All right, that's most likely the most common complaint about the current gen. "All the games are possible on seventh gen consoles, you just have to downgrade the graphics". Time for a time travel:

The very first game on the SNES, Super Mario World is one of the best examples. Downgrade it to an 8-bit game and put it on the NES, no problem. Fast forward a little bit into the sixth generation, and we have FFX in 2001. Again, downgrade the graphics and it could very well be a PS1 game. Other than the transition to 3D, I think every single generation is just a prettier version of its predecessor... Now, you could argue that this generation the games actually do downgrade the visuals and release on the seventh generation as well. The transition between the fifth and the sixth and then into the seventh saw the same things (THPS3 and 4 were released on the PS1, Double Agent was on all home consoles at the time, etc.)

Ok, so the games are prettier versions of their last gen counterparts, but the aforementioned FFX and SMW are fantastic games early on the generation, something we're not seeing so far (only six months, but anyway). Well, I've checked and the most notable releases in 94 and 95 were Donkey Kong Country and Chrono Trigger. The fifth generation pretty much began in 1996 (Crash Bandicoot, Mario 64, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil...). In fact, virtually all PS1 games on the "top of the gen" lists are from 96 and beyond.

The previous seventh gen probably had the worst beginning ever. Xbox 360 was a time bomb (over 50% failure rate, jesus), the PS3 had no gaemz and the Wii was just... there? "Oh, but Wii Sports and Twilight Princess". Let's face it, being a party game, Wii Sports got old rather quickly and TP is... debatable. It's a GameCube game pretending to be a Wii game, but I digress. You could argue the Wii U is a year and a half old and is a disaster, but that's Nintendo's fault, you can't say "shitty generation so far" just because of that, imo.

So why are you guys so impatient with the eigth gen? I mean, give it time. We've seen worst at this point (six months is a pretty small timeframe).

Cause we are all spoiled and we want everything now? To be fair, all companies always promise stuff like no more game droughts, quality games all around, best console experience ever! And then people buy into the excitement only to find out its gonna be a meh experience till at least the second year and then they complain. Its only natural to want something sooner so I think its a fault on both parties...

Companies making false promises and then delaying the shit out of their games or delivering a game that is below expectations and consumers wanting everything now and they want it to be perfect cause they think the world runs by magical pixy dust

#GamersAreTheWorst

the diference is decreasing each gen.
late or early we wont have better graphics, maybe we will only diminish the size of consoles.

I hope no one is seriously making that argument. The difference in RAM alone opens up what developers can do by a significant degree.

I remember one game designer last gen talking about how they'd come up with ideas for an encounter only to have the programmers come back and say, "nope, this can't be done, there isn't enough memory," and they'd have to change the event or scale it back. I believe it was the developers of Dishonored who said they kept having to cut down levels and remove enemies to make things fit on last gen consoles.

There will be games this gen that cannot run on last gen hardware without large-scale changes to game-play. I'd be shocked if anyone seriously disputes that.

Honestly, by the time we get there, the paradigm will have changed and it'll no longer be a problem. I don't know how, but it's looking that there won't be "console generations" anymore. Perhaps PS Now is a prelude? I'm talking like 10 years from now by the way.

Haters gonna hate.....

That aside, most gamers unfortunately won't know or at least accept that the theory of diminishing returns really does apply to games and we are getting to that limit. The geometry/LOD part of games is all but maxed out now and so is texture quality. What is really gonna push the envelope this gen will be lightning, reflections, material accuracy and if we are lucky AI. Next gen it will be all of this dialed up to 11 and running at 4k.

At that point, it will become less about the hardware and more about the developers making the games. Graphics isn't an infinite criteria, at some point, you would actually need apps or special equipment (ie. your eyes wouldn't be able to detect them) to detect what the differences are between games on platforms. But as usual, when you know that one game runs at 62fps@4k and another runs at 60fps@4k you will suddenly be able to "feel" that difference.

I was playing SCII today. Then I played V. The characters seem like they have.MORE attacks in SCII.. I dont agree with a single person that says Tekken 3 is the best tekken. Movement is stiff and its easy to get 1-3 hit KOs.

Soul Calibur II has MORE modes than Soul Calibur V. And, the characters dont feel like they walk on air like they do on most PS2 games. Movement is solid and characters felt properly weighted..

Soul Calibur V may look the best but it has fewer modes than even SCI if I remember correctly... It also seeems to. have fewer moves than SCIV. Yoshimitsu I KNOW has fewer moves.

So generations dont mean too much. no way a PS2 game should be better than a PS3 sequel . Its not even preference or opinion, its fact.

FFX would have had to be MASSIVELY scaled back to work on the PS1. Had we seen a game before with that amount of voice acting? The graphical leap between FFXIX and X was enormous. Compare that to the difference between Infamous 1 and 2 and it's clear how much of a difference it was.

As for the SNES, that's an awfully cherry picked example. Could the NES handle Mario World? I'm not sure. There were a lot of levels and they were a lot longer than the NES games had. But, lets say that it could. Could the NES do Pilot Wings? Could it do F-Zero? Nope.

You couldn't do Wii Sports on the Wii. Nor could you do Wario Ware or Raving Rabbids. I enjoyed these games very much. You can throw Elebits onto that list as well as Excite Bike and Red Steel. First two of those were underrated. The last was not so good. I didn't have a 360 or a PS3 at launch, but simply by virtue of the jump from SD to HD they were a big graphical leap.

The reason we're impatient is because not only are no awesome new experiences available, but no awesome new experiences have even been ANNOUNCED. We have the order which seems so far to be gears of Steam Punk, Drive Club, another Assassin's Creed, another Arkham, another COD, a new Witcher, and so on so forth. On Nintendo's end, we've had Wonderful 101, Nintendo Land, Zombi U, and a bunch of sequels. Some fun stuff, but not much that couldn't have been done the generation before.

There are only a couple of interesting games on the horizon. Sunset Overdrive looks interesting, but I have to see how it plays out. Looks like a mix of Dead Rising with Ratchet which could be fun. Project Spark looks interesting, but we'll see if the reality of it is as seemless as demos.

But yeah, crappy generation so far. Hopefully that will change.

See: "law of diminishing returns". So far the 8th gen represents the smallest inter-generational leap in terms of graphics, hardware and gameplay features that we've seen.

8-16 bit went from a handful of colors, tiny sprites and just two buttons to mega sprites, hundreds of colors, mode 7, and 6 buttons.

16-32/64 bit went from improved 2D graphics to fully realized 3D graphics and CD quality sound, more buttons, and 360 degree analog control.

32/64 - 128 bit saw even more advanced 3D graphics, improved storage mediums, and for the first time fully realized online gameplay on 3 out of the 4 major consoles of the gen.

128 bit - last gen saw probably the most dramatic jump in visuals between generations as the Movie, TV and entertainment industry switched from SD to HD, and the online experience for consoles became even more robust and borderline PC-like as gamers could now use their consoles' internet capabilities for so much more than just playing games online. Not to mention the fully realization of motion controls in gaming after years of failed experiments.

So far this generation in terms of hardware, gameplay and multimedia features has literally everything the last gen had, just with prettier visuals. The Wii U is literally an extension of the Wii (it even uses the same exact controllers for multiplayer), the XB1 is the same as the 360 only with Kinect 2.0, and the PS4 is the same as the PS3 only with better developer-friendly architecture. So far we have not seen any major leaps hardware or gameplay wise in the 8th gen as we've seen in previous generations.