While the PlayStation 6 and the next Xbox console have yet to be officially revealed, Microsoft already teased it will provide the biggest generational leap ever. According to the tech experts at Digital Foundry, this is likely to happen with the help of machine learning.
Speaking during their podcast, the tech experts discussed the yet-to-be-revealed next-generation systems, saying that machine learning is likely to play a big part in the aforementioned generational leap. We are already starting to see this in both the PC and console space, with the widespread adoption of NVIDIA DLSS, which is powered by machine learning, and the PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, which will be introduced with the upcoming PlayStation 5 Pro.
According to Digital Foundry, the surface has been barely scratched regarding what machine learning is capable of, as, right now, it’s been used for denoising ray tracing with NVIDIA DLSS Ray Reconstruction. Many are the applications that are being researched, such as material and texture quality improvements and even geometry, so some of these machine learning-powered features could make the difference between the PlayStation 6 and the next Xbox over their predecessors, potentially making these systems the real 4K resolution, 60 FPS machines the current generation consoles were said to be.
Speaking about current consoles, Digital Foundry has no doubt that both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X were oversold. 4K resolution at 60 frames per second was impossible to achieve without PS4 and Xbox One level of visuals, and it was known from the start, mostly due to insufficient GPU bandwidth. Other features that were talked about before release ended up being unused, as many of them are expensive to implement.
With machine learning likely to have a major impact on future consoles like the PlayStation 6, it will be very interesting how its first introduction in the console space, the PlayStation 5 Pro, will fare. Thankfully, it seems like we won’t have to wait much longer to see more of the PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, as the mid-generation refresh is rumored to be revealed this month.
