FIFTEEN YEARS

[Flojomojo]

Remember when that seemed like a really long time?

 

Well, the Xbox 360 came out in 2005, FIFTEEN YEARS AGO

 

And to think that FIFTEEN YEARS BEFORE THAT, the Sega Genesis was just hitting its stride. 

 

Have we hit a plateau of gaming, or what?

[godslabrat]

More or less, yeah.  The leap between the current generation and the next is supposed to be the BIGGEST AND MOST NOTICABLE EVAR!!!

 

That is not my expectation.  I'm going to need to be convinced.

[Newsdee]

If those leaks are anything to go by, we are seeing consoles becoming what computers were a few years ago...

[Tanooki]

Most definitely.  I mean seriously, go back to the PS3 or the 360 even, look at the level of quality those games hit mid-life and later end too when the hardware was really comfortably worked over.  God of War and Uncharted 3 level stuff, even lame GTA for detail, where Halo and Forza went, and so on.  Now what have we got?  Sure there's an even higher grain of detail but the models don't particularly in general look any smoother persay, and honestly given the idiotic push for a solid 60FPS on these vs last gen some run like crappier than the last gen.  Then you have mobile, and really the nearly no overhead OS on the Nintendo Switch side of things and what Panic Button, Virtuous, Square-Enix and others have pushed is nuts, they are PS3 quality there now too.  We're quite at a flat line of quality, well maybe unfair saying that, definitely a slow creep.  There is no 2600 to NES, no NES to SNES, no jump to N64/PS1, or the hop to the Gamecube/PS2, to the PS3 levels of quality anymore.  That jaw or panty dropping level of wow is just dead.  Perhaps when/if VR gets so damned immersive it truly feels real whether you're stuck inside of a realistic thing or a living cartoon, then you can have a return of those OH CRAP moments, but they're in purgatory for now.

[adamchevy]

I think when games cost many hundreds of thousands or millions to develop then it’s hard to continue innovation.

[0078265317]

Once cloud fever kicks in it won't be that expensive.

[CatPix]

I don't see why. Gameswill still require thousand of people working for 1/2...5 years to make a game. I don't see how cloud gaming will change that. You just have to look on Steam and online shops to see that transport is the tail end of a game cost.

In fact it happens that physical games can even be gotten cheaper than the digital game since on the digital store, the seller has total control, but your local supermarket can say otherwise.

 

I don't think gaming will improve much indeed at least graphics-wise. In fact It might even stall since, when developpers will have produced a new 3D engine with characters and effects, they'll reuse it to no end for several years to recoup the cost.

In fact they may even stop improving for the more realisting things looks, the more we're creeping into the uncanny valley. Because we will have a realistic-looking face, but wrong or no facial muscles moving, poor lip-syncing, stiff body moves, dead blank eye look, etc.

It will improve on that front too but this will be subtle and slow since it's a detail most producer wouldn't care about because "realistic facial muscles" doesn't sell as much as "Bear hair entierely modelised and animated"

[0078265317]

Physical cart pcb and shell or cdrom costs.  Plus shipping to stores and the factories to assemble the parts.  Cloud or stream eliminates all that.  Just download.  No driving to the store.  And a download on my phone is 5 to 10 dollars.  Not the 50 to 60 a physical switch game costs.  

Edited March 25, 2020 by 0078265317

[Newsdee]

We already are in Cloud land for distributing games, but streaming games via video seems like a bad idea. Steam Link at home with a wired connection is barely enough. 

[Lost Dragon]

Great topic and some great comments so far.

 

I still have my 360 and HD DVD drive hooked up to my telly, it's been a great work horse.

 

The 360 also highlighted the utter nonsense of the numbers game. 

 

 

MS and talk of 720P gaming and then the online drama about it's flagship title, Halo 3 running below that and later Alan Wake ( which looked fantastic and was an absolute joy to play), running at 540P.

 

PS3 was supposedly more powerful on paper in key areas, but it took years for developers to get the best from it (Rockstar only switching to PS3 as lead development platform with GTA5) or even support it (Valve with Portal, after slagging the hardware at time of The Orange Box).

 

And now 15 years on we are seeing the same tactics employed already by both camps, talk of secret sauce they can't talk about, how one console is 30% more powerful than the other in key areas, developers picking sides..

 

 

Just show us some real innovation and killer Apps. 

[CatPix]

7 hours ago, 0078265317 said:

Physical cart pcb and shell or cdrom costs.  Plus shipping to stores and the factories to assemble the parts.  Cloud or stream eliminates all that.  Just download.  No driving to the store.  And a download on my phone is 5 to 10 dollars.  Not the 50 to 60 a physical switch game costs.  

Phone? I was talking about PC or current gen games. Those games already are available as downloads and they still cost 65/70$.

And cloud gaming require large powerful servers and storage space, all of which has a cost.

[dj_convoy]

Arrrgh, I'm old. Still have PS3, the 360 and PS4 all hooked up. My PS3 has basically always been my media server (it's REALLY good at that!) and if it blew up today, I'd definitely get another. My 360 sure has a lot of fun, weird indie games and stuff on it. 

 

As far as the next generation being the next leap forward or whatever... I dunno. We're already at the point where the TV has to be upgraded (not all of us have bought 4K sets yet, you know) to take advantage of the horsepower of the current iteration of consoles... so I doubt that the next step will be much different. Maybe graphics get a little nicer, maybe framerates get a little more stable. Maybe, with PS5, they are correct and they kill traditional loading times (I'll believe that when I see it). Eh. 

 

I keep telling myself "the next generation of consoles is when I opt out" and, unless PS5 is just somehow an indispensable machine with true backward compatibility with actual physical media, I just don't see myself getting one. Even my PS4, which I do have plenty of games for, doesn't get that much use these days. The Switch is where I do a great deal of gaming, just because it's so easy to pick up and play (and also not worry about hogging the TV). That is probably the one console that has VASTLY exceeded my expectations.  

 

[Agamon]

14 hours ago, adamchevy said:

I think when games cost many hundreds of thousands or millions to develop then it’s hard to continue innovation.

That's what Indie games are for. The AAA studios can keep churning out their over produced GaaS crap. Lots of innovation happening in the indie space. 

[Zoyous]

I think VR does have that feeling of a leap forward, but unfortunately it has several dings against it... nausea is a factor for many, but beyond that it's just about as isolating as can be, and it can get sweaty and cause some fatigue to your head and neck. Still, I think it's a worthy technology and it will continue to get better.

 

I don't think the addition of realtime raytracing to the next gen of high-end consoles is going to provide much of a wow factor. If you're technically-minded, you know it's been a long time coming and is not easy. But for most people, it'll have to be pointed out to them, and they may not have ever noticed it was missing before. But there is a lot of interesting ground to explore with physics simulations that weren't possible until recently.

 

The last game I remember giving me a familiar feeling, similar to the "wow!" of playing the Atari 2600 as a young kid, was Portal.

[BassGuitari]

On 3/24/2020 at 4:03 PM, Flojomojo said:

Remember when that seemed like a really long time?

 

Yup. I remember in 2000 when we all said, "Holy shit, the NES is 15 years old?!"

 

Around that time, I actually had a brief mini existential crisis on behalf of the Atari 2600, which was over 20 years old! by that point.

 

Time is a funny thing.

[Newsdee]

2 hours ago, BassGuitari said:

 

Yup. I remember in 2000 when we all said, "Holy shit, the NES is 15 years old?!"

Apple II says hi ?

 

I didn't even get a PS4... the games I wanted to play released on Steam, so that's good enough for me...

[Trinity]

My original Atari VCS is like 40 years old.

[digdugnate]

On 3/24/2020 at 4:03 PM, Flojomojo said:

Remember when that seemed like a really long time?

 

Well, the Xbox 360 came out in 2005, FIFTEEN YEARS AGO

 

And to think that FIFTEEN YEARS BEFORE THAT, the Sega Genesis was just hitting its stride. 

 

Have we hit a plateau of gaming, or what?

so that'd be 2035- i fully expect by then the planet will be run by damn dirty apes and we'll be eating meals in pill form, right?

 

Unless we end up with some holodeck-level stuff, i feel like we're going to see incremental upgrades to what's already out there- but i am hardly a prognosticator. 

[Flojomojo]

Technical stagnation and maybe even a little regression is also possible, and acceptable. 

[zzip]

20 hours ago, Zoyous said:

I think VR does have that feeling of a leap forward, but unfortunately it has several dings against it... nausea is a factor for many, but beyond that it's just about as isolating as can be, and it can get sweaty and cause some fatigue to your head and neck. Still, I think it's a worthy technology and it will continue to get better.

 

I think of current VR as the "Atari 2600 era of VR",  it will only get better, but even then, it's far ahead of where the 2600 started.

[Cobra Kai]

The way I see it, Doom/Quake changed the direction of gaming and pushed for hardware innovation. It will take another titanic game to change course. It will be an entirely new way to play games probably. Will it be VR? Who knows, but Nintendo tried hard with imposing motion  control  to change gaming, and despite great console sales, motion control was a fad and eventual flop IMO.

 

 

[zzip]

1 hour ago, Kobra Kai said:

The way I see it, Doom/Quake changed the direction of gaming and pushed for hardware innovation. It will take another titanic game to change course. It will be an entirely new way to play games probably. Will it be VR? Who knows, but Nintendo tried hard with imposing motion  control  to change gaming, and despite great console sales, motion control was a fad and eventual flop IMO.

motion control failed on regular gaming, however it really enhances the VR experience.   The most popular VR game, Beat Saber, wouldn't be possible without it.

[CatPix]

Also motion controls in't just about flapping a Wiimote in the air.

Try playing a regular FPS/adventure game then play Breath of the Wild.

It's just impossible for Nintendo to remove motion detection from their systems and I think that the next gens console and PC should adopt it. It makes aiming so much more fast, precise and natural it's a given.

Much like how analog controls arrived with 3Dad are impossible to remove now. (unless we replace it with VR.)

[mbd30]

PS3 and XBOX 360 still seem newish to me because the original XBOX and PS2 are the most recent consoles that I've owned.

 

[mbd30]

On 3/25/2020 at 6:28 PM, BassGuitari said:

 

Yup. I remember in 2000 when we all said, "Holy shit, the NES is 15 years old?!"

 

Around that time, I actually had a brief mini existential crisis on behalf of the Atari 2600, which was over 20 years old! by that point.

 

Time is a funny thing.

 

The NES felt that old in 2000 because there was a dramatic change in technology and popular genres over those 15 years. Not as much of a leap from PS3 to PS4.