With this gen coming closer and closer to an end lets look back at this generation of games and analyze what games did we really need a new gen of consoles for because it was not possible on PS2, Cube, or Xbox gameplay wise that is (after all that whats really important for gamers).

Was it not possible for epic games to create Gears of war for the original Xbox and not keep every aspect of the game intact. Did Sony really need to wasteerrr I mean wait six years to release GT5 because that game plays so much different that GT4. And did we really need  wiimote to control mario in Super Mario Galaxy. Or do we gamers just like shiny new things?

uncharted 2/3 would have been impossible on last gen consoles

Really good thread!

I'm probably in the minority on this, but I think most seventh generation games could have translated to machines with older technology. For sure they wouldn't look or sound as good, and they wouldn't be as capable of more sophisticated artificial intelligence, etc. But the core gameplay could be reproduced a generation or two earlier. All the bells and whistles would go missing, so I guess it depends on how important those bells and whistles are to each player.

Wii Sports/Wii Fit/WSR/Red Steel 2/Tiger Woods with motion, heck anything that used motion as an intrigal part of the gameplay and not a tacked out feature. Boom Blox, Zack & Wiki, etc.

On HD consoles, vertually all games would have been possible just not to the same degree. I've seen nothing on Uncharted that last gen system's couldn't do, but they couldn't have done it anywhere near as well.
Dead Rising was one of the early game to utilize the HD system's increased power but even that was possible to do on a last gen system (they ported it to Wii) but doing so lost most of the zombies and heft of the game.

Little Big Planet couldn't have been done. And online multiplayer to the degree we take for granted now only existed on PCs last gen. So add all online multiplayer/MMO games.

Of course they would have been possible. They just wouldn't have looked as nice.

If you're talking about graphics then that would apple to all current gen games because the previous machines didn't have the specs to render HD. But if you strip away the graphics Uncharted is really just a cover shooter with some scripted events.

Hmmm... portal? Don't think they could calculate all the physics..

Folklore, you need the sixaxis to pull the souls out of the enemies.

I think the physics are built into the source engine and since Half-Life 2 ran fine on the original Xbox I think Portal would have worked too. The graphics are pretty simple and the actual portals are a trick.

Folklore! I thought I was the only person who played that game :)

Online more for Smash...wait...