Well at the same time development costs also didn't increase that much from 7th to 8th gen. A few percent more, but not nearly as big as from the 6th to 7th gen where budgets were many many times higher.

sub 4K

It doesnt even matter because when the time comes and we almost fully utilize 4K then we'll see 8K or whatever.. my point is consoles will always play catch up with resolution and stuff.

Agreed. Crysis 2 / 3 in PC blows PS3 and Xbox 360 versions away and on par current gen graphics. But the it seems cost wasnt that big. At the beginning of this gen many develoeprs were saying development is easier and less expensive. Now for some reason all develoeprs are saying development is sky high and they need microtransactions. Lol. Its their inability of manage develoment cost.

i dont get that logic.

its still high.

Just look at cyrsis 2 / 3 last gen. Its on par current gen. Did the development cost went sky high?

But assuming the computers creating market leading CGI will always be far ahead of devices and GPU's available to consumers, isnt this something that will always be impossible?

Even taking into account streaming technology (like onlive), I still think the machines creating CGI for things like movies will be miles ahead of the machines that are running games to stream to your device because they are only going to give you so much computing power before its not worth selling you the streaming subscription.

As for 4k, I think many indie and downloadable games will be 4k next gen, the AAA's will have to wait the gen after that.

I don't think next gen will have 4k on the basis of a $400 machine in 2019 will run 4K graphics that equal the graphic fidelity of a PS4 in 2019. I mean it's hard to say as 4k does negate the need for AA which is very intense on hardware.. we'll just have to see. 4K TV's will be standard in 4 years time so it'd be strange everyone buying these 1080p beasts then.

Edit: Put more thought and remembered Moore's Law, definitely will be playing in 4K.
PS5/Next Box will be about 390X level i'd say. Console GPU being 4 years out of date sounds either too conservite or just right. No way it'll be weaker than a 4 year old GPU. Same way PS4 is better than a 2009 GPU (unless I'm wrong?)

Edit (AGAIN): Best GPU in 2009 is the GTX 295 which had 1.192 TFLOPS, PS4 is 1.84, and X1 is 1.32. So yes next consoles will definitely will be above 980/390x which menas 4k will most definitely be a thing.

If you are so stupid and make realistic looking games (that end up looking unrealistic anyway and out of date 2 years later). 
its your own fault for needing a budget of 1 billion dollars per game. Also dont hire 1000 people go get 100 talented ones not 1000 mediocre ones. Cut the fat.

You just need time and money to make a realistic good looking game you need talent to make a good game thats why everyone makes good looking games instead of good games. its easier and another advantage is that you can market visuals better than quality.


Dont do what Ubisoft does with what ? 4 studios working on one of their games at the same time? 4 studios where there is probably 50% of the people idling etc. Compare that to Farcry 1 which was the best looking game in what 2004? 2003? and was made by a handful of Germans in a garage or something. Learn 2 economize.

Its just some kind of fairy tail that development gets more and more expensive. You can get engines and then just tweak them so they suit your needs. Half of the code writes itself these days and you can scan rocks and then have them as a 3D model etc. All of this was not possible 1999 etc. Also porting games to another platform is easier than it ever was.  It just gets expensive becuase 90% of the budget is wasted on squeezing 5% better visuals out of a system.

About paragraph one. I agree. The number of sheer animations is too high in CGI movies.

About paragraph two. 1440p is perfect. Or I will be happy with 1080p 60fps.

1st post from Guitarguy:
"Does anyone else see console gaming imploding simply due to the immense cost of keeping up with advancing technology?[...]"

2nd post from Guitarguy:
"I can understand the massive jump from 2D to 3D(ie sprites to polgons, SNES to N64, MegaDrive to Saturn etc) and also from standard definition to high definition(PS2 to PS3, Xbox OG to 360) but from 7th genetation to 8th there was no real colossal advancement like those."

To which I simply responded that because the advancement wasn't as colossal, costs also weren't.

It's surely higher than last gen, but any company who survived the 7th gen won't care as the increase is rather minimal, especially when taking inflation into account.
Also the issue might be that some think that "advancing technology"  immediately leads to higher costs, when in fact there are multiple instances where the opposite happened.
You should rather "blame" developers (or publishers) for creating more complex games that simply need more manpower. It's been easy to waste money before (Shenmue) and it's just as easy now.

There isn't any independant developer who is forced to:
- include hundreds of NPCs in their game, each with their own dialogue tree
- use expensive CGI cinematics instead of in-game cutscenes
- include a worthless and half-assed multiplayer that isn't needed
- hire celebrities as voice actors
etc.