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With the reveal of Microsoft's Project Scorpio and Sony's PlayStation Neo, the platform holders find themselves at a crossroads. Whether it's a 2.3x or 4x increase in processing power compared to their predecessors, the question is, just how should these resources be used to improve the games we play? As things stand, we've been told to expect higher resolutions, increased fidelity and more stable frame-rates, but the ambition here sounds limited when the hardware is capable of so much more.The bottom line is this: both Sony and Microsoft are effectively selling us the status quo in terms of gameplay, the idea being that they can create a two-tier market - existing console hardware caters for those with 1080p displays while the new machines are best experienced paired with a 4K UHD screen. But fundamentally, it's the same software, and in order to ensure that owners of existing systems are "not left behind", the chances are that they'll play much the same too. Indeed, Sony's guidelines for developers actively prohibit game-makers from providing exclusive features for the Neo hardware.
Cards on the table here - I'm not entirely sure that this is the best way forward, but I am one of the few to have had a preview of this kind of next-gen experience - and I was blown away. At the recent Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 launch, I played Rise of the Tomb Raider at native 4K with HDR enabled and with quality settings that, while not quite maxed, easily out-strip the Xbox One version. Aside from what looked like a wobbly 35-40fps (something easily fixed) the experience was simply magnificent. Improved effects, higher detail texture work, brilliantly vivid colour - this was the best Rise of the Tomb Raider experience it's possible to have, and compared to the existing console version, there was undoubtedly a 'next-gen' feel about it.
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