Fighting games are one genre of games that require lots of resources, while still having to maintain 60 frames per second. But, some fighting games have been held back by limitations of the hardware. Such as, home versions of Street Fighter II on Sega and Nintendo consoles, PS1 version of Marvel Vs. Capcom. It was even a bit of a problem on PS3 and 360. I will exclude Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, and CvS2 on PS2 and Xbox because that was just lazy porting.
Part of the problem was that move-lists were getting bigger and bigger, and animations needed to be more fluent/better motion capture tecniques, etc. while having to run 60 frames per second.
However, last generation, move-lists have gotten about as big as they're going to get. Current gen consoles will also be able to support up to 30 characters in online shooters, but, fighting games, have trouble even doing 4-players in an online setting. In shooters, it's fine to have a bit of delay online.
But, take virtua fighter as an example, even 1 frame of lag can cause something unintentional to happen. So, it's always preferable to play fighters in an offline setting, when the option is available.
The thing is, though, I can't see where the issues of the previous generation would still be a problem. I cannot see PS4 and Xbox One struggling to keep a fighting with 2 characters fighting running at 60 frames per second. Since they're also able to do 30 persons in other genres, 1v1 matches should be extremely simpe.
Why not, if you have a room, allow spectators to choose to spectate, or fight against each other until it's their turn to fight?
I know I've targeted fighting games specifically, but is there anything, for any genre that you feel the creators can re-create in their original vision without being set-back by console limitations? PS4 and Xbox one may be to a point where if you do make cut-backs, it's due to budget, and not the console in most cases.
I think that now, without the limitations they've previously had, fighting games may finally have the potential to be the best looking games there are, due to the play area being a lot smaller than an action game would be.
