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HappySqurriel on 16 September 2012
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pokoko said:
HappySqurriel said:
To say something people will probably misunderstand ...

I honestly have mixed feelings about the current generation of consoles graphical capabilities. While I don't see a need for dramatically more advanced effects in game, it would be really nice to see increased performance to reduce polygonalization and pixelation artifacts.

Hypothetically speaking, I don't think I would see a big need to get better graphics if you could double texture resolution and increase the number of polygons devoted to a particular model (in general a 50% to 100% increase should be enough). Certainly, the HD consoles don't produce photo-realistic graphics, but I don't really see the need for photo-realistic graphics.

I'm ready for the next generation but it has almost nothing to do with how games appear.  Even though I do most of my gaming on the PC, I'm not a "graphics" guy.  I'm ready for more powerful consoles so developers can spread their wings on improvements like better AIs, more events taking place at once, and more interactive environments.  That's what the larger studios have been stressing out over.

I think part of the reason people are looking for more "power" from Microsoft and Sony is that both have exclusives and developers that push the envelope.  Nintendo doesn't really do that.  They leave that kind of thing up to 3rd party titles.  

"Better AI" tends not to be the result of more processing power, it tends to come from having more developers spending longer creating more (and more complicated) scripts. Certainly, processing power can help but with how poor AI is in general it is really man power that makes it go. Physics simulations are heavily processing power dependent but developers are still learning on how to use physics in a way that produces interesting gameplay experiences (and is not just used for visual impact). More active objects/characters is nice but it is difficult to imagine how that will be meaningful beyond the Wii U's (rumoured) capabilities:

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, I'm just saying that these are not necessarily directly related to processing power.

 

With that said, about the only thing I would disagree with you on is the comment about Nintendo not pushing the limits. On every system Nintendo has built they have been one of the developers to really push the hardware to its limit, and they have really only produced one system (the Wii) which truly had low processing power compared to what you could realistically expect when it was released. One of many reasons why I think Nintendo decided to take a step back with the Wii, and realistically hasn't been pushing cutting edge hardware with the Wii U either, is because it is difficult to control costs on game development when the capabilities of the hardware are "unlimited".

Most developers (even the bad ones) want to produce one of the best looking games for the system they're working on. Until this changes, or until developers consider best looking outside of strict photo-realism, producing a bleeding edge system in this day and age is kind of like offering crack to crack addicts. While many would acknowledge that it is bad for them few will refuse.