry – to focus on what made the regular PlayStation 4 the phenomenon it still represents in terms of sales and buzz rather than simply on technology.

“Next-gen hardware design and marketing shouldn’t really be defined by native resolution. It was a key point of differentiation for Microsoft with Xbox One X, for a product very much aimed at a hardcore niche looking to get the best out of their expensive new TV purchases – but the new wave of machines will need the mainstream appeal that propelled PlayStation 4 to over 80 million sales,” the feature claims.

“The display upgrade in itself is no longer the focus of the experience and 4K screens can be addressed more efficiently without the need to focus on native resolution rendering. And that, in turn, opens the door to a more profound question: just what is next-gen? What are the new ideas that’ll shift new hardware? It’ll be fascinating to see what Sony and Microsoft come up with, but it’ll almost certainly be the case that to achieve these goals, technologies like checkerboarding, temporal super-sampling and dynamic resolution will have a big part to play.”

You can check the full feature here, and the video below. In the meantime, anyway, it looks we’re still quite far away from the announce and release of new consoles since they’re apparently planned from 2020.