Hey Guy's,

if we look at today's Games (especially the beatiful piece of software that is Battlefield 3), someone could think that Dev's are alway's looking to implement the best visuals possible for their games, right?

Well, i guess not.

If we look at iCEnhancer's GTAIV Mod, (Video below - for the 2 people on here that do not know about this by now) it appear's that there was much more to be made in order to let this game look pretty sexy, no? though GTA4 was released quite some time ago, and since technology is moving forward quite fast, i'd guess that - back then - this result's were pretty much close to impossible to achieve, without wasting another Year or two on amping the Game and responsible Engine.

But just some day's ago, the Guy's responsible for the GTA Mod have started working on a similar project for Skyrim.

http://www.pcgames.de/The-Elder-Scrolls-5-Skyrim-PC-128680/News/Skyrim-als-Grafikbombe-iCEnhancer-Modder-veroeffentlicht-erste-grandiose-Screenshots-Update-neue-Bilder-860056/  (<- screenshots inside; Note, those are made from a Pre-Alpha version of the project.)

The big difference between Skyrim and GTAIV: Skyrim is a brand new game, just released last month, so there arent any futuristic technologies involved in the upcoming Mod, but stuff that was already available prior to Skyrims release.

I dont want to shit-talk skyrim, its gorgeous, but when Analyst's and Specialist's say that we shouldn't expect a huge graphical leap from PS3/360 to the next generation of Console's, i think it might not be because of hardware limitations anymore, but rather because Development would be even more expensive, and many Dev's just can't or won't afford the extra work.

whaddaya think?

Sure development costs play decent role. Unless you want to spend 70-80 per game to keep your favorite 3rd party developer afloat. I know graphics will be a lot better than now but it won't be anything that blows me away. I kind of had that stop happen to me ever since around the 32/64 bit era. When I was a kid and saw Contra 3 on SNES, I just couldn't grasp how they made the graphics so much better when compared to NES games.

The OP is talking about next gen consoles and PCs.

He/she is right, development costs and time are going to hold back some devs from putting the best possible graphics they can. Not just on consoles. PC too.

To say the limits will never be reached on PC is absurd.

It's not like  devs will just spend whatever they want on PC game development and not think about wether the game would sell enough to get them healthy profits.

It's the big guys like EA that can afford to spend huge budgets on games. 

well The Last of us will look better then UC3 or Battlefield, so current gen. hardware i'd say is close to being tapped, but there is clearly something more that can be untapped from current gen hardware.

Then again, with the resent Wiiu tech demo shown at E3, i'm not so sure how much longer PS360 can hold up before they're done.

well the 360 mostly.

Yes cost will be a major deciding factor, just as it is with every game, current and future. The onus is on the hardware and technology developers, PC and console, to make things easier, not more difficult, for developers to use. There is already a push to advance technology by simply making it more efficient and user friendly, instead of just increasing raw power. This will go a long ways towards stabilizing cost.

its not really about technology as much about development cost.

even if you have a super computer,to make a game that takes full advantage of that system won't be viable as it would not be able to profit from the product

the skyrim engine isn't brand new, its a modified gamebyro engine or w/e the one from oblivion and fallout was. if you go on the bethesda forum you and ask you will get the same responses.
Console won't get much better, especially due to the low ram.
PC will constantly get better, when quantum computing becomes the same price as a 360 though, PC technology will slow down rapidly because what else is after that?

lol...

what do you guys think the modders have as a budget?

if they can do it on their free time on their own PCs, then surely it's not a multimillion dollar investment we're talking about.