| JGarret said: ok, noname, so where does this situation lead us?...That inevitably the "hardcore" gamers will have to find something else? |
No, not in my opinion. I think I should take this chance to clarify something: I have many of the same tastes in games as the snobcore (with some notable differences); I simply despise them because they despise people who don't share their tastes (we've seen some examples in this very thread). Why do you think the word "casual" has become an insult to someone's intelligence? I mention this to warn you that what follows may be partly influenced by wishful thinking, as I don't want to see "hardcore" gaming completely disappear.
It seems to me that the solution is to accept that the "more more more" philosophy that's driving that type of gaming has to end. Now. I like my eye candy as much as the next guy, but it's driving companies either out of business or into completely cautious game development, and neither of those things benefits me or any other gamer in the long run. Instead, we'll simply have to accept that games are not going to be as gorgeous as they currently are on the HD front, not for a long while anyhow. This may well drive away some people, of course, but it's inevitable anyway.
Instead, I'm guessing that some few companies will try to ride out the current generation with HD games, hoping to develop the game that wins the lottery (a few, like Call of Duty 4, do. They're just the exception rather than the rule). More and more developers will start shifting to the Wii, or to handhelds, and those who don't will almost always have to publish their game on both the 360 and the PS3. That's not much of a guess, I'll admit, since it's precisely what's been happening the past few months (have you noticed the death of third-party exclusives on the HD systems, or the uptick in support for the Wii?).
More importantly, I believe that the graphical output in the next generation will have only a comparatively miniscule increase, and I'm praying that efficiency will have increased enough that such development becomes viable. Alternatively, middle-ware companies will become increasingly important (even Squeenix, the last big company that insisted on making individual engines for each of its games, has relented because of development costs), while we'll see more mergers and acquisitions. For the sake of our hobby, I hope it's option one rather than option two.
