With so many people completely obsessed with raw power, (even people on this forum calling for a PS5 and Xbox... whatever... almost immediately after the announcement of the PS4 and Xbox One) have we not gotten to a point where we are noticing that the promise of more raw power does not mean ANYTHING regarding the quality of a gaming title?
Now just to be clear... I am old enough to remember the Pentium 4, where Intel kept marketing raw clock speed as a means to measure system power/productivity. But AMD kept pushing their little processors saying "Hey, we can actually do as much (if not more) per clock cycle than Intel, at a lower price", and proved that raw power isn't always the way to go. I know that might not be the most apt comparison for this discussion, but in my mind, it makes sense.
We are now far enough into this console generation (and close enough to yet another "most powerful console" launch) for me to ask this:
Are we really still blinded by companies trying to blind us with raw numbers to get their consoles off the shelf? Does the mere idea of a 6 teraflop console really still hold water, now that we have been introduced to a generation where backwards compatibility, sequels, retro games and remakes/remasters are the order of the day?
Now I don't deny that there are some great games that have come out this generation, Uncharted 4, Witcher 3, Bloodborne and the like all being absoluetely amazing... but MOST of the titles for this gen are either sequels or spiritual successors. By this point in last gens console race we had the likes of:
- Mass Effect
- Bioshock
- Uncharted
- Gears of War
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
- Batman: Arkham asylum
- Assassins Creed
- Portal
- Demon's Souls
