It's not just about looking life like , I would rather they used a lot of that extra power on things such as better AI , physics , draw distance , pop up etc. ,

but increased graphical fidelity does have it's place especially if it is used to create grandiose worlds with a sense of awe and wonder ,not spent on creating mundane minutia.

yeah sure especially ai is still horrible in games nowadays and has to get much better to be "good". and as example a game like forza 4 would be much much better for me without aliasing but just talking about the "look" of humans in games i think not seeing a difference to a real human anymore isn't what i would like to see (and this will take still decades to get to this point).

No it's not a given on every PC because of the different specs on offer , that is why scaling is important , how much more expensive it will be is anybody's guess .

that

especially physics (ai is not really a power issue ) but physics can be way more immerssive in the future.... real 3d world and textures with real particules dencity, mass, gravity, and simple thing like when i write my name in bullets leave it for the rest of the games same if i do some donuts with the transport.... and keep those bodies arround and show them decay and can put a couple extra in his face for target practice when ever.... 

that and sound.... keep improving on 5.1 push 7.2 or even more cause since i got myself a serious sound system, i'm sold.... to me it made a bigger difference on the quality of the game when i switched from 2.0 stereo to 5.1 than when i went from SD picture to HD... and i switched to hd before 5.1

beside that 16 core even real cores not threads is not really far fetched for a console that is at least 18 month before release more likely 30 and even maybe 42 month before release... if the hardware is suppose to hold until 2020

i havent a good feeling about this, i hope microsofts and sonys next console are not powerhouses. its bad economic times etc, id be happy with improvements in performance as if they are going for top notch it will be costly to buy and costly to make games for

Interesting point, around 15-20% of the money you pay for a game is for the developer, that means between 9 and 12 dollars. If they are saying that the cost are doubling that means an overall increase of that same amount in the final price, or it will require that they sale almost 50% more copies of the game to earn some money from it, not 100% more because the publisher will pay that money in advance and take that cut first.

I can se many developers disappearing in the next couple of years if thing continue like this.

I thought games were more expensive in the past right? Also, the growing games market should offset some of the increases right? So games won't actually cost twice as much.

I think Wii U games will be $59.99, and Orbis/Durango games will be $69.99, perhaps with budget games or late ports released at 59.99.

With the possible exception of in-house Nintendo games, I think we're going to see fewer and fewer releases overall on the three new platforms.  Indie games will continue to grow and prosper as they have since 2006, but retail released will be AAA blockbusters that are all expected to sell at least 2 or 3 million in order to justify being green-lit for development.  I think, like I said, the only games that might not be so expensive to make are Wii U games, since they will likely be far less expensive to make than Orbis or Durango.   But I think Wii U games will cost $59.99, and I fully expect at least the AAA Orbis/Durango games to cost $69.99.  To me that's just an inevitability.

Both are real possibilities, another one is that the developers start to sell more and more DLC as that is usually low risk. Take a look at Capcom, Asura's Wrath TRUE ending is being sold as DLC. So in order to see the real ending of the game you have to pay the original 60 dollars + 7 additional ones. Same thing with day one DLC, if you don't get the Limited edition of some games that cost 70 dollars you have to pay extra for the day 1 DLC.