So, some ex Playstation guy is finally making sense saying what the PS6 eventually needs isn't more teraflops and ray tracing, but to do what we're already doing cheaper.
And uh, this is kind of a no brainer for me. As I said, we've reached peak gaming. We're not seeing a lot of progress from more raw specs. We're just getting more unoptimized games that look slightly better than the previous generation, on hardware that costs way too much money, with the games costing way too much money, and the situation feeling unaffordable. As I look toward the future, I'm literally thinking, if hardware doesn't come down in price, I'm checking out next gen. I mean, Im not very satisfied with the state of modern gaming in general and find myself drawn more and more to the previous generations where games are cheaper and still fun to play. Obviously not all past games are winner, but the same is true today. The best still hold up though. And if the cost of entry is gonna be high for next gen, it's just...well...forget that, i'm going to just double down on that retro direction.
As I see it, progress is exactly what this guy said. What made progress happen technologically is moore's law. Because we could roughly double processing power every 18 months, after about 4-5 years, we'd have 8x the power for generally the same amount of money. And because gaming was in its infancy in the 90s and even early 2000s still, generational leaps in compute power could cause generational leaps in gaming in general. However, eventually, we get to the point where enough is enough. I'd say gaming was "mature" by generation 7, although generation 8's processing power allowed for more open worlds, higher resolutions, and better frame rates. But that's where things started to stagnate. Now gen 9 just feels like gen 8 game play wise, just with slightly better graphics, but also jankier games, and it feels like with moore's law beginning to break down, the whole industry is beginning to cannibalize itself. And something has to give. For me, the answer is obvious. Rather than focus on making things better, we SHOULD focus on doing the same thing more cheaply. Like, at this point, we got smartphones as powerful as PS4s. If you have at least a snapdragon 8 gen 2 and 8 GB ram, congrats, you got a potential PS4 in raw processing power in your pocket. And that could play games like fallout 4, the witcher 3, and battlefield 4, 1, and 5. Why do we NEED more? And that's where "next gen" has fallen flat. For as great as cyberpunk is, what does it offer other than higher fidelity graphics that GTA V didn't? And remember, the original version of that could run on a PS3, and some people with more powerful phones are emulating the PC version on their phones. Starfield, was it better than fallout 4 or skyrim? I doubt anyone would say it was. Borderlands 4 is a joke while borderlands 2 runs on a potato these days. There's no reason the overwhelming majority of PS5 titles can't be scaled down graphically to run on phones, and with that PC emulation I mentioned, i wouldnt be surprised if Valve eventually did make a full blown arm/android solution for steam that's official.
And for me, that's the future I want. To be able to play my games on ANY device. I mean Im not a console guy, I dont wanna be tethered to an ecosystem designed to extract maximum revenue from me. I want my games to run on ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING. I want to be able to play doom on my toaster or smart fridge, in theory, assuming it had an operating system that allowed installing programs.
I dont want more power. I want more versatility. I want to see my games run on cheaper and cheaper devices. And I want new games to run on existing hardware. Keep in mind, if Im gonna be paying for a new system, a new GPU, a new CPU, Im gonna want better games that look noticably better and do something different from games in the past. Ray tracing isnt it. And given games look "good enough" and have looked "good enough" for about 10 years by this point, Im not really interested in higher fidelity graphics at a price I cant afford.
But if I can run GTA5 (or even 6 when it comes out) on say, my phone, or some $300 mini PC or something, yeah, that's a big fricking deal. And i aint saying every game has to be scaled down to run on mobile. BUT...it shouldnt be scaled up to run on hardware no one can reasonably afford either. It's a balance.
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