Has Gaming Hit a Graphical Halt?

Graphics have always been a key component of gaming ever since they became a popular mainstream form of entertainment. It was one of the main reasons for propelling the gaming industry to the level…

[v_eno_m]

link is busted, should just go to https://deadpixels.wordpres... and not https://wordpress.com/view/...

[Dead_Pixels_]

Just sorted it. Thanks for raising the issue.

[mikeslemonade]

People keep buying Nintendo products. Which not only degrades graphical growth but also quality games.

[SuperSonic91]

We will never hit a wall when it comes to computer graphics. Never.
Not even the 100 year old Hollywood is there yet .... and same goes for video games.

The two has a lot of home work left to do.

Sound quality is pretty much there at the peak.

Game play mechanics has peaked during PS2 era. Everything we see today has been done by that time. They arevjust mixing and matching them today.

But about graphics....
Artificial Intelligence needs more improvement.
Physics needs lots of improvement.
Compression needs to improve too.
Lighting needs more improvement.
Frame rate needs lotso improvement.

So video game graphics is not there yet.

[UltraNova]

The aboslute graphical ceiling would be when game engines produce visuals that are literally and beyond any doubt, indistinguishable from reality. That includes everything from lightning, physics, animations, textures, geometry, draw distance etc. A reality simulation if you like.

I'd say we are about 50 years at least off that target.

[WilliamSheridan]

We might not hit a reply on graphic ability, but we will hit a point where the pay off for the time spent adding the detail will diminish. I think we are nearing that point. I could be wrong, and developers may find a way to automate some of that detail, but I expect that growth to slow as developers switch to AI and physics.

[SharpCT]

Video games arent there YET. But we are starting to hit the ceiling for how great the game can look from a graphical standpoint.

So what if pcs can get 4K, 8k etc.. it's not ever going to be The jump SD was to HD. Period. They just will continue to milk the next technology

[Maddens Raiders]

I think Ultra Nova nailed it.

[wonderfulmonkeyman]

If it hasn't, then I hope it does soon; the over-focus on pleasing graphics nuts is inflating budgets way too often, and giving MT's and GaaS room in the heads of devs that are desperate to make up the difference.

Which means we, as consumers, suffer through games being either more expensive without these things to try and make up the difference in costs, or ruined, when the devs include these Microtransaction and Games-as-a-Service ideas, to try and pull in more money in an effort to counterbalance the outrageous budget-inflations.

The "Fidelity Focus Fiasco" has gone on long enough.

It's literally been ramping up more and more since the very start of gaming, but now that we're hitting a point of diminishing returns thanks to the limits of tech [and average consumer income rates that simply cannot keep pace with it for very much longer if things keep jumping in price, slowly but surely, over time], it's time to either slow down or stop on it, at least for a while.

I mean, unless graphics fanatics WANT another gaming crash, like the one back in the 80's, with the only difference being the cause of it...

[Dead_Pixels_]

I think if we have a game crash anytime soon it will be in regards to the current microtransaction fiasco and the treatment the ESRB have towards the issue. I do believe that gameplay and other elements of a game need to be given more attention within the industry now more than ever.

[mcstorm]

I agree and I think this is where Nintendo always come out on top of the others.

I'm not saying every Nintendo game is better than every Sony and Microsoft or even 3rd parts but I don't ever recall Nintendo putting out a broken game that needs a day one patch ect.

I love some of the games we get now on all 3 plus my but the industry has become like the phone industry where people want the same games you like phones and they are cod and fifa. Ide love to see one or 2 big ips a year and then see smaller / new ips hit the market in between from the same publisher. For me we just see to many of the same ips. Don't get me wrong I love some of them forza ms and horizon being one of them but I do wish Microsoft would do them every 2 years so a ms every 4 no Horizon every 4 but 2 years apart from each other. The same with games like halo, UC, killzone cod ac, batman ect

[Teflon02]

Mcstorm, look up the skyward sword fiasco. That game was released on a system that doesn't do patches and it still got a patch lol. Also every Nintendo game now gets day one patches to add things or correct things now. Every company needs those patches the second they become available to use. Nintendo is now getting as careless as everyone else. They just took an extra Gen over everyone to start doing it because patches weren't available

[SuperSonic91]

Look at what that kidtendo posted in this discussion?

Totally irrelevant!

What does loot boxes, the North American Video Game Crash have to do with video game graphics fidelity topic at hand?

That guy's brain is a mess.

That crash was brought about by low quality games and rip offs not graphical advances in gaming.

[ChrisW]

The fact that it can cost millions of dollars to make AAA high-graphics games is reason enough for programmers to go "retro" and favor gameplay over graphics.

[KyRo]

Good graphics don't need inflated budgets. Hellblade looked mind-blowing and easily one of the best looking games of this generation and the budget was a fraction to what some of these other games are using.

[frostypants]

The current gaming market has literally nothing in common with the 80s gaming crash. C'mon.

You're right about diminishing returns. It takes bigger and bigger hardware boosts to have a smaller and smaller practical visual impact. 4K vs 1080p is far less visually discernible than 1080p vs. 480p, for example...despite being a far greater increase in pixels.

But major noticeable jumps are still happening, particularly in the areas polygon count, lighting, and shadows. And regardless of your opinion, many do find that these things add significantly to a game's immersion (in games where immersion is a goal).

I would also wholeheartedly dispute that graphics are what is inflating game budgets. In fact over time this stuff gets rather commoditized, to the point that a hobbyist at home can create amazing demos (see: almost every freaking thing DSOGaming ever posts on this site). The sheer amount of content in non-party games has exploded from 1-10 hours in the NES era to often 30-100 hours today. THAT'S the main culprit. The market demands more content for the money than ever before. On top of that, the sheer complexity of the games is many orders of magnitude higher, even before factoring in graphics. Even most of those cutesy retro-graphics indie games of today are way more complex than the games they take their visual inspiration from.

If graphics truly do not matter to you, there are endless options out there. The gaming market is not going to crash over this.

[jmc8888]

Wrong on so many levels. You have to know what drives the trends. You have incorrectly done so.

Few are graphics fanatics. Just about everyone wants graphics to improve over time. Every time you make a game, you learn stuff. You have more powerful equipment. You can pull in new techniques others have used. Graphics advance because it's almost impossible to NOT have them advance. You clearly haven't figured that out.

Diminishing returns? Nope. We're not even 10 percent, hell 1 percent to the best graphics ever. Diminishing returns to you only means you haven't thought things out long enough to figure out how much better graphics are on the table. There's 4k, 8k, 16k... guess what, even 16k isn't anywhere close to how things go. 128k? Nope. Even higher... much higher. Then you have things like 2000FPS... not a typo. Then you have much higher IQ, physics, etc, etc. Even then we're only talking about FLAT screens. You have VR, you have AR, you have holographic tv/games. (Think the type of games they played in Robotech... coming up from out of base almost like those old flat Pac Man arcade games you'd see at Pizza hut)

Why do some people believe in stopping progress? The human race is anti-entropy. The universe is undergoing entropy. The human race builds, betters, improves, and evolves. That's what we do. So your 'fidelity focus fiasco' is just pure backwards thinking.

Games are more expensive because... get this... the money you use to buy them is worth less every day. Also because most big AAA games are made by Wall Street entities, who load up on debt, stock buybacks, mergers and acquisitions (during stock market bubbles with debt).

I.E. Crap.com is $100 a share, if not in a bubble, it's $5 a share. But Activision decides to buy it at a premium for $120 a share and does so with debt they procured at 0 percent. They don't have that much cash because they've been funneling it all via dividends. They then take out another loan so they can announce a stock buyback. $1 billion more in debt so they can temporarily raise the price of their stock.

Then they realize the IP's they bought at a premium, with debt, wasn't worth 1/20th of what they actually paid. The games from that IP bombs. The market goes down. Interest rates goes up. Suddenly, short of cash, they have to keep servicing their debt, but at a higher interest rate. Thus their debt payments skyrocket.

To try to survive they raise game prices, cut back on scope of games, more micro transactions. Meanwhile the Federal Reserve, BoE, BoJ, ECB all turn the printing presses on overdrive. QE-infinity. More junk bond purchases. More backstops. Outright buying of stocks and direct monetary interventions. The purchasing power of your currency goes from $4 a gallon of milk to $20 a gallon of milk. Developers have no choice but to raise game prices, but can't completely pass it on since the consumers didn't get pay raises. Thus they ONLY raise it to say $100 a game, instead of fully passing it on and charging $150-200.

[wonderfulmonkeyman]

Sorry, buddy, but diminishing returns actually is a thing; the human eye cannot fully distinguish the differences between 1080P and 4K at this point, and the differences they'll be able to pick out only shrinks with the jump from 4k into 8k and beyond, because the differences in these little leaps just isn't big enough to have the dramatic difference shown as clearly.

Until we get to the point where graphics actually do start looking human, which is going to take a while yet, there isn't going to be any major leaps that justify favoring the expenses that go into trying to push for more and more graphical fidelity, over the leaps they COULD be making if they put even half of that focus into brainstorming on gameplay enhancements and new ideas.
You can live in denial of this all you like, but the fact is that the industry has been going nuts over graphical fidelity for quite a while now, and the big three have been dragging the sheeple by their collars with it the whole way.
You can see it every time you look into a comment section about a multiconsole port; no one focuses on differences in gameplay. It's ALWAYS about graphics. There are more nuts out there than you're willing to admit to yourself.
It holds back developers from focusing on areas of gameplay that are far more important than those extra few pixels needed to make a sweat drop stand out against a person's forehead.

Some amount of improvement per new machine is expected, yes, but not to the point that fanatics keep expecting, and OVERGLORIFYING.

And to be quite honest, it isn't needed, either. It just takes up more budget that could be going towards more important things.
Clearly you haven't figured THAT out.

I've also already pointed out, quite clearly, that if another crash happens, it WILL be due, at least in part, to budget inflations that could have been curbed if they weren't trying to pull out more and more from each budget so that they could get their devs to focus so much on drawing out more and more of a machine's maximum abilities in favor almost solely of graphics improvements.

Blaming wall-street for the mis-focus of development dollars is like excusing EA for microtransactions.

[jmc8888]

Same thing for consoles, which is why if you want a true successor to an Xbox 360 in PS4/X1, it would of cost about $799. They couldn't. So they made the PS4/X1 weak... because they ARE weak, and charged a rate people could afford... $399. But because they did, they had to release new half gen console just 3 years later. Even then, they are STILL gimped and losing about 30-50 fps because of poor CPU.

You blaming graphics is hilariously wrong for higher costs. It's called the money printing press and the machinations of idiocy on Wall Street. Focus your blame where it belongs.

We definitely aren't in a situation where there's a bunch of crap games out there flooding the market like the 83 crash. It's the opposite, we have too many good games coming.

The gaming crash will come when you have too many games. Back in the 1980's people were charging too much for crap games. The next one can come one of two ways.

1. Worldwide Economic Depression
2. Quality games crash... where everyone has 200-1000 games in their backlog and simply can't justify buying games.

It's not going to come because of developers and people wanting better graphics.

That's like saying the higher prices of cars is because they keep changing the look of the body every year slightly. Clearly you don't have your finger on the pulse of what drives things. I just told you what does.

[PhoenixUp]

Visuals always find a way to improve no matter how great they look at a period in time

[Dead_Pixels_]

Yeah, I seem to think that too, but this generation has definitely been the most underwhelming since the birth of the home console.

[PoSTedUP]

i think its because of the rapid progression and graphical leaps we have seen in the past that we have hit some sort of brief plateau. i do believe it is and has been compensated by progression in 3D, portability, VR and processing, imo. which isnt a bad thing. everyone has their preferences but im happy with how the industry is progressing minus MT's etc. in the home console industry.

[Tru_Blu]

I have yet to have that wow moment on ps4 so I get what you are saying. Solid console though.

[Teflon02]

I get what you mean but horizon was a wow moment for me. That game felt leaps beyond anything I've played all Gen. Uncharted looked amazing as well but because the games always looked great, it wasn't too much of a wow factor. But Ratchet and Clank was definitely my biggest wow factor this Gen. I was in awe when I saw that the game looked like a high quality Pixar movie all the way through

[SuperSonic91]

Have you ever considered the cost, the time and man power needed to make that leap?

Also the dramatic change from SD to HD is not gonna happen again, dude.

[chris235]

word!!

[SuperSonic91]

" Graphics have always been a key component of gaming ever since they became a popular mainstream form of entertainment. It was one of the main reasons for propelling the gaming industry to the level…"
Thank you for saying that. I hope that truth sinks into the brains of many Nintendo loyalist/apologists here.

[SuperSonic91]

Agree 100%.

Video game graphics are like the Super Saiyans of video gaming. They will always ascend in power.

How they can go beyond god or Ultra Instinct status is beyond me.

[theXtReMe1]

They always start to peak around 3-4 years into the generation. the problem this generation, unlike most before it, is the PS4 and Xbox One started the generation at a decent deficit to PCs best. Making the generation age even quicker. It didn’t help that the CPUs were underpowered, which left AI and Physics improvements behind. So the generation has been about really nothing more than visuals... and in some ways, I think we actually took a step back from last gen (in the aforementioned areas). Which is why these mid gen refreshes were kind of a necessity. Hardware prices for a true generational leap werent where they needed to be and the tech was still in its infancy(Ryzen).

Every generation I start getting the next gen itch around the 3-4 year mark, as by then we start to see the consoles hit their stride and the games get as good as they possibly can within the confines of the technology powering them. Though there are a few games that stand out later, which then starts teasing us with what could be when the next consoles release.

Im interested to know what everyone’s consensus is on the perfect generation length. I am usually ready at the 4-5 year mark, sometimes at the 3. I am huge on Physics and AI advancements. Red Faction: Guerilla showed us how much fun real world physics can be and how incredible they are when used for gameplay. Totally changing the way we play and how we think about enemies and the environments they are in. Using those environments against them... though, the glaring issue is and was(in that game) AI knew nothing about those physics and couldn’t turn them around on you. If they happened to trigger a physics related incident In their favor, it was strictly accidental and not a reflection of any AI advancement. Which is why we need advancement in AI, so it can use every advantage you have at your disposal.

I hope that CPUs are as advanced as the GPU next gen, because without them... we will have another gen like this where everything but the visuals remains the same, including gameplay.

I like the Pro and the X, but they were a means to an end to help us through the later part of the generation with visuals that kept consoles competitive with PCs best and looked good on a 4K TV. 2020/ 2021... Im looking forward to that true generational leap in hopefully every aspect I’ve mentioned. Making games smarter, their game worlds more alive and more dynamic and their visuals exceptionally more beautiful.

[jonos]

I agree with you most of the part, but I wouldn't blame CPU to much about AI and Physic. If you look back, there were some amazing games with AI or Physic. F.E.A.R, Far Cry even Half Life (all originals) had A.I. that some modern games are still to behind too match. For example, Half Life 2 had really nice physic, Max Payne 2,3, Painkiller game e.g.

I think the main problem is that game developers are to lazy. Good AI and physic takes time to develop. Quick money is something that destroys those games.

[lio_convoy]

You are obviously a n00b to the gaming scene and your ignorance is forgiven. Consoles have always been a generation or two behind PC's since the mid 1990's. This is old news. You want awesome gfx? Go spend $1500 on the latest Nvidia GeForce Turbo SuperCharger Nitrous 250000 and another $3000 on a high end PC and rock that 4K video at 120 fps! You want a budget solution that delivers good quality visuals and a platform you don't have to upgrade yearly to keep up with the latest games? Get a console. There are trade-offs to both. You want the best powered console? Get the XBOX. You want the most popular console this generation with some of the better games? Get PS4Pro. You don't care about graphic fidelity, but want a second screen? Go Nintendo.

Will games get better looking? Yep. Higher resolutions, higher quality textures and more triangles are all coming next gen. We haven't plateaued yet. Not even close.

[zb1ftw777]

I don't know if it has or hasn't.

What i do know is that graphics that simulate real life i find extremely boring.

Much prefer a game like Zelda or Mario than a game that looks and feels exactly real.

[PoSTedUP]

it depends for me. im hooked on zelda atm and its amazing. but i do enjoy racing simulators like gran turismo. and gta5 more than saints row. the level of graphics depends on the game and genre. we need both imo.

[Xenophon_York]

Good to ebb and flow back and forth between photorealism and 'cartoon-esque' or impressionalism.

[Sam Fisher]

I love all, my mood changes when a great game is made, no matter the look

[PoSTedUP]

agreed 100%. the gaming industry always has an abundance of pleasing games for me. im always happy.

[blackblades]

Lol feels exactly real.

[antikbaka]

games should be about design, not striving for realistic graphics

[PoSTedUP]

sometimes that is a part of the design.

[notachance]

in most big studios graphical designer team is usually different from gameplay design team...
why can't both strive to be the best?

[antikbaka]

realistic =/= best

[Einhander1971]

A.i and physics need to be the next big improvements, visual fidelity has practically hit the wall. With growing development costs the industry has to careful it doesn't crash in on itself.

[Kabaneri]

In terms of resolution you wont notice much of a difference after 4k, and power wise we are basically at a plateau until we get quantum computing chips.

[Sam Fisher]

Pc maybe but consoles are still behind

[Italiano1234567]

Exactly the human eye can't tell the difference between 8K and 4K so 8K is really pointless if you ask me

[paintedgamer1984]

We wont notice a difference but the kids, teenagers, and pc elitists of that gen will say... bruh... 8k60 is s0o0o0 much better than 4k60

[EazyC]

I don't think so, but it is getting incrementally smaller. I think Red Dead 2 and especially the new Battlefield will be the forefront of 2018 graphical power-houses.

[Segata]

I remember people saying the same thing when Unreal 1 released. I remember the same was said when PS2 released. Same was said when Xbox 360 was hyped as having CGI cutscenes and gameplay looking indistinguishable in games like Lost Odyssey. Why would now be any different?

[mastiffchild]

As we get closer to being capable of near photo realism the increases look to be smaller each generation. For me the leap from PS1 to PS2 seemed way bigger than from 2 to 3 or 3 to 4 with each seeming less of a gap.

I cannot tell massive differences between 4K and 1080p on my TV from ten feet away as it is(65") and that is nothing like the jump ee had from standard to HD last time either.

So, no, graphics still get better, technically, it's just that those improvements are smaller and smaller to the human eye. Art style and direction offer up just as much eye candy as pure pixel power and increased performance in AI, physics, story and acting etc are easier areas for clear improvements right now.

There is nothing up with wanting better graphics or chasing better and better GPUs and, who knows, maybe the price and availability of high end graphics cards will get devs to focus more on story or CPU heavy tasks instead of currently trying to push visuals. It isn't the easiest area to improve for devs atm and trying to upgrade your PC can be too expensive for people today.

[Segata]

They still look pretty far from real to me. Let me know when I can put my characters hands in the sand and scoop individual grains of sand and leave the imprint and it's not pre-scripted animations or an image simulating the effect but actually happening in that digital world. when humans in games are not running on a script but ae dynamic and truly decide and learn for themselves. Just because Forza looks super shiny still doesn't mean total realism yet.

[ChristopherJack]

I don't think the quest for improved graphics will end anytime soon. Everytime we think they peaked, someone ups the notch.

Some people are satisfied today & think everyone else should stop to save money, I think that's short-sighted, personally I'm hoping for a break through soon on voxels or something that'll allow fully 3D destructible realistic environments.

[Tzuno]

A big yes, now they try to fool the eye with 4k but the real issue here are graphical engines, they better put their ass to work and develop more realistic graphical engines.

[Tross]

Graphics shouldn't be written off completely, but they're only one component of what makes a game great. Also, you don't need nearly as much power to make cartoony games, let alone produce a 16-bit retro-style indie game. I think power is important to an extent, but I think even the Switch is a fairly competent system in its own right. I love my PS4 because it's the perfect balance of power, yet has more than enough exclusives. The Switch went with lower power, but with the whole handheld/console hybrid thing and a focus on titles with less realistic art styles that work just fine with last gen architecture. Oh, and exclusives. There's a reason why both systems are successful.

[SuperSonic91]

PS4 power fixed alot of PS3s problems.... which is a great thing. I am enjoying it so much.

[Tross]

Actually, the PS3 has more power than it was given credit for, but was apparently incredibly difficult to program for. Also, most devs didn't know how to do certain things on the PS3 because it wasn't very self-explanatory. In designing the PS4 Sony took that criticism to heart and decided to opt for architecture that's dev friendly first and foremost. In spite of having the more powerful console at the time with the base PS4, the system actually could have been even more powerful, but Sony also wanted to keep the cost down so they didn't invest in hardware that would be too expensive for the consumer. It's also worth noting that YLoD isn't the pandemic it was last gen, so they clearly opted for more reliable hardware too.

Yes, Sony invested in more power, but not at the expense of other things that unfortunately plagued the PS3. I still think the PS3 is a solid system but I think Sony made the right decisions this gen to provide an even better product.

[lellkay]

Witcher 3 max on PC,
Uncharted 4
Horizon Zero Dawn

all ridiculously impressive looking games, no way have we hit a "halt"

[strayanalog]

The last time I was awed by graphics it was Generation 6. The past two generations were just more of the same with each bringing clearer visuals.
Our focus, as I've said numerous times, needs to be gameplay. It truly is time for graphics to take a backseat, in my personal opinion. That's not to say graphics don't matter, they do in their own way, but to a lesser extent.‎
One Triple-A title is another generation's B, so graphics never really mattered. It's the gameplay you revisit that makes the title timeless, not the shininess that's aged.
The sooner we lose the fidelity goggles, the sooner we can drop downloading a physical title to a drive, start gaining full experiences without microtransactions and possibly DLC, and truly push gaming again.‎

[Bobafret]

I am waiting for better physics and animation, what we have now is passable but I see beautiful screenshots and I am often let down once I see a game in motion.

[Tetsujin]

Game play, story, and fun factor will always win over just eye candy. There's a problem when I have more fun with previous gen games instead of what's currently released. The project I'm a part of is addressing a lot of current complaints, negative trends, and other silly nonsense.

[SuperSonic91]

Good to hear your comment.
Is your game about game play mechanics and storytelling integration like ICO or SOTC?

[Tetsujin]

To a degree, yes. We're putting together a list of do's/don'ts at the moment.

[Nacho_Z]

At some point games will be photo realistic and at that point graphics literally can't get any better. We're not there yet but we're closer to that then we are 8 bit pixel graphics and the closer we get the less improvements we'll see from year to year.

[Xenophon_York]

The bottleneck is our display devices not software or console.

[Sciurus_vulgaris]

It’s the diminishing returns of hardware, polygons ,shaders and development costs. There are great looking games still. Graphics progression has been slowing down. Crysis 3 which is 5 years old still looks amazy. The visual gap between Ryse/Killzone shadowfall to Horizon Zero Dawn/Gears of War 4, is much lower than the visual between early 360/PS3 games and their late gen counterparts.

[DeadSilence]

Pretty sure Sony devs will keep raising the bar.

[InTheZoneAC]

I believe it's getting to a point where it's almost a waste of manhours to push for anything higher. Animations, effects, AI, content, complete no microtransaction experiences is what we should be striving for.

[TheOttomatic91]

I mean if you own a Switch sure but there plenty of games on the PS4, XB1 and PC that look phenomenal

[jc12]

In terms of leaps...it sort of has.

[michellelynn0976]

@mikeslemonade, that is why Zelda, Mario, Xenoblade and Mario Rabbids all won a game of the year. So wrong. Quality is gameplay and design are what matters most.

[OMNlPOTENT]

Graphics are starting to hit a halt in the realism factor due to games already becoming somewhat hyper realistic. There’s only so far we can go. They still look a hell of a lot better than last gen though.. compare any game of a franchise from this gen to last gen and you’ll see great improvements.

The big leap in graphics imo is the revolution of VR this generation. We’ve basically started over on that front, and VR games generally look like something between ps2 and ps3. It’ll be amazing to see what they can do with it. Playing VR with standard game graphics? Yes please

[3-4-5]

no..dumb article.

[SuperSonic91]

IKR

[Dead_Pixels_]

If you read the article, it is more of questions of the leaps between the generations are getting smaller each time. I am raising a question of a potential future peak within the industry and whether other factors of a game should get the proper care and attention that graphics usually get from the devs.

[paintedgamer1984]

Not for nintendo it hasnt... maybe 10 more years before they go 4k 30...

[blawren4]

There is always something that can be done to improve visuals and performance, however, the cost of this improvement increases exponentially for sometimes little gain. The question is that balance of cost and performance. At some point, we are satisfied with a balance and there won't be an incentive for developers to push things. I am nearly there. I have never said that before. A good analogy would be restaurants. you can go to one restaurant where a meal is $15/person and the meal might be great. Then go to a restaurant with $30/person. It is nicer, service is excellent, and the food is better, but is it $35/person better to justify the extra cost? What about $50/person? That is for the market to decide.

[BrettAwesome]

Well...it had to happen sooner or later. It's called "diminishing returns", and there's nothing we can do about it. Next gen will look awesome, sure. But it won't blow anybody's minds like it did when going from the 16bit to the 32/64 bit era. The computational power required is simply too much.

[frostypants]

Answer: no.

[CobraKai]

I’d say, considering that movies still have noticeable CGI, that we’re far from hitting that ceiling. I think since a lot of power is routed towards 4K, the graphics race have slowed a bit, but the tech will improve and soon we will see graphical barriers broken.

[maybelovehate]

Go play a Backwards Compatible game on Xbox One, while switching to Destiny 2 in 4k and HDR. It is a huge leap. Unless you are talking about the Switch which is about on par if not worse than the Wii U.

[WeAreLegion]

Kind of. Diminishing returns, ya know? This is good for gaming, btw. This means a heavier focus on art style, physics, story telling, writing, mechanics, etc.

[wonderfulmonkeyman]

I tried pointing out diminishing returns earlier, and ended up with a bunch of knicker-twisted angsties giving me a sermon about how wrong I was that graphics should be given less of a focus, in favor of gameplay and new ideas, now that we're hitting such high fidelity caps and can't tell the difference as much anymore, due to the difference between gaps being smaller.

Just saying, watch out for those. They'll give you hell in here for "attacking" their precious graphics.XD

[DJ_Professor_K]

My immediate answer would be yes but it’s still plenty room for improvement like in hz ,animation next gen I’m exspecting everything to be 4K min 30 FPS but we are at a point where we are topping out games aren’t far from the movies so what’s next .......

[CrimsonWing69]

No...

[DJ_Professor_K]

Off topic
As for the Nintendo comment I was like bla bla bla when it came to Nintendo games but I picked up a switch for a family member and I played mario. The switch is legit I forgot how much fun MARIO could be .As for a charter he’s so lame he needs to find a “real” girlfriend he’s a sucker for love

[jznrpg]

No, Nintendo decided not to upgrade their machine much so they didn’t make much of a leap . Graphics can always improve in some sort of way , someday we will have 3D holograms or something like it . No need to worry about market crashing like the 80s b cause they were making shit games left and right and we get quality almost every month from Sony and Nintendo has been doing good so far this gen .

[RevXM]

Games now look really good, but developement has far from halted.
What is slowing down is hardware. we used to see hardware double in power roughly every two years and that isnt really the case anymore, though it is still advancing.

If we are to see any major jumps we have to get to the point where we develop superconductors meaning circuitry will have lower resistances and run cooler so we may clock up our hardware significantly or we implement or develop quantum based hardware that is efficiently capable of the tasks handled by traditional digital hardware today. quantum computing is only in its infancy and is not any good as of now to do visuals as far as I know and would take a good while before developers figure out how to make rendering and engines virtually everything work in such a system.

Rendering and engine work is where stuff happens now at the moment.

Look at games that have come out over the last two generations. last generation was a big jump from the one before it and even though the hardware we have today isnt as great a jump as the previous one the fidelity achieved on these systems are pretty good.

Look at games like heavenly sword, uncharted and resistance fom, and compare them to later titles like GOW 3/ascention, Uncharted 3/TLOU and Resistance 3/Killzone 2/3. all games for the same system.

Jump over to the ps4 and youll see early games like Killzone shadow fall and Knack, later on we get Driveclub and Uncharted 4.
Or compare installments in a series of games that have existed for a long time like Assasins creed or far cry. they are getting better visually.

It is getting more and more towards details and lighting, optimization and algorithms and clever wizardry and less things we can easily define with numbers such as texture sizes.

HDR, Kinematics, subsurface scattering, physically based shading, general lighting, animation, general shaders, physics and AI work.

Driveclub,Alien isolation, MGS5, the last of us 1-part 2, uncharted 4, Horizon zero dawn are examples of games that all have clever systems and techniques in place to elevate the visual levels, AI and behaviours and animation to a level we did not see previously. yes a couple of them are cross generation and ports but that proves more than anything that clever coding and engine work and design matters a lot in making a good looking and immersive game.

[corroios]

Lol. What platform do you play games? Do you even play games? there a pic from Nintendo, but they arent a graphic powerhouse. They are going for the cartony look. It much easier to make cartony game with less power, and that arent so demanding in physics, IA, AA, effects.

This gen the big problem was the CPU power, because to build huge worlds, with detail and full of NPCs that arent moving at 15 frames with low rez textures, you need more CPU power. But there was a evolution.