NVIDIA: New consoles will never match PC graphics

NVIDIA Senior Vice President of Content and Technology Tony Tamasi mentioned in an interview that game consoles leapfrogging PC graphic capabilities are definitely a thing of the past. Tamasi said Microsoft and Sony simply can't afford this: Talking about the current state of graphics and the shift in R&D budgets, device physics and power, since the PS3 and Xbox 360 came out, the Nvidia SVP said; “NVIDIA spends 1.5 billion US dollars per year on research and development in graphics, every year, and in the course of a console’s lifecycle we’ll spend over 10 billion dollars into graphics research. Sony and Microsoft simply can’t afford to spend that kind of money.”

Another reason for PC superiority sustaining into the foreseeable future is becasue of power budgets, “The most efficient architectures are from NVIDIA and AMD, and you’re not going to get anything that is significantly more power efficient in a console, as it’s using the same core technology.” That is the same tech as is in your PC - but with a restricted power budget of around 200-300W to make it living-room friendly. "Taken to the theoretical limits, the best any console could ever do would be to ship a console that is equal to the best PC at that time. But then a year later, it's going to be slower and it still wouldn't be possible due to power limits," added the Nvidia SVP.