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[DaGwaphics]

More Vram is way more cost too, just look at recently launched rtx 4060ti with 8gigs, msrp 400$, and in a month 16gigs variant is launching, msrp 500$.

GDDR6 prices have crashed in comparison to the 2020 pricing (around $4 a GB now, there are reports of GDDR6 being around $12GB in 2019). 32GB may actually be no more expensive or even cheaper now than the 16GB the systems launched with (depending on the deals MS and Sony negotiated).

Nvidia being Nvidia isn't really evidence of anything.

 

[kvltus lvlzvs]

Lowest generational leap, also fewest console exclusives. We are approaching some sort of singularity wherein it becomes apparent that none of it matters, but the console wars will continue nonetheless.

Except for Nintendo, I guess, they will continue to dmca/sue/assassinate until the end of time.

 

[Romulus]

Not at all. Next to no loading is amazing and so much more meaningful than prettier graphics that won’t hold up 10 years from now.

The og xbox was the first console with an hdd. You could save unlimited games for the first time, burn cds, and it helped with gaming. It also had prettier visuals than the previous n64 generation. A colossal jump. So you can have both, a features upgrade and better visuals.

Thats how it usually works.

Most people don't play their console 10 years later anyway, so that point is irrelevant. And i would argue many ps4 games still look fine from 2013 because of the current state of the industry. Most everything looks like a ps4 games, still.

 

[Shadowstar39]

Wish games had better physics, not many have been able to topple half-life 2 from 2004.

Even GTA IV felt next gen because of the physics, which even modern games have failed to replicate.

Yep. A ton of games had better physics back then. Nvidia even had physical card to offload physics phyX or something like that. We seen it in rpgs like oblivion, and others as well as fps games like crysis.

Also lighting, we have had ray tracing, but outside of quake2, metro exodus and cyberpunk, it hasnt really been used. It's not a major game changer either. I remember 2004/2005 with games like fear, doom3, half-life 2, vtm 2 bloodlines, splinter cell Chaos theory, thief deadly shadows, all had incorporated shadows and physics to great extent. It affected gameplay. I was so impressed with those games.
Remember shooting out lights would darken most of the rooms except for thin light from elsewhere creeping in. Or hitting a fixture watching the shadows bounce off your weapons and the world. It was all real time hardware lighting. Our textures have gotten better but not other aspects.

Also why do we have games that take up 100-200gb and don't look much better than 10-50gb games? I guess it's all the 4k assets. It would be nice if a game only used 4k assets if you had a 4k display. It could save on storage space. Especially for devices like steam deck.

There are some games taking advantage of new tech or using physics and environmental assets, but they aren't the norm. Everything really now should ha e physical properties and be objects and not just set peices. As when it's set peices it feels like a Disney world ride not a lovong world. One game that incorporates it all beautifully is both new Zelda games. Everything is an object. You can burn things and watch it expand to other materials or stop. lightning hits metal to electrocute or burn. The lighting is used for real time day and night with weather patterns. Trees can be chopped ans float, etc... So many items have weight as they are all objects with properties. The elder scrolls games do this too. And both are loved by millions. Why aren't other games adding features like this? How many shooters (of the limited ones we get anymore) can you shoot lights and watch it go dark orpeek through a bullet hole into another room. Break down a wall with a sledgehammer (Ala bad company) or burn down forests and feilds like far cry2/Zelda botw?

 

[Buggy Loop]

Lowest generational leap, also fewest console exclusives. We are approaching some sort of singularity wherein it becomes apparent that none of it matters, but the console wars will continue nonetheless.

Except for Nintendo, I guess, they will continue to dmca/sue/assassinate until the end of time.

You basically have PCs with different boot OS at this point.

 

[Kikorin]

Yes, but is not because of the hardware IMHO. People can shit on TotK performance, but the Zelda Team made the most interactive open world ever on a smartphone hardware of 6 years ago and it plays absolutely fine even with the frame drops.

Naugty Dog did TloU on PS3 and was something never seen before from a technical standpoint, even with the shitty framerate.

GTA V is still the most insane "realistic" open world ever created and released in 2012 on a laughable hardware for today standard with 20/25fps average framerate.

Dead Rising shown from start of the gen what a new hardware could offer in terms of gameplay that would have been impossible before.

I've the impression in past devs were more interested in pushing boundaries of the tech in their games, physics, interactivity, animations, etc... Today seems we are stuck in 360/PS3 generation template of games with higher and higher framerate/resolution or some sort of half backed RTX, but the teams are no more incline to try something really innovative with the tech because would be too much of a struggle/risky, so they prefer to continue doing things that have worked before and hopes for the best.

 

[crazy monkey]

Yes. Before that, it was going from PS3 to PS4. Before that, it was going from PS2 to PS3. The next one will be smaller.

Diminishing returns is an actual thing.

Ps2 to ps3 was noticeable jump. I am not sure after that.

 

[SmokedMeat]

Yes, but it's not necessarily a bad thing. Instead of fidelity, I hope devs and investors will invest more into physics, ai, simulated ecosystems, reactive storytelling, etc. Instead of mOrE BeTteR GrApHiX PLz!!!1

 

[crazy monkey]

I have said it before.

Please keep hardware for really long time.

Make game development easy and chea

Make games and console cheap.

I am OK with ps3 or 4 level graphics for another 10 years. Give me those console for 99 dollars and games for 40.

 

[Shadowstar39]

The wikipedia version of 2nd to third would be the lowest jump because it was practically the same during the veryyy short time the site gives before 4th gen starts.

Otherwise if we use the historical linage of generations than yeah the current gen so far would be the least, but we also haven't really seen next gen only games yet in mass taking advantage of all the new shoe shining yet. I say we need another year or two before we can really say. It took the Xbox One gen just as long to really showcase a big difference before the pro models.

Infamous 2nd Son and Killzone shadowfall, both launch games showed off ps4 right out the gate, no pro models involved. As for pro models, ghost of tusbimo and gow both ran fine on my baseline ps4... No pro model needed unless you had 4k TV. I still don't have a 4k TV but have a ps5. I don't see much of a difference so far. I had a 1080p set during ps3 Gen and into ps4, I saw a major difference. Not as big as ps2 Gen into ps3 but it was there.

I haven't had my Mgs4, Gta4, uncharted 2.kz2 moment where I am wowed and say damn that couldn't of been done at all last gen.

I honestly think we weren't ready for 4k and still aren't. TV makers pushed that to sell tvs. Our gpus aren't there yet. If we aimed for lower resolution (1080 /1440p) and upscale for people with 4k sets, more graphics could be pushed and more 60fps levels.

 

[Shadowstar39]

Yes, and the reason why is because there have barely been any games released that were made from scratch for these new systems, and the other main reason is everybody is demanding native 4K and 60 FPS, and so the graphical fidelity can only be so high under those conditions.

Finally someone who gets it. I come from pc land. Its easy to understand. If you up the resolution to high and still expect 60fps you have to sacrifice the graphics. This will also make the 1080p setting take a hit as console games don't have sliders or different texture packs, like an exclusive pc game would. I imagine they could make higher quality assets if done at 1080 as well as push more physics. Make it upscale to 4k like we had on the pro consoles.

 

[LimanimaPT]

The prior generation already outputed some pretty good graphics. The graphics jump between generations will get smaller and smaller as a new generation arrives. For someone that started gaming a few decades ago on a zx spectrum and lived thru all this graphics evolution I think this is just normal. The wow graphics factor will be harder and harder to achieve. It's time to face the truth.

 

[Shadowstar39]

If you want to see a true generational jump. Get a 4090. Don’t expect these 500 dollar boxes to push the boundaries of graphics.

That won't help as there isn't pc exclusives made for it. Not since crysis and maybe metro have we had that and no dev will even try.

That 4090 will let you run 4k at high fps. If you only have a 1080 or 1440p monitor it's overkillasmy 3060ti will max everything at those resolutions.

4090 is good for 60+ fps in 4k, multimonitor, vr, but it won't make exciting games more pretty.

 

[Business]

It's the lowest by a large margin. We all know about diminishing returns and increased costs but still, considering how weak the jaguar was even at the beginning of last gen 10 years ago, and seeing the on paper specs of the current one, I'd have expected a lot more. They might as well named these machines PS4 PRO 2 and whatever X's you wanna add to the other.

 

[fallingdove]

The og xbox was the first console with an hdd. You could save unlimited games for the first time, burn cds, and it helped with gaming. It also had prettier visuals than the previous n64 generation. A colossal jump. So you can have both, a features upgrade and better visuals.

Thats how it usually works.

Most people don't play their console 10 years later anyway, so that point is irrelevant. And i would argue many ps4 games still look fine from 2013 because of the current state of the industry. Most everything looks like a ps4 games, still.

Lol. No, you can’t have both anymore. The N64 gen was the absolute least mature state of 3D graphics in console history. V2 was always going to allow for a massive jump without a significant increase in console cost, dev time or dev budget.

To see a similar jump, consoles would cost $5000, dev time would balloon — you’d probably only see games from big time developers come out once every other generation, and budgets would be so massive — paint by numbers games would be even more frequent and you would probably spend more than $70 a title.

Who would want that?

 

[HL3.exe]

Guess you don't have a Switch and tried TOTK? It's not like these don't exist, and Hardware horsepower isn't the problem here.

 

[winjer]

Another thing to consider is that neither Sony or Microsoft are willing to subsidize machines with as big margins as they did before.
This leaves less room to waste money on high end chips.
Nintendo even less, in fact, they seem to make a profit on the hardware right from the start.

 

[Ivan]

Again we have plenty games with great animation runs at 60FPS or even higher.

That's not great animation (quality wise), it's actually rigid. People mix coreography and animation way too often (end even more often in japanese games).

 

[Umbasaborne]

Those big next gen games take 6 years to make, and on top of that were delayed further due to covid. I bet we dont start seeing more ps5 and series x games that actually push the hardware til the end of the generation. Sony’s slate of new first party games probably wont be ready til 2025 or so, if many of them began development in 2019 or 2020, same with microsoft. This problem wont be solved til ai starts taking on more game dev responsibility. Will that suck for developers? Yes, but that is the future unless you want triple a games that take a decade to make

 

[Romulus]

Lol. No, you can’t have both anymore. The N64 gen was the absolute least mature state of 3D graphics in console history. V2 was always going to allow for a massive jump without a significant increase in console cost, dev time or dev budget.

To see a similar jump, consoles would cost $5000, dev time would balloon — you’d probably only see games from big time developers come out once every other generation, and budgets would be so massive — paint by numbers games would be even more frequent and you would probably spend more than $70 a title.

Who would want that?

I mean I just used that as an example. Snes, n64, GameCube were all big jumps. Ps3 was a massive leap despite being shitty hardware. Ps4 was an immediately noticeable jump. Ps5 is the first time we have to stoop to loading times as the main advantage. It's hilariously sad.

 

[Imru’ al-Qays]

I mean I just used that as an example. Snes, n64, GameCube were all big jumps. Ps3 was a massive leap despite being shitty hardware. Ps4 was an immediately noticeable jump. Ps5 is the first time we have to stoop to loading times as the main advantage. It's hilariously sad.

I mean loading times are objectively more important than the graphical and performance improvements between the PS3 and PS4 gens.

 

[Reallink]

The OP himself points out that the new consoles are barely 2x improvements over the 7yo last gen "Pro" consoles. And every ounce of that power is geing used to run stuff at 60fps. Of course it's the smallest generational jump ever, there's not really a jump at all.

 

[sncvsrtoip]

Yes it is, 4k and rt on rdna2 is one of the reasons.

 

[Romulus]

I mean loading times are objectively more important than the graphical and performance improvements between the PS3 and PS4 gens.

Huge disagree.

I don't even need to post texture comparisons between Infamous ps3 and Infamous ps4. Framerate was also god awful on ps3 to boot.

We went from God of War PS3 with a fixed camera ps3(lol) and a shit framerate to a 3rd person explorable world and a solid framerate.

Uncharted 4 and Uncharted 3 aren't even close.

TLou original PS3 vs TLou 2 on ps4 lol.

Just no.

 

[Represent.]

The answer is yes, thanks to threads like these.

Keep going, lets see how shitty we can make these games look. lmaoo

 

[Knightime_X]

Graphically, we're already surpassing or on par with FMV levels from just a few generations ago.
All we need to do now it work on frame rates and image quality.
AI is the future and that will really push the industry forward in a variety of ways.

 

[YeulEmeralda]

I mostly agree. Even on PC a lot of people are using native 1440p monitors. And when using 4K TVs games are basically doing 1440p as the rendering baseline that is then dynamically upscaled to 4K using DLSS or FSR. Unfortunately, in consoles, native rendering many times dips below 1440p with dynamic upscalling. And outside of direct comparions side by side like in a Digital Foundry comparions, in gameplay you you'd be hard-pressed to notice the difference.

A good example is Skyrim's latest edition in PS5 and XSX. On the former, Skyrim runs natively at 4K, but framerate occasionaly dips below the targeted 60 fps to keep that locked 4K native resolution going. On the XSX, the game uses dynamic upscalling, thus lowering the native rendering resolution below 4K at times, but with the benefit of having a virtually stable & locked 60 fps. During actual gameplay the upscaling is hardly noticeable when it occurs. And as far as I'm concerned, I'll take the locked and stable 60 fps with dynamic upscaling any day of the week.

I used to be in the camp that 30 fps was "just fine" outside of Shooters, Racing games, Fighting games, etc, and that getting some extra eye-candy was worth the 30 fps. I changed my mind. Honestly, even in something like Hellblade the difference in gameplay is night and day. Playing at 60 fps is just SO much better. Pardon my french, but 30 fps is shit that needs to go, unconditionally. 30 fps "mode" is just unaceptable these days, especially because games don't really look much better on "quality" mode anyway. Most optional ray-tracing in console games, for example, is really doing nothing worth the performance hit. It's a text book case of diminishing returns. 60 fps, on the other hand, makes a huge difference in gameplay, virtually always, and should be the baseline.




They are basically low-mid end PCs, and that's already taking into account the console-specific engineered optimizations. People shouldn't expect miracles from 500$ boxes. Yes, games will eventually look better as the generation goes especially if you throw hundreds of millions of dollars into development, but people need to keep their expectations grounded.

What does €$500 get you on PC? Not even a 4070 that's what.

 

[ZoukGalaxy]

Graphics rendering is inevitably logarithmic: the more the tech progress the less we see the differences.

Others aspect needs to be urgently improved but sadly have been mostly ignored, like PHYSICS: 20+ years after the N64/PS1, we are still stuck with ridiculous clipping ("let's have my sword on my back going inside my ass" or "my new armo is so nice, even my hair goes through my clothes" or "hey, look, my magic is so strong that my half my body is in the wall").

 

[CGNoire]

I have said it before.

Please keep hardware for really long time.

Make game development easy and chea

Make games and console cheap.

I am OK with ps3 or 4 level graphics for another 10 years. Give me those console for 99 dollars and games for 40.

If the number of consoles sold passed a certain threshold you would also get 10+ year long cross gen periods at the end of every generation.

 

[hououinkyouma00]

No. It’s great. PS3 to 4 was less imo

Have you played PS3 and PS4 games recently? It's a very noticeable jump.

Go play Resistance Fall of Man and Killzone Shadow Fall back to back, or for late games go play TLOU and TLOU 2 or Ragnarok.

 

[fatmarco]

I think the fact there's 5 pages of discussion, and zero comparative screenshots proving or moderately arguing the opposite of the OP's statement is testament enough.

The last great graphical leap we've had was the introduction and use of PBR materials (and maybe SSR to a lesser extent) in terms of the entire frame of an image, every object, looking substantially improved, and that began proper almost 10 years ago.

The current limited use of Ray Tracing we're seeing, I'd argue, has been closer in effect to what the jump Ambient Occlusion gave us back in roughly 2007/8, in terms of the difference between "Off" and "On", which is to say it definitely improves the image, but not quite to the extent a casual eye would always pick up on it when seeing one, leaving, and then seeing the other.

 

[leo-j]

Tbh going from UNCH 1 visually to UNCH 4 imo was a big leap from ps3-ps4……

Ratchet ps4 - ps5 demonstrates a mega leap

Demons souls ps3- ps5 as well

The issue is we don’t have a lot of ps5 only games, you can still argue rift apart + Dsouls looks better than most games this gen

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

I think we are spoiled. Games look EXTREMELY good these days. Imagine what we have now versus the PS3 era and it's enormous.

Higher framerates, much better clarity. I seldom look at a game and think "wow, this looks bad".

 

[Hoddi]

There's still tons of room for growth even with pure rasterization. These consoles are just so memory constrained that it limits how much data can be in a frame.

Here's my 2080 Ti as a case in point. Performance is otherwise fine but it collapses as the card runs out of VRAM.

 

[Trogdor1123]

Have you played PS3 and PS4 games recently? It's a very noticeable jump.

Go play Resistance Fall of Man and Killzone Shadow Fall back to back, or for late games go play TLOU and TLOU 2 or Ragnarok.

Oh for sure, the leap was great but I think the 360 and ps3 hit above their weight.

The changes this gen with things like load times have made huge differences too.

 

[NahaNago]

It will probably feel like it. I mean we had to jump to 4k and the push for 60 fps is strong this gen plus ray tracing the games are going to look good just not omg generation jump good.

If we don't jump to 8k for the ps6 then the generation jump should be a lot more impressive plus we'll have already be accustomed to the graphics for 60 fps.

 

[Lupin25]

Part of the visual stagnation is diminishing returns, sure, but also because of the general expectation of the public.

Think to yourself, outside of this niche pocket of individuals, what are the majority of people playing out there currently?

TOTK/BOTW/Elden Ring
Super Smash Bros. Ult/Street Fighter 6/MK11
GTA 5 Online
League of Legends
COD/Warzone/Apex Legends/PUBG
Fortnite/Minecraft/Roblox
Mario Kart/Rocket League
Hogwarts Legacy
TLOU/Spider-Man (2018)/Miles Morales/GoW
FIFA (or FC)/Madden ‘23

Where’s the need for publishers to push photorealism and graphical fidelity if these are the kinds of games (despite all of them being good) still leading the way?

Cross-Gen sequels….

 

[xellos2099alpha]

I would say Dreamcast to ps2 is lower imo

 

[Represent.]

I have said it before.

Please keep hardware for really long time.

Make game development easy and chea

Make games and console cheap.

I am OK with ps3 or 4 level graphics for another 10 years. Give me those console for 99 dollars and games for 40.

Crazy indeed

Are you the same CM from Systemwars back in the day?

 

[SeraphJan]

They will make a leap if you can take 1440p 30fps, or until mid gen refresh

 

[HighPoly]

Well, I can't read all of you guys!!

I couldn't imagine how long this thread could be!!!

 

[EverydayBeast]

Todays games are fascinating, I think ps2 stained peoples minds, people know it introduced DVD. I think ps5 will rank #1 in the end.

 

[Kyo]

Back on the PS4, I couldn't really enjoy most of the big budget titles as almost all of them ran at merely 30 fps. Now on the PS5, I can play almost any new game in 60 fps. On top of that we get features like ray tracing, though of course limited in scope. I really can't compain, as this is what I'd been waiting for for years.

 

[Shifty1897]

We've paying attention to irrelevant elements/assets, like Ray Tracing, and High Resolutions??

Ray Tracing and rendering at a high resolution are irrelevant?

 

[YeulEmeralda]

Back on the PS4, I couldn't really enjoy most of the big budget titles as almost all of them ran at merely 30 fps. Now on the PS5, I can play almost any new game in 60 fps. On top of that we get features like ray tracing, though of course limited in scope. I really can't compain, as this is what I'd been waiting for for years.

I'm actually going back to play a bunch of games on PC now at 1440p 60fps.

 

[brettski2024]

Back on the PS4, I couldn't really enjoy most of the big budget titles as almost all of them ran at merely 30 fps. Now on the PS5, I can play almost any new game in 60 fps. On top of that we get features like ray tracing, though of course limited in scope. I really can't compain, as this is what I'd been waiting for for years.

You couldn't enjoy a game at 30fps?

 

[HighPoly]

There's still tons of room for growth even with pure rasterization. These consoles are just so memory constrained that it limits how much data can be in a frame.

Here's my 2080 Ti as a case in point. Performance is otherwise fine but it collapses as the card runs out of VRAM.

this is more like a PS4 CGi level, maybe a PS3 CGi level graphics.
But we'll only see that on next gen, PS6...
This time I'm proud of playing early 2000's CGi, like Spirit Within and Toy Story 2
What do you think?

 

[TheAmazingSpiderMan]

I think once cross gen is finally over a few years even after that, Spider-Man 2 I don’t know why I still feel like it may come to last gen consoles in some capacity, I wouldn’t put it past Sony and to be honest what have we seen from it that can’t be done on the ps4 pro apart from load times, graphics (which look good but not next gen) can be turned down a few notches.

 

[delfrickintree]

Well, I can't read all of you guys!!

I couldn't imagine how long this thread could be!!!

Never underestimate the power of nerds!

 

[SmokedMeat]

Guess you don't have a Switch and tried TOTK? It's not like these don't exist, and Hardware horsepower isn't the problem here.

I do, and I have it. But Nintendo and indies are the outlier. For every one game that does the things you’re asking for, there’s hundreds that don’t bother to.