Not necessarily in general and in this day and age, no, not anymore.

There was a day, long time ago when we was fab, that all this power dick-measuring did mean something for game quality, when the gameplay possibilities opened up by the added juice were substantial, at times massive and game-changing.

Nowadays, no. There's so little in terms of systems that is beyond current tech. Shoot, most of the games today could have been done last gen without too many compromises.

And even back in the day, more power opened up new options but didn't necessarily mean established game types WOULD be superseded. Chrono Trigger is better than many games today, Super Mario World remains one of the best 2D platformers ever crafted.

Could be, I continued playing UT99, less resource heavy. In Uni we would take the computer room, download the demo and have an instagib lan party :)

You can also look at the strategy genre, the jump to 3D made the games harder to enjoy for me. I didn't see the benefit from C&C or AoE, you saw less had to deal with the camera, when the isometric view was quick and easy. There are more 2D to 3D failed attempts...

Still this a case by case situation. There are obviously games that the main selling point is the presentation while others aim for interaction, and as you mention some complement each other. Like someone said before, with a given hardware (which always improves), "good game design makes good games".

Good points.

StarCraft 2 managed to transition into 3D rather well... By ironically, making itself look like it's 2D isometric.

Other games wen't into a different direction completely, Sanctum for instance took advantage of the fact it is rendered in 3D so threw you into a First-person perspective for it's turret defense concept.

Battlezone 2 and Sacrifice also pushed you into the First/3rd person view point for it's Real-time strategy... And yet attempts like Dark Reign 2 didn't translate as successfully.

With Age of Empires 3, I found I didn't have any issues with the image quality, so much as the games fundamental design choices... Age of Empires 2 HD has proven that it was the wrong direction to take the franchise and sadly, Ensemble Studio's is no longer around to bring us a 4th entry that fixes those shortcomings in the 3rd game.

Command and Conquer failed due to allot of intereference from Electronic Arts, it was one of the largest franchises in PC gaming at one point... But I have to admit I thoroughly played the crap out of Red Alert 3 and Commanders Challenge.

Good graphics are welcome, but GPU cost must not be so high to make producers cut corners on CPU power and RAM below what's necessary to have good AI and large numbers of NPCs and items and load and manage large levels or worlds without needing to divide them in small parts as it happened in Thief III, or, less bad for immersion, but still bad, separate inside and outside as it happened in Morrowind.

For multiformat games, more power and resources definitely normally means the best version but sometimes making for a fixed platform like ps4 can beat pc in feel and handling.

For Switch titles we are seeing some games hugely downgraded visually and with a worse controller over ps4 for example and higher cost too.

As ever a fantastic exclusive game is a fantastic game and you are forced to buy the hardware however dire or overpriced.

AoEIII had those problems you mention: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-02-14-age-of-empires-iii-a-huge-mistake

And yeah, many awesome simulation and strategy devs are gone :(

I think it's open world could also benefit from it. With the push to open world games, more power is a necessity.

Strange question.

Great devs don't lose their creativity once more power becomes available to them. Bad devs will continue making bad games.

I want games to look prettier and to run at the resolution of my Full HD tv.

I feel like Eurogamer are my long lost brother sometimes. Ha. We typically resonate the same on everything.

no, more power isn't needed to make a good game. but it can make an already good game even better.