Gamesradar- The Wii U's launch marks the transition out of the longest console generation in gaming's history. Yes, even if you think Nintendo is just playing HD catch-up, the Wii U is the beginning of the eighth generation of consoles--Wikipedia says so! Traditionally, the advancement in technology from one generation to the next led to enormous gains in visual quality, which, software aside, was often the marketing focus of any console. Advertisements would scream "look how great the pictures look on this thing!" and kids would point, jaws unhinged, and proclaim how "real" pixelated water was.
So we got to thinking: What can we really expect from games a few years down the road? Surely they'll look better--but will the increase be as dramatic as it had been in generations past?
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Interestingly enough, what we are seeing is more developers willing to take on smaller projects for digital distribution, and really that's where I think we're seeing the evolution of gaming. With multimillion dollar games pushing system specs, you need those games to do well or else you're out of business and so you take fewer risks. I think if anything, we'll see more smaller, made for download type games next gen and those are the games that's where the innovation will happen.
As far as genre selection, I expect the next gen to be very similar to this one.
To put that in perspective, it's often said that the Ps3 and Xbox360 are 30x more powerful than their predecessors, again that's a sort of aggregate.
meaning, todays games with 1080p, 30 frames, 4x aa
is the MOST we can hope for from ps4/nextbox
Since Msoft is pushing Windows 8 strongly how about next console cycle you give me the ability to customize my xbox home screen tiles.
It's bullsh*t that they give us a system update on the 360 to make the homscreen tiles like windows 7/8 and yet don't give us the option to remove/modify/pin tiles of our own choosing to the homescreen like on their phones.
Other than that...they better not implement internal storage, and actually use universal HDD's and not this weird HDD case that you need to open up and mod just to use a regular HDD.
more on creativity.... But who am I kidding, that won't happen.
Avoid making shooters/FPS, they are an extremely tired genre.
I hope true next gen brings back the adventure genre.
I enjoyed Okami more than I did Skyrim (though I got ridiculously bored of Skyrim & Reckoning).
Now what I mean is: even if you get a hardware that can run pretty graphics at 60 FPS, there will always be someone who'll develop something even more beautiful but would do that at 30 frames.