Comment by trencedamp
6 hours ago
Part of what I've always hated about consoles is the inevitable push toward an entirely new generation of hardware when the current hardware is more than capable.
The best games I've played in the last year would run on a PS4 and probably even a PS3 with a little optimization, yet we're already at the "end" of the PS5. It's so disingenuous. We should be squeezing everything we can out of the wonderful hardware we have today instead of chucking it for the new shiny thing, but instead we're force fed a new box, with a new exclusive title, with graphics you can barely distinguish from what we already have and more restrictions on what you can do.
Microsoft already switched its release support to the "series" model. There are still big games coming out on PS4. With the PS6 expected to be very expensive, we may very well see games simultaneously released on the 4, 5, and 6. We may be moving away from discrete console generations. Older consoles still have a massive library you can cycle through as well.
Yeah, the console companies want to be profitable, but consumers are pushing for new stuff, too. I don't care a whole lot about graphics improvements, but going from HDDs to SSDs was a huge improvement and worth the upgrade for me. And software engineers as a whole have long favored requiring new hardware over optimization for current hardware. I hope the great electronics crunch will curtail that.
John Carmack said it in about 2011, if you cannot make your game vision work on a 360 or PS3 you are doing something wrong.
I get that we have made huge strides in rendering tech, but the broad idea behind that I can still get behind.
Other than higher res assets, shaders and cleaner rendering; I havent seen anything that probably couldnt be done on those systems and still broadly have the same overall feel.
I do agree that gameplay is king, but a counterexample would be Cyberpunk 2077 that can't meaningfully run on hardware that old. It runs really nicely on my SteamDeck however.
I think a point of it is that there are a lot of tricks that can be done to create the overall experience. What I mean is, I didn't see anything outside of the visuals side that was particularly intensive with CP2077.
For instance, when I did game coding it was always a point to not make the AI smart but make it fun. The core game loop is typically pretty simple code wise, when physics comes into it then it gets a lot more heavy but even then, I see titles like Red Faction Guerrilla on the Ps3 and you can get a glimpse at the potential. Even then, apparently that title only used 2 of the SPE's for the physics system.
The PC is worse in this regard since everyone's hardware is different. There's rarely much optimization going into PC games compared to consoles.
I don't think you really understood my point then, maybe I didn't make it clearly.
What I meant was we abandon perfectly good console hardware, not because it's outdated or obsolete, not because games demand the cutting edge, but because profit margins demand the consumer spend 500+ on new hardware every 5 years or whatever. It's nothing to do with the software and everything to do with shareholders.
The PC is the exact opposite of this.
There are no PC games that force you to buy a whole new device. There are games that your 5 year old PC might struggle with, but they're still compatible.
The top games on steam are mostly things that would run on 15 year old gaming rigs.
Backwards compatibility! I can still play games from decades ago on my current PC. On a console you're in luck if the game you played on the last generation is rereleased on the next one
You're not locked into a store, a network, or even an operating system.
It's true the AAA devs don't optimize much but my point is that Microsoft don't decide that you have to buy a new PC every five years and there are a bunch of new games coming out for it that are literally unavailable on your old one.
(Well ok technically they do exactly this but it's called an Xbox and it's a failure right now)
I would argue that in some spaces it has gotten better. Ever since the Steamdeck became popular, that kind of set a lower bound on hardware. Games have ended up being optimised a little to run on that because it is another potential 5 million+ customers.