Agreed. PS5/XSS generation sucks and barely feels like it has even started properly, I get the sense no one is that hung up on paying $700+ for new consoles for slightly shinier looking games that take even longer to make.

The game's as is look good enough as is, many studios simply cannot go another big step up in visual fidelity without the budget going up significantly too.

100% disagree - the thing I'm mostly hoping for next gen are AI NPCs, and that can't be (efficiently) done on current gen hardware.

And there's that thing where path traced games look much better than what we have in this gen.

I have been this way for a while now. I actually stopped gaming for a few years while in Uni, and now I just steam game. Pretty much everything is on steam except for a few exclusives and Nintendo games. And now with steam deck everything can be portable to some extent. Most laptops and desktops can play most of what's on steam. 

This.  Next generation consoles are coming.  AI will speed up development.  And console haven't even really started doing high end RT, still stuck at 60 fps, etc. 

There is plenty of room for growth in gaming from a fidelity perspective.  

I dunno Yoshi, FFXVI sometimes runs like ass on both base PS5 and Xbox Series X

And PC.  I averaged 70 to 80 fps on a 4090 at 1440p.  The game was a mess.  Oblivion ran better.  

He just doesn't want to use more resources to port FF14 to yet another platform, They have already done PC, PS3, PS4, PS5 and now recently Xbox Series. He also had discussions with Nintendo recently too. That's what happens when your MMO runs for 12 plus years on consoles.

Do you honestly believe consoles will be able to run fully path tracing games next gen?
Its crazy demanding on the GPU.


Here is a overclocked 5080 on a tuned PC:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G6uFxizjX8

First area they show in Cyberpunk 2077, it goes from 115 fps down to 41 fps.

In Alan Wake 2, its the shadows only? and there the fps tanked from 90+ fps down to 58 fps.... just to have sharper looking shadows with path tracing.
In Indy it goes from 155fps down to 75fps, and the differences arn't as massive as in say Cyberpunk2077.

Again this is with a geforce 5080 that's overclocked.
even next gen, I doubt consoles get close that performance.

We don't want 1100$+ consoles do we ? just so we can path trace games?

Yeah, they will be, if the rumours about UDNA are true. Current gen GPUs are still brute forcing a lot of things when it comes to RT, and I expect for UDNA to have much more optimized and clever approach to it.

I don't however expect all games to be fully path-traced, especially open world games, which will probably use some combination of techniques, but I can fully imagine something like Alien Isolation Remake or its sequel (or REs, SHs and similar), dungeon crawlers or games like Portal etc. to be fully pathtraced for next gen consoles.

That said, PT is not what I'm primarily excited about...

After the PS4 being my favorite Sony console the PS5 has been my least favorite Sony console. Only the Switch 1 really saved the past several years of gaming, hopefully the Switch 2 can continue that as it's off to a great start with the excellent DK.