Because of heavy use of Taa ruining graphics. It's plagueing most games with motion blur consequences in each frame. Though there are some stand out moments this ge. Ff7 remake 2, astro, returnal, cyberpunk, silent hill 2 remake, wukong black myth

The games aren't looking better now than ps4 games because they still are ps4 games and mostly began developement during ps4 era.

When you now take 5 years or more to make a game and the generation lasts only 6 years, it's obvious that there will be issues. When Sony got the live service strategy and canceled games this year, it'll mean that we won't get games from these teams before 5 years, therefore as ps5/ps6 games. Considering that these days, a new game should be planned for ps6 as it will release in 2030.

Pro versions ruined the jump in technology between generations, plus the time it takes to make games now.

For example, we got 3 final fantasy from nes era to ps2 era (counting ff11), only 12 in ps3 era (counting ff14), one on ps4 era, one in ps5 era, plus a remake whose last part will be release much like remake, months prior ps6 release, with a game announced in 2015.

And we were tricked into thinking that games were graphically improving since ps2 era. Let's face it, play a ps3 game with rca and then use hdmi. If you keep rca and compare god of war 2 with god of war 3, huh...

Ps3 gen was "full hd gen", then we got ps4 "true full hd gen", then ps4 pro "promise, it's 4k now" and then ps5 with 4k with a performance mode which isn't really 4k...

Compare demon souls ps3 with elden ring ps4 and tell me it was worth waiting 2 full generations for such improvment (as elden ring is not technically great and is also a ps5 game at 25 fps and unplayable in 4k quality mode with ray tracing on normal ps5 (I'm currently playing it))

When i watched the state of play earlier this month, i was like "ok" when looking at the graphics of the games announced for 2025 and 2026.

The days of "wow effect" are gone, long gone.

I've bought a ps5 in 2020 for demon souls remake and i'm having hard times finding games looking better or even equal to it. We're in the middle of this dreadful generation.

Gameplay trumps graphics. The long-term goal of hyper-realism is a suicide pact for the industry. Graphics aren’t keeping up b/c a team of humans can only achieve so much.

The PS5 is only about 5x the GPU performance of the base PS4 so you can’t expect miracles.

I think too many devs expected 30 fps to continue being the norm on consoles and used that as a target when they began development. At that frame rate you usually get good image quality.

Tech has reached a status where it doesn't have any mentionable limitations for developers anymore. So the looks really depend more on the talent and motivation of developers. And a whole lot of studios just suck in that regard. Of course it's just my personal impression. But to this very day I am more impressed bei RDR2 graphics than by many so-called Next-Gen games. Hell, even MGS 4 on the PS3 still looks mighty fine. And there are some lookers on the Switch too, despite its laughable tech.

Art design is way more important than tech these days. Even with inferior technology, a game with great art design can look better than some Unreal Engine Pathtracing game that lacks any soul. Granted, the best case scenario would be a combination of both. But at least I haven't seen that yet.

It's expensive to make good looking graphics and optimise them on the hardware. Especially when making "twice as good graphics" requires to "ten times more power", while the difference is visible when the graphics are four times as good. Also, as many of the games are made PC in mind, the games do not focus on making the best looking games at 60Hz, but actually making the best looking games at 300Hz, so what's actually limiting many of the games is increased frame rates from what we had 10-15 years ago.

Black myth wukong looks terrible on ps5, I'm playing it now and the image quality is the reason I made this thread. Did you play it on a tiny screen or something. It's so janky and I'd prefer motion blur on over actually trying to blur the insane ammount of artificating with the blur on the staff and even the shadows have pop in, it's a disaster and the camera has glitched through so many times to see untouched textures. 

Potentially a hot take, but trying to make every game run at 60fps on consoles isn't worth it, you just end up with shitty image quality in a lot of games, while severely limiting what you can do in terms of physics, simulation, and scope.

For VR I would say, yes the avg PSVR2 game is much behind the avg PSVR1 game. But that's because Sony won't make games for PSVR2 so we're stuck with mobile graphics to work on Quest as well.

Two years in, RE8, CotM, GT7 are still the only next gen feeling VR games, RE4R a runner up. (missing VR cut scenes and still rooted in the 6th gen) The leap in resolution is the next gen feeling, but the games have regressed. PSVR1 had tons more high fidelity games.

For flat games, the backwards feeling comes from all the crappy upscaling techniques and lack of optimization. Having multiple modes hurts have one fully optimized single mode for the dedicated hardware. And PoE2 doesn't even make an effort, here is a bunch of PC settings you can try to find a balance yourself (and still get massive screen tearing and frame drops on PS5 Pro)

Sure some stuff gets fixed. Horizon FW was migraine inducing at launch while Forbidden Shores looks and runs phenomenal (on PS5 Pro anyway)
And some look solid at release like Rift Apart and Astrobot. (going backwards again, Rift apart had much more going on)

Also the introduction of mid gen refreshes and cross gen releases has robbed us from the next-gen feeling. There's no launch line up anymore specially made to get people to move over to the new gen. Games need to run on the old hardware thus can't do much else than raise the resolution for the new hardware. That's not a next-gen feeling, that's a remaster feeling.

Then try to make 30 as smooth as possible like last gen. So very few games have a smooth 30 in the 9th gen, Alan Wake 2 and a small few other games. People complain of Bloodborne but it's so much better than games like Wu Kong or Spiderman 2 where 30 is just a sideshow. If Alan wake can do it and look that good then the faster games should be able to achieve it too or do a balanced mode like Stellar Blade which was just perfect, image quality was great...but I think you're wrong and it's a dev/engine/talent issue since some games can do 60 fps with no image quality issues whatsoever lile Kingdom come deliverance 2 as one recent example and that's got scope and a lit of complexity going on under the hood with NPC schedules and what not and it being open world and dynamic. Some games can also keep file sizes down with insane scope but smaller titles like Jedi Survivor or COD end up at 150 gigs. Devs just aren't coordinating their efforts well enough and need help to do so, perhaps Sony should send out teams lile they did with Stellar Blade to help the big releases streamline and not end up in these messes.