Now that next gen is here, diminishing returns is a real problem

[theRepublic]

JoeTheBro said:

theRepublic said:

JoeTheBro said:
They say this every gen. Seriously I'll look through this site and find an example for you.

I would say this wasn't a problem at all in Gens 1 to 6.  It was easily recognizable to the casual observer that there was a big difference between those machines.  But we really are starting to see diminishing returns here in 7 and 8.  There is only so realistic you can get before you are pretty much there.

Zappykins' post shows that very well.

Not really.

It's almost impossible to search the internet for forums from before PS2, but people still said and thought the same way. Plus saying graphics have little left to improve is just silly. I know Avatar is used way too much in these threads, but please point out which game looks even remotely close to this pic:

On top of this you need to understand Avatar itself is far from perfection. CGI and even next gen graphics will look better than you can currently imagine.

 

As far as Zappykins post, I don't believe in diminishing returns with graphics. Do you have diminishing returns with polycounts, textures, resolution, etc. ? Of course, but graphics are the result of tons of different techniques being combined. If you took a game from the 64 and made an HD version with no new techniques, just much larger numbers for resolution, polygon, texture size, etc., it would still look worse than modern games. Golden Eye with 3 trillion polygons per character and super duper high res textures wouldn't look that amazing compared to Halo 4 even though it technically is leaps and bounds better, going by the numbers. It's why CGI with all the time in the world to render a single frame keeps looking better and better too. Why haven't they reached the point of diminishing returns?

Just ignore this rant if it doesn't make sense or is phrased poorly. I meant to retire a few hours ago but the Nintendo financial report kept me up.

There have been massive, easily recognizable differences between early generations that we just won't see again.  It is going to be a much slower progression from here into the future.