Was Nintendo right to opt out of the graphics arms race?

[Pemalite]

SvennoJ said:

Pemalite said:

This is actually not always true... And is sadly always that binary answer.

Easier to develop-for hardware means lower development costs.
Power is actually irrelevant to that.

Lighting can be a very good example.

Before we had the hardware horsepower, we couldn't run dynamic lighting in games, so artists had to constantly go back and "iterate" their lighting into light-maps or bake those details into the texture work, so they would compute that offline which would take hours, days or even weeks, which may need to be done multiple times to get an intended result... Which can drive up development time by orders of magnitude.

Now it's done all in real time.

It's not the best time to stagnate when RT still runs parallel to older lighting methods. We're still in the transition phase where real time lighting already helps development, yet developers still need to make baked lighting and reflections for consoles and older gpu's. 

But on the other hand, engines get more time to mature and do the heavy lifting more and more.

And indeed, PS5 and Switch 2 price will go up this year, no doubt. Not as much though as a new GPU :/


I think people will stick to what they have and publishers will be fine supporting existing hardware. Most of the world is not ready for streaming games, even if it was the only option. Instead a flourishing second hand PC parts market might arise. Game stores might actually survive a bit longer on second hand console sales going up.

A break in the graphics race might not be a bad thing. Heck with money saved on not upgrading, more money for games ;)

(I think I'm getting my threads crossed, part of the reply is for the GPU prices thread oops)

I wasn't even talking about RT lighting, but dynamic methods which predate that.

You can have real-time lighting without RT.