Decoding is freaking expensive, you really need something like a GPU or a special chip to reach decent framerate. Problem: that relies on patents, and someone must pay for them.

Players pay.

When you buy a console, part of its price is made of the patent costs to decode video on a special chip.

April 09, 2026 - 18:43 UTC

1
0
9
Okay, so what? Each and every console already pays a patent for devs to decode videos for free, cool?

Unless that demands devs to code a different video decoder for each platforms because each of them has a different way to use that special chip. That's a lot of work, and really sucks.
2
0
8
Genuine good faith question: why CANT devs use ffmpeg to transcode to different formats for each platform? Do the platforms not provide a way to play their blessed format? Why are devs having to write decoders?
1
0
0
So as a gamedev, you generally end up looking for a video codec that you could use on ALL platforms with the same code, but you can't use those special chips. So that means using a codec only on the CPU.

Long story short, no codec reliably can, and even 1080p can be a big problem.
1
0
8