CliffyB: Epic Must "Drag" the Industry Into the Next Generation

[DSK-]

Hey Cliff! What about the clusterfuck of a failiure that Unfinished Tournament 3 was at release? Sure, the graphics technology was vastly improved from predecessors, but the visual aesthetic was (at least in my opinion) god awful and the game was particularly poor example of a console port. It took two massive patches something like 2 and 4 months after release to fix it.

I still believe it was just an (un)playable tech demo.

 

[Aprilgold]

It's not MUST it's want to. And why do we need another generation so soon anyway?

Because if you don't change the hardware for something long enough, technology and ambitions go higher but are capped because of the hardware their using.

But HAVE they capped it? It doesn't seem like we're close enough to justify another jump.

Yes, they have. Bro, the common gaming generations up to this point have been about five years max, were going on nine years.

Nine years is a long time, and without new hardware our old hardware is un-sufficient for our need.

9 years ago was 2003. The current generation came out 2006.


Anyways, this is the argument against pushing graphics in a nutshell.

Enslaved sold half a million copies and was considered a disaster, and lost money for its publisher.

Catherine sold half a million copies and was considered the greatest success ever for its publisher, and made them tons of money.

One is a by-the-numbers adventure rehashing game elements and sharing the same story as Dragon Ball with a big budget.

The other was that risk-taking game that made a puzzle game into a metaphor for coming to grips with growing from being a young adult to coming to terms with commitment and one's future.

If you want more games to take risks, you have to encourage the sort of game-production that encourages value for the money. We have the technology to do TRULY innovative things... too bad we're spending money doing the graphics-design equivalent of bitchwork--filling in the extra detail that higher end graphics-engines demand to look passable.

Well you can answer this question then.
Does technological advancements stop for anything unless said thing makes it physically impossible to continue technological advancements?

Lets look at it like this, should we use our six year failed hardware that is six years in the past or the newer things that are made to be easier to use and better as a whole?

This has been the problems with consoles for years, it uses dated hardware and still trying to stay on the edge of technology.

I play on PC so I could care less about your console worries, but since a majority of the games are catering to the 12 year old "GRAPHIX!" boom going on in consoles right now I'm starting to get lowly depressed with no reason to upgrade my PC.

 

[DracoSuave]

Well you can answer this question then.
Does technological advancements stop for anything unless said thing makes it physically impossible to continue technological advancements?

I never said technology shouldn't advance--I said the video-game industry needs to stop whoring technology and throwing money at the bleeding edge.

Lets look at it like this, should we use our six year failed hardware that is six years in the past or the newer things that are made to be easier to use and better as a whole?

How is it easier to use? Looking strictly at resolution as an example: If you double resolution you quadruple the number of pixels, right? The same concept goes for polygons--if you halve the size of polygons, you quadruple the number of polygons needed.

That means that the work involved in actually designing the object in question is quadrupled. That means for every 1 man-hour you were spending before, you are now spending 4 man-hours.

That means the labor costs 4 times as much.

That doesn't count any other additional expense.

This has been the problems with consoles for years, it uses dated hardware and still trying to stay on the edge of technology.

And the way to do that is through artistic design. A game can look absolutely stunning without doing bitchwork.

I play on PC so I could care less about your console worries, but since a majority of the games are catering to the 12 year old "GRAPHIX!" boom going on in consoles right now I'm starting to get lowly depressed with no reason to upgrade my PC.

But that's just it, PC Gaming's need for the bleeding edge has made costs for AAA games on the PC so high that the top games either HAVE to do console ports to recoup their losses or they have to institute monstrous DRM just to reduce piracy a smidgeon.

When companies can sell HALF A MILLION units of something at 60 dollars a piece, but their costs are so high they're losing money... that's a sign of a toxic business model.

And you wonder why there's little room for innovation at the top selling games?

 

[juyunseen]

So we should see Game prices jumping to 80-120$ a pop? I WANT IT!
Consoles that cost 800$ or so? HELL YEAH!

Are they already forgetting why the Ps3 launch failed?

 

[Cid Silverwing]

It's exactly this kind of sentiment that causes games to be unaffordable to the less monetarily blessed.

Stop trying to see who can have the most fancypants graphics, you motherfuckers. You're only adding to the already rampant problems of bullshit DRM and so forth that consumers have.

 

[ReinWeisserRitter]

Looks like the gaming industry will outgrow me altogether if enough people think the same way this person does in the coming years.

 

[malestrithe]

Screw that. Let's ramp up the budget and push AAA titles to a $80 release price! Nothing could go wrong!

Atari, Coleco and Intellivision games were 75 dollars on average new.

NES games went anywhere from 60- 90 dollars new at the stores, My mom paid 75 dollars for Legened of Zelda and 95 for Nobunaga's Ambition.

SNES were 60 dollar games.

PS1 had 40-50 dollars games,

PS2 was about 50 dollars standard.

PS3 had 60 dollar games. (Wii games are 50 dollars and less. Yes, it still counts because it is a part of this generation.)

Chances are gamers will accept it and move on if the price climbs back up. Your grandparents did. Fairly certain your parents will too.