What if this time it doesn't

[JU!]

If there is not a decent leap this may make developers focus more on the gameplay side of things therefore making better games and possibly being in the days of old where all that mattered was how the game played. Not that i'm saying this still doesen't exist cus it does but just on a smaller scale and graphics have been given more of a bigger part. I personally think once graphics get so far that online will become more and more of a focus.

[iloveannie]

It does boil down to the fact that we are limited to three dimensions on a two dimensional screen. The big leap has happened as far as current viewing equipment is concerned. We will eventually be presented with utterly lifelike images and movement. Speech is already there thanks to voice acting, as is other audio. I really am not sure what everybody is expecting from the next few generations. I have resigned myself to graphical enhancements as far as the gaming goes. Any other included aspects will be from current technologies.

Of course what I would like is a console that lets me play light gun games on my 100Hz Panasonic TV. Bloody House of the Dead my arse ft:

[Brats]

Well I guess we'll have a public demo soon enough.

DVD Vs. HD-DVD Vs. Blu-Ray, anyone?

I will bet any amount of money that those formats will only sell to complete AV heads. Look how SACD and DVDA have been relatively ignored by the masses.

[nips]

I think that the console manufactures currently benefit from the gfx updates and that's what the focus will be on.

Graphics quality is easily quantifiable and easy to sell. Remember the boards in Dixon?s and GAME with specs for the 3 consoles each outlining the number of polygons each can push. It's right there in your face a simple comparison and a way to sell your console.

A game that looks good, sounds good and has a flashy title can be sold to thousands in a 20 second advert.

A game that looks average, but has a solid story, some interesting ideas and an innovative control system that allows users to explore games at a deeper level allowing for a long term growth of the genre and gaming market, is a game that you can't sell in 20 seconds.

I fear that companies are generally too short sighted (although Nintendo frequently impress eg. GC being only a games console), and will only go for what is going to give them money.

If a console was released tomorrow with a clock speed twice as fast as the XB, pushing twice as many polygons and with twice as many games, people will think that it is twice as good as the XB. Simply that isn't the case. A crap game that looks good it still a crap game. But if you don't know any better because the TV force feeds you adverts for mediocre titles, then people will be less inclined to complain.

I don't know whether a gaming revolution will come unless either Mass-market Geoffrey gets pissed off with mediocre titles and chooses not to invest time and money in videogames any longer, or Mass-market Geoffrey decides games aren't cool and chooses not to buy the Playstation 4.

Once the market dynamic changes and the people demand more then we'll see a movement away from graphics and stuff... but that may not happen because of advertising and because people are generally unaware or uncaring... Perhaps when games are no longer 'cool' we'll see a shift.

Sorry that was a little insussinct, but I cba to read over it and concisely sum up my opinions.

[NeilMcRae]

Those who believe Betamax was a failure live in cloud cuckoo land. Betamax may not have been a sucess in the home/end user market. But in the pro market it was [and still is to an extent] huge. Comparing this to games platforms is a bad idea because the dynamics of the markets are too different.

Betamax was the better format but VHS took the lead because of the way JVC and others licenced the technology. Brats I think you are right about HD-DVD/Bluray being a niche technology. At the end of the day users expect to get some level of quality and as long as that level is acceptable [VHS over betamax, GSM over 3G, CD over DVD-A/SACD] then they will happlily stick with it rather than pay the premiun for something that they think is already good enough. Look at Three, video calling - but nobdy wants to pay for it.

In my view Xbox is betmax of this gen and it just hasn't picked up the interest of joe bozo at home. Microsoft think, like Sega did with the DC, that they need to be first to market with the next gen platform to get the market share Sony has and they are gambling a huge amount, wrongly in my view, to get to the market first. In any case I like all the platforms and at a 100 quid a pop for them you can't really say that you don't get value for money. It will be interesting to see what the next gen consoles sell for at retail and how long the early adoptor price lasts for. I expect it to be a much more agressive price war which is good news for the people buying these systems. Unified system - forget it.


Regards,
Neil.

[Ady]

I really don't think the leap to the NextGen will be significant at all. We're reaching that plateau.

I think the next big thing will be fully emergent, non-linear gameplay.

[hankwangford]

Well I guess we'll have a public demo soon enough.

DVD Vs. HD-DVD Vs. Blu-Ray, anyone?

I will bet any amount of money that those formats will only sell to complete AV heads. Look how SACD and DVDA have been relatively ignored by the masses.

Exactly, although I suspect that if they came up with Blu-Ray and all that ten years from now it'd take off - kinda like Minidisc has. It's just too early and is more likely to piss the consumer off some.

[Kerraig UK]

Those who believe Betamax was a failure live in cloud cuckoo land. Betamax may not have been a sucess in the home/end user market. But in the pro market it was [and still is to an extent] huge. Comparing this to games platforms is a bad idea because the dynamics of the markets are too different.

Betamax was the better format but VHS took the lead because of the way JVC and others licenced the technology. Brats I think you are right about HD-DVD/Bluray being a niche technology. At the end of the day users expect to get some level of quality and as long as that level is acceptable [VHS over betamax, GSM over 3G, CD over DVD-A/SACD] then they will happlily stick with it rather than pay the premiun for something that they think is already good enough. Look at Three, video calling - but nobdy wants to pay for it.

In my view Xbox is betmax of this gen and it just hasn't picked up the interest of joe bozo at home. Microsoft think, like Sega did with the DC, that they need to be first to market with the next gen platform to get the market share Sony has and they are gambling a huge amount, wrongly in my view, to get to the market first. In any case I like all the platforms and at a 100 quid a pop for them you can't really say that you don't get value for money. It will be interesting to see what the next gen consoles sell for at retail and how long the early adoptor price lasts for. I expect it to be a much more agressive price war which is good news for the people buying these systems. Unified system - forget it.


Regards,
Neil.

Dude, Betamax and Beta SP/Digibeta aint the same format. Betamax was a massive flop.

[Salsa Party Animal]

I think once GC 2, XBOX Next and PS3 we should not have any more hardware until 2012 at least.

Say we have done 80% of maximum power for graphics, 40 % of Physics, 80 % sound and 40% AI in games there would not be much room to improve apart from creating new games.

Say Konami got all the stats, kits, teams league, stadium, physics, online gaming and everything in Winning Eleven 9 what they suppose to do to improve it.

[nips]

Once the graphics start to reach an apex, it will then be necessary to improve the game in other ways. Improve the control system, or the menu system, or add challenges or enter in your own character with your face using eye-toy or something...

You'll always be able to push it forwards slightly, but you'll see less of an improvement year on year. This means we may see new IP and new ideas floating around!

[NeilMcRae]

Dude, Betamax and Beta SP/Digibeta aint the same format. Betamax was a massive flop.

Yes but that wasn't the reference I made.

Betamax in some areas was a massive flop yes. But Sony still
produced Betamax kit until 2002. The cause of the failure was cited in the then Sony CEO's autobiography as stupidness on the part of Sony not to licence the technolgy.

Regards,
Neil.

[NeilMcRae]

I think there is still along way to go on the graphics front. Higher resolutions for one. Also take a look at Far Cry and try and compare it to anything available now Bzzt. I can't wait to see the Xbox version of Doom3 and compare it to the PC version. Even Halo on the PC was 20 times better than the Xbox version graphically.

Neil.

[Resonance]

It is really funny to hear all of these people say that we are reaching a graphics apex and there is not much more we can do(bookmark this thread and laugh in 10 year time). I suspect many graphics enthusiast said the same thing when they added an extra 8MB of ram to their 486's!

Technically we have a really long way to go before we can consider graphics to be photorealistic(if that is what we are aiming for). And an even longer way to go before developers have so much power that they dont have to bother with counting polygons or effects, to optimise a games performance. Instead they would just be free to do what they want and not have to worry about performance.

I think once we get to this level, the whole graphics emphasis will end.

[112]

i dissagree, a lot of the time the graphial ability of a game is down to lazy programming, which leads to games being ridiculously big because the programers are too damn lazy to iron out their work and tweak it down to the point of refinement. That is why games are so damn big these days. The technicalogical advancements are merley there to serve the power hungry programers who jus want to show boat their high end graphics with the minimal amount of fuss. We will never see an end to a means because we in nature are too damn greedy!

112

[Ady]

I was going to make this point.

It's crazy to think there was a time when people would squeeze shockingly unheardof visuals out of 48K, now nothing seems to be big or powerful enough.