Absolutely.  I picked up a Wii U at launch because I wanted to try Nintendo in HD, wanted free online and it seemed kinda novel.  I picked up 5 outstanding titles, NSMB, NintendoLand, ACIII, Batman:AC and CO:BLOPS.  Pretty hard to argue with the value in that content.  But I could have picked up 3/5 on my 360 without much difference.  And that holds true for One and 4.  I thought about picking up the White PS4 Destiny bundle, but then I said frig it.  I'll just pay $50 for an XBox Gold membership for the year and play NHL 15, Destiny and COD:AW - the games I would want on PS4 - on the system I already have.  And not much of the experience will be lost except I'll be playing it at 720p instead of 1080p.  It will still look beautiful.

We're approaching one full year into next gen and there isn't much content yet that is anything more than PS360 with a little better resolution.  I think One and 4 are fine systems and I will probably pick up one of them next year, but this has to be the slowest start of any generation of games, ever.  I agree, I think we've hit a bit of a level where big increases in processing deliver smaller improvements in visuals, and that fundamental gameplay mechanics are at a bit of a standstill.  It's not like we can double the number of buttons or add a third analogue stick or move from 3D to 4D.  We're at a bit of a plateau.

I hold out hope that something will come along and make gen 9 the breathtaking experience that 16-bit, 3D, HD, online or motion-gaming could give.

I'm gonna be perfectly honest, I think most people don't know exactly what they want.
"Being wowed by a game that's clearly not possible on previous gen machines.". And what the hell would that be exactly? It comes down to "insanely gorgeous" games, but many people would dismiss it as "just graphics, I want something more!"

It's been EIGHT generations folks. About 40 years of technological advancements. It comes a point where there's just no more room for INNOVATIONS or REVOLUTIONS - but why even bother so much with that, when ultimately the objective is just to have fun? If I'm having fun with Second Son, should I care that game could be done on the PS3 if the graphics were downgraded? Or should I care if Destiny is nothing we haven't seen before and the game is available on older hardware?

What's wrong with just having simple fun? Gamers are a pretty picky audience, imo.

I think with PS3/360 we reached a point where 3D graphics look "good enough" to a lot of people. Yes you can improve on them for sure, but it's just a certain point where those graphics will still look acceptable.

It's kinda like 2D graphics and say something like Street Fighter III, which is now 14+ years old ... it still looks good, but that's like 4th gen 2D.

Morpheus/Occulus Rift VR is pretty much going to be it this gen. 

I can't argue with that logic, and anyone that thinks like that is completely right. But thats not a bad thing per say. Its not like all 160M people that bought a PS360 is going to or expected to buy the PS4/XB1 in its first year. So its completely ok if there are some that hold out because they need more convincing. That convincing will no doubt come in time, if not in the first year in the second and if not that in the third. I for one held out on every single game released after the PS4 reveal in feb 2013 cause I was convinced that most of those games would make it over to the PS4. And I also knew that I would be buying every single game on the PS4 which would be the only console I would have for a while so I was all set. There are a lot of people that sold off the older consoles just before the launch of the new consoles and then went on to buy a console. But yh, I think in the first year at least it makes very little sense owning but a current and last gen console.

As for your hopes? well sorry to burst your bubble but all we will get next gen is probably 4k gaming and the same of everything we are getting now  but maybe running at 60fps. Sooner or later gamers will have to accept that theer isn't really much more they can do with a games graphics. Yes, we will have more of everyting and things will be sharper and look better, but they wouldn't look so good that they would put the best of what this current gen will produce to shame. What we will be playing on this current gen in a year or two will be better than majority of the CG stuff we had in games last gen or the gen before. And thats saying a lot. Case in point, just look at the FF15 tech demo, Uncharted 4, Driveclub....etc then try and imagine how anything in 6yrs time will put them to shame. Look better and sharper? no doubt, but never again will we see where new hardwre puts anything to shame anymore. Unless we are talking quantum processing.... even that is a big if cause you can only put so many polygons, textures and shaders on a face.

Even the GPU manufacturers know this, back then, with the launch of every new GPU they would release a tech demo showing the world what that GPU can do. These days, they have all collectively canned the tech demo and talk about cores and clock rates instead.

Graphics are marginally prettier, but thats about it...I think gaming is in a worse place now than it was at the start of last gen. It has been said before, that restrictions breed creativity, if you don't have a lot to work with, you need to think outside the box to make something work. Now that we have all these tools to create games, we just seem to be recycling old ideas with the gimmick of making them shinier. This whole discussion is played out, but saying things like "we are in the peak of gaming" just makes me cringe. You may have dreamed of more shiny worlds, but I dreamed of more interesting ones, and more creative gameplay...tell me we are in the peak when publishers start delivering on that dream

I'm pretty happy with the 8th gen thus far. The initial graphical jump of cross gen titles has been a little disappointing, but the peak of the jump (exclusives like Killzone, inFamous and Ryse) has been incredibly impressive. Much more so than the Xbox to 360, which was almost embarrassingly bad (Aah PDZ, we hardly knew ye).

I expect most who have been disappointed with the peak of the jump (outside of people that simply had unreasonable hopes) are those that have a low standard level of expectations for graphics. The less value you put in visuals, the less you will appreciate any improvements past what you deem acceptable. It would explain why a much larger percentage of Nintendo fans seem disappointed by the jump than PS or Xbox fans.

More than anything though, i'm exited to see what developers do now that they're free of 7th gen limitations. A linear graphical improvement is great and all, but it's stuff like mass NPC simulations and fully dynamic worlds that will be really impressive.

Honestly at this point I don't want another Killzone for a long time, and I want them to pretend that the ShadowFall timeline never happened. Then next gen, just reboot the franchise.

That leaves room for a Killzone 2/3 remaster! Put them on 1 disc fully remade for the PS4 with a MP component that combines the maps and weapons from both games! Oh and add 4 player co-op to both as well.

Black was an intentional nitpick just to show how things can go when you want. Killzone 3 vs Shadow Fall wouldn't be fair. one is a late gen title and the second one is a launch title. We could use Halo 3 vs Shadow Fall (and that's a stretch because H3 isn't a launch game). Of course COD2 isn't good looking, but neither is Destiny. About online conectivity, I see it more as a feature of the consoles. They had it, the games started using. We could note on PS4 and X1 too about how the share functions and the streaming adds to the gaming experience.

And even if we compare KZ3 with SF, SF is way better looking, despite KZ3 being really spetacular. I'll give it more points because it has 3D support (pretty good one) and Move support.

People aren't disappointed by the jump, they just have short memory. 360 was once dubbed "XBox 1.5". Every gen is the same thing over and over, people compare best looking games fron the end of the last gen with the launch games in the current one.

lets wait for the last of us 2 shall we
or people forgot how they were saying that killzone and infamous were CGI lol