I remember back on Nes time when all waited for next consoles to come with graphic update,from playstation to playstation 2...It was so huge that Ps1 actually had videos on games.

Now watching Alan Wake and Uncharted 2, I think there is no need to upgrade graphics anymore.And even if it comes more realistic in future, it won't mean much.

So whats for next gen then?Will they just upgrade basic stuff,new controls,new format?

rather than presentation, the next step is obviously how the players interact, Wii pointed the way now everyone will follow.

I foolishly hold out some hope that it will be about gameplay next gen.

Nowhere to go with graphics any more? We've barely scratched the surface on graphics and rendering and I don't think the entire world will stop/have stopped caring about technological advances in visuals and audio simply because the weakest performing console won this gen.
I can see it now, developers like Blizzard, Valve and Bioware starting to make games with nifty controls and sub-par visuals just because its cool.

You know, they said the same thing back when the first 3-D games came out and when the first Final Fantasy movie came out; there's nowhere to go from here, we've reached the summit.
I'm fairly certain that someone, somewhere, said the same thing about wheelbarrows, early boats, clothing and all manner of things.
Just because something is perceived as good or good enough, even if it were by a majority (it ain't, most gamers would want advances on all levels I believe) doesn't mean it can't (and won't) be improved upon.
And thank god for that, where would we be today?

PS: Remember "Virtual Reality"? It was all the blaze and was supposed to feel real and be "the shit" for the future. Well, it wasn't, turns out it had very few applications (at least back then) and the immensely drab visual and audiovisual output of the devices made the whole thing seem as real as... well, as real as pushing buttons on a gamepad and watching games on a TV.

I fail to see how graphics can be improved much of this gen unless you wan't real 3D or something which won't happen next gen.

Theres going to be a whole new way of gaming and graphics will have to be reduced in order to use it.

Consoles is not the future, portable is.

I'm sorry but graphics are far from done, the textures resolution are still not high enough and this is one part of graphics that consumes RAM, the current machines are restricted so new hardware will have to come out, also ram is required for physics based dynamic world destruction where polygons don't disappear as well as procedural animations, rather than the pre-canned stuff that we still see in games, although to a lesser extent.

Also, people keep saying this about graphics, but this same argument was said back in PS1 and PS2 days, but just look at the graphics between some of the best PS2 and PS3, their is a great difference in fidelity, same thing can be said about the xbox to 360. Of course to really see the difference you have to own a HDtv.

In any case, the day focus on graphics will cool off is when the hardware is in place to produce a world that has the same fidelity as that of real life....even then there will be a push to go beyond that at that stage virtual reality would be feasible and perhaps the matrix possible, one does not know what the future holds and this is what makes life exiting, to say that things should stay as they are and just stagnate is to me a rather stupid thought, but I suppose to each their own.

Hello? Didn't you see the Wii Vitality Sensor? I mean, who wouldn't want to put that on their penis? There are no limits to what Nintendo will come up with to further immerse you in a game.

Oh no, graphics can improve a lot. As amazing as Killzone 2 looked, did you think for a second it was real life? Plus it only ran at 30fps- next gen it'll be able to run at 60, or maybe 120. We haven't even started with 3D (ignoring the Virtual Boy), and the non-blockbuster games of this gen don't look all that good.

I think the future is... making an economical system. Clearly Sony learned that.