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

The N64 and PS1 weren’t exactly 64-bit.

That was a bit of hot air on Nintendo’s part. While the N64 did technically have a 64-bit CPU and co-processor, the vast majority of code was written for 32-bit execution since storage was pretty lacking.

More modern consoles do have some small 128-bit aspects of the operation, but the vast majority of software and data has only really advanced to 64-bit and stopped there.