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comment by StephenBuckley
StephenBuckley  ·  4324 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Evolution of the Console

Holy cow- I really didn't realize how long the present generation of consoles has been. I'm fairly certain this is driven by a few things, prominent among them the fact that gamers as a whole are not asking for better graphics any more.





MattholomewCup  ·  4324 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yes, we have reached a saturation point with graphics in a way. There's only so much better it can possibly get before photo-realism and it's questionable if that will even have an appreciable difference in making better games.

Aside from that graphical cap though, there's also the cost of development. Making a new console now isn't like making a new console in the 70s, 80s or 90s - a console now is basically just a computer calibrated to be used with a controller and TV, and they're marketing themselves not just as game machines, but as "media hubs". Of course, designing a new computer that 1) works Microsoft, 2) works with old stuff (no one wants to abandon their whole game collection because the new system won't read it) and 3) isn't horrendously overpriced Sony is hard, it costs a lot of money and time to do intelligently, and even if you do everything right it can still flop. Thus, it's really in companies' best interests if they let a console generation last as long as possible, to wring out as much profit from it as possible before moving on to the next gen and facing serious diminishing returns. Nintendo is the only one who has a next-gen-kinda console out, and that's because they make hardware that's cheap but different from the last thing.

ecib  ·  4324 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    prominent among them the fact that gamers as a whole are not asking for better graphics any more.

Who are these people? I won't be satisfied until it looks like I'm watching an actual recording. How could you not want better graphics?

StephenBuckley  ·  4324 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Get me their backgrounds. Find out if they had a family.