Do you prefer the generations that were competitive, or one-sided?

[curl-6]

Spindel said:

curl-6 said:

Exotic architecture increases development time and costs, that wasn't so much of an issue back when games were cheap to make, but in the current landscape where major games take 5+ years and tens/hundreds of millions of dollars, it's a pretty significant problem.

It can also result in poor multiplatform releases as we saw with PS3.

I’ll go out on a limb here and say that actually doesn’t need to be the case. Most time/money in modern games are spent on art assets not game engine. Having a ”difficult” architecture impacts core engine functions and is solved (if possible) at a fairly low cost in comparison to the total development budget. 

Also it’s important to note that exotic does not necessarily mean difficult, even if I personally are of the stance that limitations drive innovation. 

Radically different hardware means a lot of your tech won't translate 1:1 so you have to spend extra time (and hence money) reworking things. Heck, even Switch 1 ports could take around a year (and a dedicated team) to pull off. 

It's well documented also that many devs hated working with PS3 due to how much of a pain in the arse it was to get games running well on it.