Think of A.I as a layer on top of "done by hand" development.

I.E. Someone uses photogrammetry which is the process where someone creates a 3D model of real-world objects and environments by analyzing multiple 2D images from different angles.

You can use A.I to infer more "interpreted" angles of images for additional depth and detail and dramatically speed up development, so that person doesn't spend an entire day building a rock asset, they can instead build a dozen rock assets in that same day instead, with the same perceived quality... Meaning more content, larger game worlds or faster development times and smaller budgets.

A.I isn't just about negating the need for "done by hand" development, it's also about augmenting, enhancing and adding to it... The fear is that it will displace jobs, but considering that game budgets have been constantly exploding with the costs passed onto consumers and development times have constantly gotten longer.... And 10's of thousands of jobs have been lost anyway, why the hell not?

Neural Texturing can be used for multiple different purposes... Like using it to add detail to poor or low quality textures or leveraging it to for stochastic sampling for better filtering.

Art will still need to be front and center for the foreseeable future.... But what will truly be a massive leap will be in leveraging generative A.I for NPC interactions in games, the potential is there for some truly deep and engaging interactions with game worlds.


Don't get me wrong, I hate A.I upscaling with a passion, I hate the fizzle, I hate the crawl, I hate the artifacts, but that's just me as a purist... But the other stuff? That's something to get excited about.

I think the best company that could benefit from A.I development would be Gamefreak. It's 2025 and they still have terrible tiling textures in their games and subpar image quality for the given hardware.

Yes but no. It will remain the same for the most part unless something else significantly changes that impacts it. With the world the way it's been over the past decade, it's not super unlikely for something else unexpected to happen to upset the "new normal".

As others have also pointed out, advancements in both software, hardware and AI, can significantly add efficiency and boost performance. Being able to do more with less is exactly what next gen needs and the tech sector is working towards that.

PS5 Pro was also at least $100 overpriced. That makes it seem like the next gen launch console has to be insanely expensive, which isn't necessarily the case. PS5 also doesn't have the same level of competition to deal with, so they could afford to be less generous (mid gen).

Botching a new console launch is also a big mistake and SNY knows this well. They lived it and even watched MS go through it and saw what it did to the XB brand. I don't see PS6 launching too soon, or charging too much, whatever the hardware ends up being.

GTA6. Did you not see how good the graphics were? Leagues above everything else. 

Both PS6 and PS portable will release around Holidays 2027/Early 2028. 

The Witcher 4 tech demo showed us what current consoles are capable of. Literally no one is asking for better graphics or hardware. Tech wise, what we want is for devs to optimise for the hardware that we already have (and there's A LOT of room for improvement in this area).

Also, considering how long it takes to create new games nowadays (never mind decent games), do you honestly want to shell out (I bet you) over $700 for a new machine to play throughout its entire lifespan, maybe few good original games, which because of ballooning development costs, are going to be available on your current gen machine and ported to PC anyway?

I'd say that's more a software issue; any games can run poorly on any hardware if they're not well optimized.

I also think prices should be different for physical vs. digital.  I think $60/$80 is reasonable for a digital/physical game.  The bigger issue is that large third party publishers want to everyone to buy $80 digital only games.  That's unreasonable.

Sony could make an extremely profitable console if they made it a hybrid with similar specs to PS5.  However, the details do matter.  The point is not for games to get bigger and better.  The point is actually for them to get cheaper to develop (and keep prices down to customers too).  Nintendo kept hardware specs similar going from Gamecube to Wii and they developed a ton of Wii games, because they kept costs down.  Sony could do the same on their next console, and we are at the point of major diminishing returns at this point when it comes to hardware improvements.

No physical no interest, and $500 consoles are already too much for me. If I can get a Switch 2 next year, that will be it for me. I'm done with modern consoles. A lot of retro stuff yet to play. Esp with Sony and MS leadership. Sony would drown in a rain puddle, and MS remains king of slamming their dicks in the door for over a decade running.