Is Future Potential for Gaming at 8K All it’s Cracked up to Be?
For better or for worse, mainstream gaming has long had a fascination with pushing resolution as a key feature. As much as long-time players often disagree, names like Sony, Microsoft, Ubisoft, and EA have constantly touted how important high resolutions are, and the apparent advantages they offer. Time and again, reality has shown these assumptions are limited at best, yet the big AAA companies refuse to learn, with even 8K said to feature on the horizon. That said, we’re now entering an age where resolution leaps are less important than ever, and in this article, we want to look at why.
How Much Does Resolution Matter?
The basic concept behind improving resolution is more detail. The higher the potential for more detail, it’s argued, the better a game can look. In the past, there has been some serious truth in this concept, as going from an older SD 480p to a more modern HD 1080p produces a high level of additional definition. The problem is that detail alone is not the most important factor in gaming, and that’s as true today as ever.
“Super Mario 64” (CC BY 2.0) by jjbers
Consider the recent release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for the Switch. Already widely celebrated as a fantastic title, this game runs between 900p and 720p, low by today’s standards, yet the success of this new Zelda entry has been overwhelming. A lot of this ties into the early fascination we had with higher resolutions no longer holding, yet publishers don’t seem to understand this fact.
For an illustration outside of strict video games, we could look at digital casino games, like what’s available on mobile deposit casino sites. Titles here like Lightning Roulette and Infinite Blackjack work extremely well on mobiles, yet mobiles have lower resolutions than PC screens. These titles on mobile offer the same engaging experiences as on laptops and desktops, and again it’s the base fun that keeps players engaged. In other words, there is a huge range of games and gaming types that demonstrate resolution alone doesn’t matter. In fact, in the real world, extra resolution can hurt the experience.
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Sacrifices at the Altar of Pixels
Pushing extra pixels to a display doesn’t happen for free, it implies costs in both hardware and game performance. 8K capable displays are expensive, and their extra pixel count also comes with a trade-off in higher display latency. Additionally, it requires an extremely powerful system to be able to output so many pixels at a decent frame rate. Even the fastest systems today can barely manage games at 8K, and for advantages that are often not perceptible to an untrained eye. In so many ways, the effort is not worth the cost, and that is not an issue that’s going to vanish any time soon.
Over so many decades of rapid technological progress, humanity seems to have internalized the idea that growth and advancement can and should continue forever. Reality isn’t so simple, however, where we eventually inevitably reach a point where advancement becomes unnecessary and unwarranted. That’s not to say that we wouldn’t accept eventual upgrades if they came at no extra cost, but until we’ve reached that point, resolutions like 8K are far more gimmicks than useful features. We know that won’t stop the big names from chasing them, however.
