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Soundwave on 11 September 2023
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The big elephant in the room also is this is really the most underwhelming generational leap probably of any generation of video games, going back to like the NES at least if not before that.

A lot of these supposed "next-gen" PS5/XSX games just look like PS4 games with a coat of gloss put on them and a few bells and whistles ... well then a system that's "supposed to be" just a PS4 with a feature set that can add a coat of gloss (fancier lighting here, a few other effects there, maybe even some ray tracing with DLSS) well then you're basically in the same neighborhood anyway.

PS4 tier games as is can require 5-7+ years of development time, the budget even at PS4 fidelity can get so large that is can bankrupt or badly damage a studio if a game underperforms, and the visual fidelity as is while yes you can get better I think many devs have basically sorta deemed it as "good enough".

The PS5/XSX games just seem to spend all their processing power budget on increasing the resolution and sometimes frame rate and if there's anything left over maybe some ray tracing but AMD GPUs suck ass at ray tracing. I don't think developers really want to increase their budgets, dev time, their team sizes any further, so its easier just to pump all your resources.

A lot of the reaction to Spider-Man 2 for PS5 (exclusive) is the game while looking great ... doesn't really look like a full generational leap over Miles Morales not even close really. The other part is just diminishing returns, like once you reach a certain level of realism (PS4), it's become harder to push further than that unless you are exponentially increasing the graphics quality (not just frame rate + resolution).

But that is a good thing for Switch 2, because if basically it's a PS4 level fidelity but you add some shiny lighting/shadows and up the textures a bit all of the sudden you have something that can pass for a what a PS5 game looks like. You may not get 60 fps, but 30 fps to 60 fps is not a freaking generational leap. No way, no how, never has been, never was, never will be. It would be like saying the first XBox was a generational leap over the PS2, that's just ridiculous.

I mean like full stop the difference between Dreamcast (a console released in 1998) and N64 (a console released in 1996) is bigger than this PS4 to PS5 jump. Shit even Mario 64 and Wave Race 64 looked like an immediate large leap over the PS1. Again PS2 vs Dreamcast. Even GameCube versus PS2, Star Wars Rogue Squadron 2 immediately looked like a fairly notable step beyond what we were seeing on the PS2. PS3 was a massive lift past PS2, PS4 as well but here diminishing returns I think started to seep in. I get it, resolution and frame rate are massive resource sucks, diminishing returns, reflections in a puddle that you have to stop and stare at to appreciate, etc. etc. all that stuff is important, but still man what a lame generation this is.