tl:dr version at the bottom.

All recent generations have seen huge jumps in technical standards compared to their predecessars. This gen saw nearly every game having realistic lighting, textures, facial animations, etc. You could take a poor-looking game from this gen, compare it to a good-lookin game from last gen, and you'll see an obvious difference. The sixth generation saw a genuine, explorable, 3D world becoming standard. It also become standard for developers to create 3D worlds without them looking like crap. The fifth generation allowed 3D worlds to become standard. Most games didn't look like a bunch of pixels.

During all of these past generations, it was also standard that a game could sell only a few hundred-thousand units and be considered a success, if not less. The low developing costs allowed developers to reap sufficient profit from little sales. Barring maybe a handulful of titles, if a game sold over a million, it was guaranteed a success. A developer could be satisfied with a fairly unknown game.

That ease-of-profit has all but vanished this generation. In most cases, if a game only sold a few hundred-thousand units, it probably wasn't very successful. A sharp contrast with last generation and the gens before it. Of course there are a decent number of games that see success with only a few hundred-thousand units of sales, and I appaud these developers for not risking their success for only technical marvels. However, the frequency of these titles is so low that it's quite alarming.

With too many modern games today, they NEED to sell close to one-million units to be profitable, if not more. So many games have went on to sell well past one-million, yet not be enough for the developer to reap any profit. Such occurences were unfathamable in past generation. It's quite a shame that a game can sell so much yet not be profitable for developers.

These rising costs are simply bad for the industry. Developers will be less willing to experiment with new ideas and creative because they see it as a risk. Instead, they passively mimmick other popular series because they feel it's the safest route to success. So many games this generation have been casualized because they needed to reach a broader audience, to prevent failure. Now, going after success is good, don't get me wrong. But when you NEED to sell in the millions, just to be profitable, then it becomes worrying. And again, I acknowledge and applaud games that can sell well under a million, yet still be successful.

A fortunate, albeit a bit sad, truth is that gamers don't really care about such technical marvels. The average gamer doesn't give a crap if a game is a technical powerhouse. As far as technicals are concerned, they only care if the game looks 'clean' and performs smoothly. They're more concerned with the gameplay and content of the games. This applies to hardcore AND casuals. No one's going to not buy a game because it's graphics don't match Uncharted or Assassin Creed.

Ironically, the biggest franchise on the HD systems is one without breathtaking graphics: Call of Duty. It's been running on the same engine since 2007 (I believe), only a year after all seventh gen consoles released. And gamers have no problem whatsoever with this. Call of Duty provides gamers with good gameplay and good content with smooth performance. That's all gamers care about. Speak ill of Call of Duty if you want, but you can't deny that the strategy of making cheap and quick titles is more attractive than making expensive titles.

The digital distribution market shows a lot of hope though. Through digital distribution, developers can put out smaller games without being overlooked at retail. Here developers can put out small, cheap, & quick titles and find success with only a few hundred-thousand units of sales, if not less. It can be just like past generations again, probably even cheaper with the lack of manufacturing costs. This route is definitely a good one for gamers & developers. Here, developers can focus on gameplay instead of technical wonders. They can try to be creative, experiment, etc. They don't have to worry about their game not selling a million.

Now, my question for you: Will the standard next generation game be a huge technical leap over this gen's greatest games? Much like this gen and the gens before it, will the best of today pale in comparison to the standard of tomorrow? Will a standard next-gen game blow Uncharted 3 out of the water? Or will they only be marginally better? Will developers push more and more to where the standard game needs to sell 2mill to be successful. Or will developers stop pushing, and settle for smaller gamers which only need to sell modestly? Will developers even both trying to make a big jump from gamees today?

And perhaps a more important question: Will gamers care? Will gamers care if a next gen game only looks a little better than Uncharted 3? Will next generation be the first gen where the standard isn't far from what we've already seen.

Note: Don't get me wrong, I'm all for developers pushing consoles. I just think that this task should be left for the large studios. And with next gen, I think there's going to be less and less studios big enough for this task. In fact, I don't think they'll be a lot of studios capable of even being drastically better than what we have now. Most studios simply aren't capable of such technical feats. And even with these big studios that are capable of these wonders, will they even bother trying? Will they conclude that pushing graphics the best of today has very little advantages? million.

tl:dr - Next gen, developers will have to find that perfect amount of technical marvel. Much like the Call of Duty developers, they'll have to judge when enough is enough. And I think that perfect amount won't be too much higher than the best of what we've seen today.

Disucss

I don't think the upcoming generation wil be that much better looking. PS2 to PS3 that was a huge leap in graphical power. I don't expect this kind of jump from the coming generation.

I say standard next gen games should be looking like/littlebetterthan uncharted 3, at least the first ones  i would be fine with that.

The larger focus this time around will be on optimization, which is what the hardware power will be more tailored towards.

Tagged, will post after din din

so we are in unanimous agreement that most developers won't be pushing graphics that much?

the standard of games dropped this gen more then any gen before it. now all people look at is graphics and " is it fun for a few hours"
last gen if it got boring in a few days people would call it a failure.

next gen should have graphics and stuff equal to PC last year or so. so in todays standards vastly superior.
however.
I still believe the original xbox and PS2 gen was the best gen for gamers.

I'm expecting a moderate jump. Current gen consoles play BF3 on low at 720p & 30fps. Next gen I think we'll get med-high at 1080p & 30fps (high) or 60fps (med), for launch games. So it's a fairly big jump, not spectacular, but comparable to PS2-PS3. There is certainly room for improvement, and it's not that hard to achieve, even a $250 console would produce a very noticeable jump, a $400 console would show us a massive jump.

I think the best improvements will be every game looking "clean" and running smoothly as you said, we'll have higher resolutions, better AA, 60fps or 30fps+motion blur as the standard. Personally this is very important, shaky frame-rates and aliasing are 2 things that really pull me out of a game. Bad company 2 for example, could be a brilliant looking game, but the lack of AA on consoles completely ruins the visuals for me.

I think there will be less AAA games around with more devs focusing on smaller, downloadable titles, so we'll have less jaw-dropping photo-realistic visuals.

To answer the question in the poll, I think the worst looking games will look like Uncharted 3 at 1080p, and the best will look like Metro: Last light maxed out or better.

I say the leap from PS3 to PS4 will be more like PS1 to PS2 in terms of graphics/power.