Yes, I agree this generation brought forward some new ways of input to games thru introduction of wii and iphone...and we all know the crowd who is using these motion sensing controls...of course these controls will progress by the passage of time as recently shown by all three console companies...but you will accept the fact that you can not move your body parts continously for 3 to 4 hours to play an RPG or shooter or strategy games...so the scope of controls will always remain at lower importance side as compared to graphics when it comes to defining natural progression for gaming.

You're kidding right?

Nintendo has a long way to go to reach the calibre of PS360 for RTS, H&S/FPS, sims, and RPGS.  The only thing nintendo does way better than the others are platformers.

@Scottie

I'm not even going to nitpick about some of the games you mentioned not being developed by Nintendo, because that's irrelevant.

You were probably too busy with quickly totaling those big scores of yours, and you entirely missed the point of what I wrote. That wasn't to say that Nintendo never made a game in those genres, but that Bladeforce saying "Nintendo makes the best games" didn't take in account so many genres in which the big N can only be regarded as the best provider by a tiny minority of people.

Take the sentence "I'm a [genre] passionate lover, and Nintendo gives me some of the best [genre] games". Try putting one of those genres in there, and tell me how that sounds to you.

Plus, those are your examples of simulators and RTS games? Really?

I think they're plenty of room for graphics growth (although diminishing returns all seems likely).

The bigger challenge I think with the trend is how to keep cost under control - i.e. higher and higher res textures, more diverse textures, more detailed character models, etc. All this tends to cost more, raising the development cost and impacting developer ability.

Looking at this gen so far I think we're going to see (particularly given the praise given to 360 SDK and complaints about PS3's first SDK) a big focus on having very efficient SDK and tools to lower costs and development time.

Right now I'm very curious about the new ID tech, Crytek's move to consoles and what the next iteration of Unreal engine will look like (plus of course where Guerrilla and Naughty Dog take their tech next).

A good SDK will make developers' (re)training and code testing/optimization easier, quicker and cheaper. But I don't think it's going to cut much costs where it really counts today, that is assets production.

Carmack in one of his interviews expressed the same worries, and suggested that moving into procedurally created content could become a necessity soon.

Good point - I meant to mention procedural content as part of a direction I expect to see more games taking.  I was intending to mention it when talking about textures, etc. but forgot to expand on that paragraph.

I mean when I look at some big titles now, either released or in development, I just boggle at the amount of content and variety of that content vs say 10 years ago.  And then I think, that must have cost a fortune.

I believe that last gen pretty much reached "good enough" graphics for the most part. Just from personal experience, I've found myself often recoiling in horror or sort of laughing at PS1/N64 graphics, while GC/PS2/XBX graphics still look just fine for me. Not that I don't enjoy a graphical treat like Killzone 2 or MGS4, but I don't find the graphics of a Gamecube game getting in my way of enjoying them, while I often do for PS1 games. MGS1 and MGS:TTS are the perfect example of this, at least, IMO.

Either way, graphical power has little to do with sales figures, no matter how you look at it. In almost every case, the weakest system wins. The WII and PS2 are the weakest technical systems in their generation, but ended up winning big. After the Saturn dropped out, the PS1 was the weakest, but beat the pants off the N64. Handheld wise, the Gamegear, Lynx, NeoGeo Pocket Color, Wonderswan, N-Gage and finally PSP probably all have a support group for losing out to Nintendo's (comparatively) underpowered handhelds. Only the GameGear and the PSP even proved a real competitor.

I'm not sure I can think of a single example of graphics and technical abilities translating into sales figures. There probably are a few, but they are the exception, not the rule. If anything, it seems that technical ability is almost a hindrance to (sales) success.

Well, in your first paragraph you seemed to get my point. After it, though, you seemed to diverge from the actual topic.

I'll try stating my point a little bit differently: putting more graphical power behind the same effects will not yield significant results when you are further along the graph on the x-axis. When you're getting up close to your monitor trying to find the differences between GT5P and Forza 3 screenshots, I think we've gotten to that "good enough" point in terms of simply upping the texture resolutions and polygon counts. Where the extra horsepower would go to are things that aren't immediately noticeable.

For significant things like destructible terrain vs non-destructible, that's a no-brainer. Every one would notice things like that. But when you try to compare two games that only really have their differences in the physics (tire deformation, any one?), can you really tell me that the difference between, say, the PS3 and 360 are so great?

Truth is, the PS3 does have more room to grow than the 360 at the moment, but the difference isn't going to be very significant. I brought this about simply because the bickering between the MS and Sony fanboys about their two respective racing games was getting very annoying.

THEY BOTH LOOK GREAT! >_<

Yeah, I agree completely. My semi-off topic rambling was just something floating in my head, hehe. I can tell when a (for instance) PS3 game like KZ2 has amazing graphics, but honestly, most games in HD look pretty damn good, and the degree of difference probably isn't worth spending a ton of extra effort to push the console 10% more.

I do feel the PS3 probably is somewhat more powerful, but to be honest, I can't see a game pushing it to the point where you can actually see a huge difference in graphical power. It's not like the SNES vs Genesis where you can clearly see games on the Super Nintendo that do things the Genesis could only dream of (Yoshi's Island) or simply wouldn't be possible on the Genesis (Star Fox). Not even "Blast Processing" could keep up with that. (Disclaimer: as a kid I had a Genesis and no SNES, so I don't hate Sega or anything).

As usual, fanboy comparing of graphics is silly. These are among the closest in specs two consoles have been. The biggest difference is the PS3's Blu-Ray drive, which only really allows higher-rez textures, and no disc swapping. Not a big deal. I especially find it ironic when I see Sony fanboys gushing over the "amazingly more powerful" PS3, when the PS2 was the least powerful of the last gen, and did just fine, with a great library of games. Never did understand where the myth that the Gamecube was the least powerful came from though.

Hmmm. I think I'm rambling again...

Nintendo doesn't have to make the best games in every possible genre to make the "best games," or be the best software developer/publisher, or anything like that.  Nor does a person have to dislike dark brooding space marine games to think that Super Mario Galaxy is an all-time classic; it is not either/or.  It is possible for a given person to enjoy a wide variety of genres, and still believe that Nintendo has had a special quality over the last few decades which has lead them to create some of the most beloved video games, all time, as is demonstrated by numerous "best-of" lists both on and off this very site.

Just as you say "your opinion about the 'best games' is perfectly fine with me," it's also perfectly fine if you don't think Nintendo has the best games.  But to assume that someone who does think that must not like RPGs, RTSs, etc., is arrogant and lame.  And wrong.