| TheMisterManGuy said: To an extent, yes. However, my point is that power is no longer the sole aspect consoles can sell themselves on. PS4 sold well because it had a ton of other selling points that mattered far more than just how powerful it was (which BTW, for being the most powerful system at the time, the PS4 really wasn't that powerful. It was just playing catch up to what PCs were doing for a few years by that point). |
Consoles are always playing Catch-up to the PC, that's always been the way things have been.
| TheMisterManGuy said: PS4 Pro sold itself on better visuals alone, and yet the base system still regularly outsells it by quite a margin. Granted, the Pro was always meant to be a niche product, but it still proves my point that you can no longer use power as the sole, or even the main selling point anymore. Yeah, that stuff is important still, but increasingly less now due to diminishing returns. |
Not just better visuals, faster load times, better frame pacing and so on.
| TheMisterManGuy said: I agree that this gen was a noticeable step up from previous generation, I never said it was a small bump. However, the improvements weren't as significant as past gens IMO. The biggest things that improved was better lighting, facial expressions/textures, and more detailed open worlds. While several current gen games are made better by more powerful hardware, most of the improvements can again, be traced back to finally having adequate RAM and CPUs that aren't heavily customized garbage. I've seen footage of Battlefield 3 vs Battlefield 1 and yes, it looks noticeably better, but not by a massive margin. Keep in mind, I've never cared about the subtle nuances of graphics to begin with, so things like resolution, textures, etc might be noticeable to a more hardcore gamer, but to someone who doesn't care about that, they probably won't notice a difference. |
It was just as significant as the jump from 6th to 7th gen from a hardware perspective, there was a large paradigm shift in rendering technologies as well.
Battlefield 3 on Xbox 360 and Battlefield 5 on Xbox One X look generationally different.
I am a PC gamer, I crack a fit if there is a blurry out-of-place texture. (I.E. My biggest gripe with Mass Effect 3.)
| TheMisterManGuy said: I especially agree with this. I don't think games in general are harder to make now. If anything, they're actually easier to make than ever these days thanks to simple hardware and wide engine support for all consoles. I think gamers really overestimate how expensive game development generally is today. That said, I was specifically referring to AAA game development, which continues to rise due to ever increasing audience expectations for these games. We're seeing AAA games take longer to make now because of that. |
More and more of the development costs aren't actually attributed to development at all... But rather advertising, so much cash is sunk on Advertising, same thing goes with movies.
| TheMisterManGuy said: For your lighting example, I certainly agree with you that new rendering tools and techniques can help with development, especially for smaller developers. But I'd say that has more to do with the architecture and engine support of today's console than RAW power. Simply because it's easier to employ these graphical techniques on hardware your already familiar with vs some heavily customized processor that makes doing those same tricks just as time consuming as the old fashioned way. |
Consoles are leveraging PC technology, which has development tools that have been "evolving" for 30+ decades, they are well and truly a known quantity at this point, so that translates over to the 8th gen rather well.
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