Mark Cerny has been in the news lately for some strange and rather questionable rhetoric. Earlier this month he made waves when he announced that the PS4 Pro could, in theory, split the current 32-bit APU into two 16-bit operations, effectively doubling the already paltry 4.2 TFLOPS of computing power. However, this was proven to be a damp squib, since the technology has been around since 2002 and that it’s been used to some extent before. Many advanced game engines utilize 32-bit computation so unless we’re going to see a lot of pretty indie games on the console, it doesn’t help games like Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.
With the Xbox ‘Project Scorpio’ grabbing everyone’s attention even with these desperate comments from Cerny, it wasn’t a long wait until he was back at it trying to downplay the true power of the upcoming Xbox console. According to Mark, he noted that the power needed to achieve ‘true 4K’ gaming was in excess of 8 TFLOPS and that anything less was completely incapable of this feat. Strangely enough, Sony has peddled the underpowered PlayStation 4 Pro as a ‘4K gaming console’ demanding that all developers play along to their tune in an attempt to mislead consumers into thinking that they will get 4K native gaming, instead of the actual sub-4K upscaled games.
Microsoft and their Xbox division have since the announcement been steadfast at assuring gamers that all games developed on the Xbox ‘Project Scorpio’ will be native 4K, at least from a first-party perspective. The console was touted at 6 TFLOPS of GPU performance, however, the specifications aren’t set at the moment and Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox, was quoted recently stating that development was going well. Microsoft also announced that the Scorpio was tightly conjoined with actual developers and that the console was designed around what they needed to achieve 4K natively.
Developers like Rod Fergusson have already said that Gears of War 4 will be native 4K on Xbox Scorpio. Considering that it might just be the best-looking game on Xbox One at the moment, that’s quite a feat. Plus, imagine Sea of Thieves at native 4K. Just imagine those amazing water effects! Just because Cerny can’t do it that doesn’t mean others can’t. Many people have come out and said that 6 TFLOPS is enough for 4K gaming if you’re going on a console. The development environment is different than what we get on PC. Cerny should take that into account.
I’m pretty excited to see what Mark Cerny will come up with next, with the PlayStation 4 Pro launching in November. Do you agree with Mark on these comments or do you find it problematic? Let us know below.
Source: SegmentNext
Dreyer was a regular ICXM contributor between 2016–2017, publishing 139 articles across opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative. They post on X as @dreyer_smit.