I was just using the youtube example to give an idea of details being added, to help understand that there would not be pop ins but added details. Your starting point in this situation is what your console can do on its own and not related to resolutions at all, but instead of the quality of the object being rendered. You would still have the level of detail in the game that your console is able to achieve on its own without extra help.

The offline POTENTIAL of the PS4 over the Xbox One is formidable.

Also, since the PS4 optimizations will be directly transferrable to Mantle, developers implementing Mantle will focus more on the PS4 than Xbox One. As DICE indicated in it’s Mantle presentation, stating flat out in a slide future Frostbite development and optimization will focus on the PS4 and Mantle.

This makes even more sense knowing Mantle is built to be extensible to Intel, Nvidia, ARM, Apple, Android and Steam OS.

What you have been trying to imply has been quite clear. But do you honestly think that a gamer who buys a 60$ game should have to settle for shadows with artifacts just coz his internet connection is slow. I for one can clearly see the difference between a 240p youtube video and a 1080p youtube video, and would abhor having to settle for 240p quality even for a minuscule moment.

True, you would have to have an incentive to opting in and allowing use of your computer as a client. As you say a give/take model or you could have game incentives or ways for users to make money by providing computing time, etc.
As for using local computers, it is really no different than using computers that are connected over the internet, in fact much faster connection speeds. Blender and Maya already have software clients that do this for creating rendering farms that distribute tasks across them on your local network. To go through that hassle, you would have to really want more detailed graphics though haha. But just an idea of possibilities.

As far as Microsoft increasing their monthly/yearly fees for their network use, well I think we will have to wait and see. If there is a demand for it i.e. – More Subscriptions/Increased Console sales, then it would be a safe bet the fees will stay the same. Console sales are already looking more promising then last generation, if they can keep it going (which I believe MS is banking on) then we, as subscribers should be fine. However, at the same time, it can go south, but it is not looking that way at the moment, so it would be considered a worse case scenario. As far as games go, TitanFall will be the game changer for the consoles, even if “720p” LoL

Aye – if they can get distributed computing happening (one of the ideas Sony had with the Cell, although it was half-baked at very best) then you could use local PCs as computing clients. I’m not sure about an opt-in processing network though – the electricity cost of running a computer using a significant proportion of its CPU isn’t insignificant, most users would wise up to this pretty quick and it’d likely be limited to people that needed to use the network as much (or more) as they were taking out of it.

As far as I can see (and I’m happy to hear other arguments), my argument is only confusing if you assume that the $50/$60 a year people have been paying on XBL for half a decade is only now going to pay for servers for cloud computing – ie, that Microsoft fleeced its customers for half a decade, but is now willing to forego that profit to pay for cloud servers, which would be a brave assumption on a lot of levels ;). Don’t forget that Microsoft (like Sony) is a company run for the benefit of its investors. Its investors want to see a return on investment. Sure, they could afford to treat fans on XBL like charity cases, but I’d be surprised if that’s what they decide to do. Therefore, MS (and anyone in the provision of cloud services) needs to recoup their spend. That’s why Office is moving to a subscription model – because they’re running Office 365 from Azure (on a side note, I bet the Office 365 users were thrilled that the XBL launch broke their product for half a day or so – there’s a ‘benefit’ of the cloud we don’t hear about much ;)), and their business model simply won’t work on the old model. Sony’s approach to the cloud (they are actually investing in servers) is based on cloud streaming, where customers will pay for the games they stream, when they stream them, linking an ongoing revenue stream back to their server maintenance costs. At the moment, Microsoft’s plan for recouping its cloud processing costs haven’t been outlined, but they’re a business, and at the end of the day, the customers will have to pay for the services, and it won’t be through the existing XBL subscription.

As for your comment about a PS3, KZ:SF is streets ahead of the best of last-gen (TLoU), and that’s with larger environments and more interactive elements (more enemy AI about at once). But I have a PS3, PS4 and PC, and had a 360 at one point (it got traded towards the PS4 once I’d had my fill of Halo 4), and am _very_ happy with Sony’s move into next-gen. I’d be happy with an XB1 as well, but am particularly fond of KZ’s MP and War Thunder.

The shadow is already there, rendered on your console. You would only be gaining detail. Think of it like watching youtube when it starts out low detail but as you watch it the details “quality” gets better. There is no popping in, there is only clearer better details that are being applied. If you have a decent connection the details will be there from the start, if you do not, it will get better over time. And if you do not have internet you will still have the shadow that your console is able to render on its own with less details.
I hope that makes sense to you?

as per the example that you have cited, we’ll be having shadows popping in all over the place. it would be a horrible effect

Of course Sony could implement cloud computing. Cloud computing isn’t owned by a company it is a method of offloading computing resources that has been used for many years.

This article is about what happens when the resources of memory are used up. Cloud computing is really the only answer to add additional power to these existing machines. It can’t be used in every situation but there are many times when it makes sense and will provide solutions when your console needs more resources.