Soundwave said:
Yeah that too, good point. People have a lot more digital content these days. Still I think there was kind of this feeling in the past that when a new system launched, you kinda booted the old system + games off the main TV shelf space (lol) and then once the games were further away you just never bothered to go back to them. This happened with other physical formats too, I'd notice friends once proud VHS collection of movies wouldn't get touched once they got a DVD player, they'd rather even watch a crappier movie on the DVD format than dig through their old VHS tapes. Diminishing returns in visuals and blurring of generational lines probably is another factor. In the past it was sort of like "well I've paid $200-$300+ for this new system, I should focus on playing current gen games not outdated "old generation" games. What's the point of buying a new system to play old games on it? But that's not really how I think people view games any more, not to that extent. In the past I think this was a PC centric way of thinking, but now it's part of consoles, something about having the games on an internal storage just feels different for some reason. |
I personally always have the current consoles and the previous generation consoles below my main TV, so Switch Dock, WiiU, P4 Pro (don't have a PS5 yet) and Wii (sorry PS3, it's the fat version using too much space, so I keep the Wii instead). I never owned an X-Box console.
The visible diminishing returns in graphical quality is also something that concerns me. In the past it was always so exciting when a new console generation started because the games looked that much better and you had no appetite anymore for the old games on the old console. However, since the HD era (PS3/Xbox 360) at least AAA-games just look good to great. Sure, if I compare a PS5/Xbox Series X AAA-game with one from the PS3/Xbox 360 era, I can see a big difference in grahpical fidelty. However, not so much compared to the PS4/Xbox One era and in turn the same is true if I compare PS4/Xbox One games with those from PS3/Xbox 360.
What I want to say with the above is that for me, the WOW-factor is gone since years. I look at the games and see that they look good or great but I'm used to it since two generations. It's kinda sad as this WOW-factor was always something that drived the industry and my personal interest in games.
It's an interesting question how the majority of console buyers see them. Do they just want to play great games and don't care much to which generation they belong, i.e. became more like PC gamers or do they buy the next gen consoles mainly because of the next gen games? In the past you just had your console until the exiting games diden't came out for it anymore. That's when you had to by the new generation. But today, we have an overlap of 3+ years and many casual gamers don't really have an incentive yet to upgrade. On the other hand, people nowadays are just used to buy the newest and shiniest tech (i.e. smartphones) even though they don't need it and their old seond last device would just be good enough for how they use it. We also live in economical interesting times: On the one hand people and especially young people have more money at hand then in the past but on the other hand we are in very difficult times with heavy inflation, products becoming more expensive, high housing and student loan rates, lots of job cuts and salary reductions, etc. For most companies (and individuals) we really can say that the fat 7 years are over and the meager 7 years have begun (not that I feel pity for most of the big companies as they still make a tone of money just less than they used to).
