Since at least this year's E3, if not before, it has been clear that the usual market cycle of clearly delineated console generations is being upended. The new model—as exemplified by Sony's PS4 Pro, Microsoft's upcoming Project Scorpio, and even last year's "new Nintendo 3DS"—sees a single generation of console software working on multiple tiers of hardware power, with consumers deciding where exactly they want to sit on the price/power continuum.

The idea, as pitched, is that the cheaper, lower-end hardware will still provide an "acceptable" experience, while the more expensive high-end hardware makes everything look and perform just a bit better. Already, though, we're seeing cases where games seemingly tailored for high-end console hardware are struggling to provide bare-bones performance on legacy hardware.

Last week's release of The Last Guardian—coming nearly a decade after the game was first started as a PS3 title—is one of the highest profile examples of this problem. As Digital Foundry notes in its analysis of the game, "if you're on a regular PS4 you're in for a very variable experience; lurching between 20-30fps just by running around empty areas, and with stutters to over 110ms." The analysis goes on to call the stock version of the game "way off the pace compared to what we've come to expect from a modern PS4 title."

On the PS4 Pro, on the other hand, Last Guardian players can get a steady performance of 30fps while running at a full 1080p resolution or less consistent frame rates at resolutions up to 3360×1890.

Players of Pokemon Sun & Moon on the Nintendo 3DS get a similarly compromised experience if they haven't invested in the slightly more powerful "new Nintendo 3DS" that was released last year. Those compromises begin at startup, when the stock hardware takes an additional 15 seconds to load the game, thanks to RAM allocation issues. The problem extends to the gameplay as well, with noticeable animation stuttering and low frame rates during battle scenes on stock hardware. You can see the problem clearly at 2:26 in this comparison video, with the new 3DS version on the left running smoothly while the old 3DS version chugs along in fits and starts.

In a slow-paced RPG like Pokemon, these performance issues are primarily cosmetic. But in a game like Hyrule Warriors Legends (which was ported from the Wii U to the 3DS in March), the lack of hardware power can make a big difference in gameplay as well. Digital Foundry's analysis shows how the stock 3DS version features fewer on-screen enemies than the one with new 3DS enhancements. Despite that reduction in complexity, the older hardware struggles to maintain a jittery 19fps, compared to a smooth 30fps on the new 3DS.

Hardware tiering is also starting to have an effect on the multiplayer scene in some console games. While Battlefield 1 runs acceptably on the standard PS4, Digital Foundry found that PS4 Pro players can get up to 47 percent more frames per second in common multiplayer scenarios. That's important in a highly competitive twitch shooter, where smoothing out your aiming control and seeing movements a few milliseconds before your opponents can be vitally important.

An unchanging “minimum spec”

The problem of developing game software that can run acceptably on widely different hardware is nothing new in the PC gaming world. There, developers have to decide early on what minimum hardware requirement to target, balancing out their creative vision with the size of the potential audience that has powerful enough hardware. Then there are the related vagaries of the "recommended specs," which ideally allow the game to run precisely as the developers envisioned.

Things have been a bit different with consoles, though, where there was always just one hardware target to hit within a generation. Now, to borrow from the PC terminology, the older stock hardware seems to be acting as an unchanging minimum spec, while the upgraded pro hardware serves as the new recommended spec. That will likely continue until a completely new hardware generation provides a new starting point or when the eventual release of an even higher hardware tier (PS4 Super Pro?) allows that aging stock hardware to be phased out.

The current tiered state of affairs isn't a problem if games run acceptably well on all hardware. Sony has taken pains to point out that every piece of PS4 software released for the foreseeable future has to meet its minimum quality standards on both the PS4 Pro and the standard PS4 hardware. Sony has also said that developers aren't allowed to use a reduced frame rate (compared to the standard PS4) to get better graphical performance out of the PS4 Pro, though it seems at least some early games fudged this requirement at launch.

In any case, this kind of hardware tiering can become a problem when that "minimum spec" version on older hardware starts to drop below an acceptable threshold. Different studios are going to have different priorities when it comes to balancing resolution, frame rate, and overall level of detail in their games, of course. That said, ideally we shouldn't have to wonder if a game will be able to maintain a solid 30fps on older hardware, regardless of the graphical enhancements on more powerful hardware. We also shouldn't have to worry that the gameplay experience itself should be impacted just because the hardware is less powerful. Older hardware is always going to look worse than newer hardware, but it should never be less enjoyable to play, at its core.

In the new world of tiered console generations, these problems are already showing at the margins. And as time goes on—with more and more consumers presumably opting for more powerful hardware and older, stock systems starting to show their age—these are things that could continue to get worse. As developers and platform makers chase the performance gains at the top tier of these new console generations, they're going to have to work extra hard to make sure those on older hardware aren't left behind with a significantly compromised experience.