Why did the console bit wars end? During the 32 bit era, PS1 and Saturn were 32 bit systems, and Nintendo was boasting about having a 64 bit system. The last time console makers boasted about bits in their system was the sixth generation, with the Dreamcast, GameCube, and PS2 being 128 bits.

Question

Why didn’t the bit war continue into the seventh generation? Why didn’t the amount of bits double to 256 bits like they did in past generations? Any insight into this would be appreciated.

In: 609

Answer 1

First thing to appreciate is that going from 32 bits to 64 bit depth isn’t a doubling of “capacity”. These numbers refer to the length of the basic data size. A 32 bit machine handles data that has a precision up to 2^32 (ELI5 – loosely speaking) which is roughly 4 billion. Essentially each 32 bit word can hold an integer between 0 and 4 billion. A 64 bit word can hold a number up to 18 quintillion. (essentially 4 billion billion)

For example think of colors.

1 bit color can show essentially black and white (2 gradations).

2 bit color can show up to 4 colors (fairly boring)

8 bit color can go up to 256 colors (well within a human to distinguish easily)

16 bit color is 32,000 colors (this allows for fairly good picture representation)

32 bit color is 4 billion colors (a regular human eye cannot detect this many colors/shades)

Anything more than 32 bits is already overkill for colors. And the same goes for sound etc.

At some point increasing bit depth is only really necessary for scientific/industrial work where extreme precision might be needed.