An ex-Naughty Dog developer, John Hable said on Gamingbolt that the PS4 and Xbox One will not reach 4k quality any time soon as it needs two more console generations before it is possible. Hable's statement seemed to debunk previous rumours that Sony and Microsoft will be releasing PS4s and Xbox Ones that can handle 4k gaming this year.
Hable stated on his interview with Gamingbolt that the timeframe wherein consoles will hit 4K is certainly not this generation of consoles.
"I don't have a good answer for you, but my guess would be longer than you think. One more console generation seems too quick. Maybe in two more generations? That would be PS6 and the 5th gen Xbox? And if we need to render in 4k then add another generation which puts us at PS7 and 6th gen Xbox. It'll be a while."
Another viable point Hable pointed out is the issue of funding. Rending a full game in 4K needs a lot of budget, however big game developers for the PS4 and Xbox One are either reluctant to shell out and take the risk or simply couldn't afford the cost.
"...Of course, they will never fully line up because of the content costs. Trailers and feature-length movies simply have a much higher budget per second than what the full game can afford. This difference is more than an order of magnitude in some cases."
Having a 4K gaming console release this early is useless as 4k console games are practically non-existent. If one will buy a 4K gaming console and only play games that are rendered in just 2K resolution, it is a waste of money. Even with upscaling features, it would still be a waste as most gamers wouldn't notice the difference between 4K and 2K resolutions.
Even if a console capable of 4K gaming is indeed released this soon, game developers wouldn't immediately take the advantage and spend millions of dollars on 4K games for an extremely limited market.
So in the end, 4K consoles is simply not yet practical as hardware is not cheap and more importantly, game developers are not yet focused on producing 4K console games. As of the moment, only the PC can get to 4K and that is final, for now.
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