What's the point of the next generation?

[Kingjackl]

If you don't care about graphics technology (and you shouldn't because they don't matter), there is still something to be said for technology that could theoretically make games better and easier to develop.

The issue is where that money is being spent; development costs for triple A games are so high because publishes insist on putting all the budget into the graphics technology to make things look good for the punters, but the end result is a game that's pretty paper-thin. The real smart thing to do would be to have PS4/Xbone/PC equivalent hardware specs, but set everything at around, say, GTAVs level of graphics quality, regardless of whether the game is linear or open world. That's about the last generation of consoles at their best graphical quality, but it shouldn't need all the hardware intensive tricks and cheats that were required to get that game to run on Xbox 360. Let's have none of this Call of Duty/Crysis/Battlefield crap where every game just has to look really really pretty and the game winds up being a big money sink.

 

[clippen05]

What you have to understand is, personally, and for a lot of non forum visiting gamers. We don't compare our consoles to whats available at top dollar on the PC market, we compare our next console to our current console.

Show me Killzone 3, it's still looks fantastic, Shadowfall makes Kz3 look dated. That's the difference, and the gap in quality will only get bigger as time goes on. No I don't care how realistic your pc games look because 30 of my irl friends don't have fucking gaming PCs, theres no $400 PC that will out perform a PS4 im sorry your sources are wrong if you think there is, there just isn't. Consoles are entry level gaming, if you wanna flip that as some sort of insult, then you're an idiot. My ps4 is cheap, has the games I want to play, has my friends to play with socially and is accessible enough for me to recommend to any people looking to get INTO gaming without having to invest as much as you do with a Mega-Rig PC.

Next-gen as we know it is very necessary.

Well, if you want to play with those 30 IRL friends online, you're gonna have to pay the monthly multiplayer fee on either console. Roughly $60 a year that we PC gamers don't pay to Microsoft or Sony, but rather to Nvidia or AMD one time $300 purchase so our graphics are better. Stop acting like consoles are a one-time $400 purchase and then that's it, your done. It's simply not true, and if you factor everything else in (games, online services, DLC) the costs will even out and eventually turn in PC's favor depending on how long you buy multiplayer for. Sure, the initial fee might be higher on PC, but it does not cost more overall, stop perpetuating such an incorrect comparison of PC and console.

 

[The White Hunter]

So that's why Crysis 3 is so linear and short.

Still fun though. And they did eventually get Crysis 1 working on the consoles, though I have no idea how they did that as I still have issues running it on my PC.

Check comparisson videos between the two. They used ultra low res textures, removed about 80% of clutter in environments, and all round made it look slightly better than your typical console game, leaving only the gameplay as Crysis.
These, for example, are the exact same scene in each game. You wouldn't believe it on first look, but taking a closer examination reveals it to be true;

[Granted in the Xbox 360 version he has walked an extra few steps down the path, but that's not what one should be noticing =P]

I'm well aware of that I've played it on a low end and high end PC as well as my PS3, it's a much worse version but it's still a lot of fun and has dedicated buttons for suit functions on the consoles (wish the PC version did...).

Crysis 1 is very pretty but it is not very well optimised at all, I can even run Metro 2033 better and that just was never optimised for anything (it also lacks vsync and tears like crazy for it).

 

[Arslan Aladeen]

I'm not particularly excited about next gen. A lot of people have mentioned how the better hardware could potentially improve gaming, but I'm really cynical. My feeling is that they are going to keep focusing on graphics and making the game more of a movie experience while continuing to implement business practices that show their disdain for their own consumers.