The Graphics Plateau: Where do we go next?

[Lilani]

Gaming visuals are reaching their peak, slowly but surely. What will happen once we finally reach it? The current generation of Consoles has been the driving force for bringing lifelike visuals to gaming, with games like Killzone 3, Crysis, and such.

Where do we go next? The Playstation 2 era hit its graphics threshold rather quickly, and so games instead expanded outwards. Instead of trying to push the limits further, the PS2 era began to focus more on gameplay and style over realism, with solid platformers like Jak and Daxter or Ratchet and Clank.

But while all this was happening, and the older consoles gaining massive catalogs of games, the companies were still working on the NextGen consoles, which we have now. Of course the biggest focus of the new hardware was the shinier graphics engines, which pushed the boundries of graphical fidelity. We are reaching the end of that push for realism.

What is going to happen next? I'm really not sure. Thoughts?

Now we work on aesthetics, and making games that look GOOD rather than just crisp and well-rendered. Hardcore particle affects, realistic animation, and perfectly mapped and rendered textures aren't worth shit if it all ads up to an ugly, brown mess.

 

[Jaloopa]

Ooh, the "Graphics can't get much better" argument. We must be 5 years or so into a console generation.

Seriously, this sounds a hell of a lot like what I was hearing when speculation about 360 and PS3 was hotting up. I very much doubt any of the people who were sceptical about the possible improvement from XBox/PS2 graphics would be happy to go back to San Andreas or Halo 2 looking games.

 

[Something Amyss]

I think graphics whores will die out eventually. I mean, stuff looked pretty damn bad ten years ago. I remember playing Medal of Honor: Allied Assault as a kid and noticing how blocky the soldiers' hands were. Nowadays, high-graphics games look really good, and the change over the years has been quite noticeable.

Five years from now, unless they develop 3D that isn't garbage, fitting a few more pixels into a screen won't have the same return that it did in the past, so people will at least move onto other gimmicks.

Never underestimate the powers of fanboys. Remember, there were those who claimed COD MW2 and Uncharted 2's graphics were AWFUL at the time. I'm pretty sure that, as long as you can anaylyze the difference on a supercomputer that would make NASA and Bond Villains eerywhere cream their pants, there will be graphics whores.

"Oh man, I just blew this screencap of MW36 up to the point of being visible from space and there's a JAGGIE! These graphics SUCK!!!!!!!!!"

 

[Something Amyss]

Ooh, the "Graphics can't get much better" argument. We must be 5 years or so into a console generation.

Seriously, this sounds a hell of a lot like what I was hearing when speculation about 360 and PS3 was hotting up. I very much doubt any of the people who were sceptical about the possible improvement from XBox/PS2 graphics would be happy to go back to San Andreas or Halo 2 looking games.

If they played well, I would. I still play a lot of last gen games.

On the other hand, yes, we've heard this before. I have a feeling next gen, they'll have to struggle to keep stuff on a single BD. And Sony will still whine that Microsoft is holding them back.