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JWeinCom on 12 February 2023
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IcaroRibeiro said:
JackHandy said:

I don't know if it's because I'm from an older generation or what, but this is the first time I haven't bought a new Sony console at, or near launch. I still don't own a PS5 or an Xbox 4, and I don't feel the need for one either, because it never felt like the PS4 and Xbox 3 needed to be replaced. It was just like, here are our two new consoles that make games look a little better and run the games a little better than our last consoles. Please buy them and continue to enjoy the same games you're currently playing in slighter better ways. With PS2/Xbox/PS3/Xbox 2, that wasn't the case. The whole industry shifted. There was a massive jump forward and brand new franchises like GTA3 (the jump to 3D made it feel like a new franchise), Halo, Uncharted and Gears of War that sprung up and couldn't have been played before. You needed the new console, and if you didn't get it, you were left out in the cold while this exciting new revolution was taking place. I didn't feel that at all with the PS5/Xbox 4, so I still don't have either... and it's a real shame. Especially for me. 

I hope PS6/Xbox 5 don't repeat the same approach, and they go back to the old way of doing things. 

No please... It's better that way, much more democratic. Most people just cannot afford to buy hardware every couple of years, why should we remove them the right of playing games that could be perfectly playable on their machines only to give the satisfaction of richer people to have their "exclusivity"?

Like, I've played Horizon Forbidden West and it's for sure run much better on my PS4 than it runs on my 11 years cousin PS4, but the still can play it. Would my experience with Horizon became any better if Horizon was absent from PS4? Not, doubt it. But this kid would probably be much less happy knowing he would have to wait for maybe 4 years to play Horizon again. 

The thing is that in the past, games were not only on new consoles because they wanted to force people to buy new consoles (even if that was part of it), but because there were new experiences that were only possible on those consoles. You could not make Street Fighter 2 on an NES, Sonic the Hedgehog on a Master System, or Super Mario 64 on an SNES, Final Fantasy X on PS1, Dead Rising on a Gamecube (although they kind of did try), etc. Even if you could technically make ports, they would have to be modified to the point where they were entirely different experiences (see Sonic the Hedgehog on Game Gear, Dead Rising on Wii, etc.) Back in the day, we were paying for entirely new experiences.

Nowadays it feels like we're paying for optimized experiences. It's been a while since I've played a game on any console that I felt could not have been fairly approximated on older hardware. Maybe something like No Man's Sky which is procedurally generated couldn't have been done on 360, but those examples are few and far between. I haven't played anything yet on the SxBox or PS5 that couldn't be done with small compromises on their predecessors.

So, while I'd rather companies port to older hardware when it was feasible, it feels like the value I get from a new console is less and less each generation. It used to be like going from a Motorolla Flip phone to an iPhone. Now it's like going from a Samsung Galaxy 18 (or whatever they're on) to a 19. And if it's worth it to you great, but for me, it's kind of meh.