| happydolphin said: Don't you think that you might be biased by that? Many Nintendo gamers have been around for a very long time, some during times when Nintendo's consoles were graphically superior to the competition, even Sony for most of Sony's existence in the market. So that is, factually, a pretty biased thing to think. No, imho the graphics have reached a point where going much further will yield less added value given the investment. 2D games look beautiful, they could be pulled off with a PS1. Now, 3D games are beginning to look beautiful, it will be very soon when that plateau the 2D games met in the past is met in the world of 3D as well. Going into never-ending detail and realism at that point will lead to more studios closing. Did you know that Darksiders 2 didn't meet its projections? Were you aware that, above and beyond the Udraw fail, that THQ's graphically impressive games were not able to make things better? There is a trend and it hasn't ended yet. |
Well, everyone is biased at a certain point at least. My conclusion was simply reading the thread, the division in the opinions is clear like water. And Nintendo having worse graphics is a new trend starting with Wii, normally they had the most powerful consoles and that is the cause of the bias I'm talking about. Besides that, even when Ninty had the most powerful device, it wasn't a difference even close to Wii vs. HD twins and Wii U vs PS720.
And no, 2D games can't all be pulled from a PS1. Rayman Origins and Kof XIII are two good examples of beautiful 2D games that were possible with this gen. 3D games are far from their objective, that is simulate the reality. Graphics can always improve until they reach the level of complete photorealism, that still is far from now.
And we can't put the blame for the demise of every studio in development costs. Some studios close simply because they made the wrong decision. What THQ had to stand on this own in the market? Saints Row suffered comparisons with GTA, WWE was buggy, Metro was a poorly optimized game... They made a lot of bad decisions and that led them to close.
Development costs can't be solved simply by deciding to make crappy looking games. We need better engines and better development tools. And that is what we are having now. X360 is way simpler to develop for than 6th gen consoles. Even talking about PS3, its hardware isn't as strange as people say. It uses a normal GPU and Cell is the only challenge here. It isn't a big problem to port games from X360 to PS3 and then to PC because of all similarities between them. If we analyse a PS2 game, the port was a nightmare because of the extremely different tech on it, it was radically different at architeture-level than the other consoles and PCs. If the rumours are correct, PS4/720 will be even easier to develop for and porting will be simple between platforms.
