Support NeoGAF

[BossLackey]

I keep seeing people on this board, Twitter, Reddit, etc. complaining about how shitty games are these days and I'm having a hard time agreeing.

Yes, there are loads of incredibly greedy business practices, crunch for developers, broken promises, your "Red Falls" and "LOTR: Gollums" and myriad issues plaguing the industry. PC hardware prices have been bad recently and there has been a piss-poor track record of ports this last year or two.

But at the end of the day, we're getting some pretty damn incredible games very frequently. Despite my absolute best efforts, I simply cannot keep up.

This year alone has been a non-stop force-feeding of incredible game after incredible game. whycantIholdallthesegames.jpg.

Tears of the Kingdom just came out and while I'm reeling from that. BOOM. Diablo 4, Street Fighter 6, Final Fantasy XVI. Hell, even Boltgun is awesome and just came out!

Are people just playing a few genres and getting frustrated when something good doesn't fall within their limited view?

If you're one of these people, I'd love to know your reasoning.

 

[hyperbertha]

Tears of the Kingdom just came out and while I'm reeling from that. BOOM. Diablo 4, Street Fighter 6, Final Fantasy XVI. Hell, even Boltgun is awesome and just came out!

You just answered your question. Every single one of those are easily possible on a PS4. Why do we need this new generation?

 

[Crayon]

Bad pc ports aside, it seems complainers want every mass market big budget game tailored for THEM. There are a fuckton of games out there. Find something you like.

You just answered your question. Every single one of those are easily possible on a PS4. Why do we need this new generation?

Op title said generation but post was more like state of the industry. If you are meaning the generation though...

Those games are coming out *in this generation* if you want to think about it that way. Some aren't going to be ps4. Maybe kz shadowfall could have been played on a ps3 by your estimation. Maybe the ps4 is currently the entry level ps for this generation. What I'm saying here is I don't know why it matters that you have to deem a game only possible on ps5 to make it count towards games being good.

 

[hyperbertha]

Bad pc ports aside, it seems complainers want ever mass market big budget game tailored for THEM. There are a fuckton of games out there. Find something you like.



Op title said generation but post was more like state of the industry. If you are meaning the generation though...

Those games are coming out *in this generation* if you want to think about it that way. Some aren't going to be ps4. Maybe kz shadowfall could have been played on a ps3 by your estimation. Maybe the ps4 is currently the entry level ps for this generation. What I'm saying here is I don't know why it matters that you have to deem a game only possible on ps5 to make it count towards games being good.

Ops wants to know why people complain about this generation. The reason is there are no proper next gen games except two or three in three years. The best looking game so far is a cross gen game. Spiderman 2 looking worse than last of us 2 doesn't help.

 

[BossLackey]

You just answered your question. Every single one of those are easily possible on a PS4. Why do we need this new generation?

So a game must be impossible to play on the previous generation in order to be good? Nonsense.

This isn't 2D to 3D anymore. We're past that. Seems like people don't actually know what they want.

 

[Fabieter]

Fewer and fewer big games. And the variety with aaa games isn't the best amymore unfortunately.

 

[Tams]

Everyone sucks

 

[Mr Hyde]

I've had a great gen so far on PS5. Lots of quality games, both first party and third party. I just don't like Sonys new direction towards GaaS, which is why I'm partially moving over to PC so I can watch Sonys "Phase 2" crash and burn from a safe distance.

 

[Walter Matthau]

Generally speaking, negative or critical opinions dominate social media and forum discussions these days.

As a Nintendo fan, I think the Switch may be the best console Nintendo has ever made and its run is still going.

 

[hyperbertha]

So a game must be impossible to play on the previous generation in order to be good? Nonsense.

This isn't 2D to 3D anymore. We're past that. Seems like people don't actually know what they want.

Nobody said the games were bad. People who bought next gen consoles are understandably upset nothing substantial has come out to justify their purchase.

 

[BossLackey]

I've had a great gen so far on PS5. Lots of quality games, both first party and third party. I just don't like Sonys new direction towards GaaS, which is why I'm partially moving over to PC so I can watch Sonys "Phase 2" crash and burn from a safe distance.

I think that's largely what this boils down to. Options.

Me and many others have a lot of options because:

1. I love MANY genres, so there are very very few good games that I don't want to play.
2. I have a gaming PC, Switch, and PS5 (as far as this generation). So there's nothing off limits.

There are some that don't have one or both of these and I would imagine that makes a big difference in how they perceive what's available to them.

 

[Spaceman292]

Because they're miserable cynics who hate video games. They're not worth paying attention to.

 

[Cert.in.Death]

 

[SuperSaiyanWithDreads]

Because they're miserable cynics who hate video games. They're not worth paying attention to.

That projection is strong as hell

 

[SirTerry-T]

Because we are all old, grouchy miserable fuckers.

 

[BossLackey]

Nobody said the games were bad. People who bought next gen consoles are understandably upset nothing substantial has come out to justify their purchase.

Games and their engines are becoming significantly more scalable than ever before. COVID/supply shortage happened.

These two things alone are a good reason why there is so much cross-generational titles. Add to that the increasingly long development times, and you have a recipe for games on both generations.

There are a TON of games on PS5 that have inferior versions on the PS4. Does that make the PS5 less impressive? What if there was no PS4 version?

FFVII Remake is a great example. I played through on PS5 and although I know it's on PS4, it definitely felt "next gen".

 

[FrankWza]

Because they're miserable cynics who hate video games. They're not worth paying attention to.

The amount of awesome moments and fun I've had playing GT7 in VR with wheel and pedal setup makes a lot of these arguments dumb. It's a PS4 game though

 

[Fbh]

The games themselves have been great.
There so much good stuff coming out that I can't keep up. I feel like I still have 80% of TotK to go and FF16 is already coming out in less than a month and I still haven't even played GOW Ragnarok or Hogwarts or RE4 Remake.
If we didn't get a single new game for the rest of the year I'd still probably have a year worth of stuff to play just between the things I've yet to play from late last year until now.

I can understand people being disappointed about the gen itself though. There isn't really a next gen, we just got an iterative power upgrade to play last gen games at a higher res/framerate. The Ps5 and SX might as well have been called Ps4 Pro pro and Xbox One XX.
Some people are still clinging to the old times, when a new gen felt like this massive leap. Those times are gone, unless there's some big technological breakthrough from now on new gens will likely just be small incremental upgrades.

 

[nemiroff]

Nah, I have the time of my life right now

 

[Mr Hyde]

I think that's largely what this boils down to. Options.

Me and many others have a lot of options because:

1. I love MANY genres, so there are very very few good games that I don't want to play.
2. I have a gaming PC, Switch, and PS5 (as far as this generation). So there's nothing off limits.

There are some that don't have one or both of these and I would imagine that makes a big difference in how they perceive what's available to them.

Absolutely. I want to cover my bases, just like you do (I have a Switch also). And I love all sorts of genres too. Adventure, action, rpg, platformers, Metroidvania, open world etc. I also play a lot of older stuff. Quite a lot of indies too. I feel like I have an endless supply of great games at my disposal 24/7. It's weird seeing people complain so much about a hobby they enjoy, but then I'm reminded we are on the internet.

 

[SEGA_2012]

I have no doubt this is going to be the shittiest generation of all time. BRING BACK THE PSTRIPLE/X360/WII/DS DAYS NOW!

 

[SlimySnake]

I keep seeing people on this board, Twitter, Reddit, etc. complaining about how shitty games are these days and I'm having a hard time agreeing.

Yes, there are loads of incredibly greedy business practices, crunch for developers, broken promises, your "Red Falls" and "LOTR: Gollums" and myriad issues plaguing the industry. PC hardware prices have been bad recently and there has been a piss-poor track record of ports this last year or two.

But at the end of the day, we're getting some pretty damn incredible games very frequently. Despite my absolute best efforts, I simply cannot keep up.

This year alone has been a non-stop force-feeding of incredible game after incredible game. whycantIholdallthesegames.jpg.

Tears of the Kingdom just came out and while I'm reeling from that. BOOM. Diablo 4, Street Fighter 6, Final Fantasy XVI. Hell, even Boltgun is awesome and just came out!

Are people just playing a few genres and getting frustrated when something good doesn't fall within their limited view?

If you're one of these people, I'd love to know your reasoning.

I paid $500 almost three years ago to play new games that couldnt be done on previous gen consoles.

What I am getting is the same shit that we were playing in 2005. Not interested. RE4 came out and tell me one thing it did that wouldnt have been possible on PS3 or hell PS2 era hardware. Just prettier graphics and thats it. And honestly, not that pretty.

 

[Silver Wattle]

Just to try and answer your question rather than "people suck".

Games are taking longer and longer to develop, developers putting greed over gameplay, most games have been same-y over the last 10+ years, this console generation has not had a single price cut and instead has had a price rise.

 

[Represent.]

The medium isn't living up to its potential. Not even close. Pisses people off because it could be so much more.

 

[simpatico]

It's the generation that doesn't even really exist. All the big games are still coming out on PS4 so far. I can't think of a single "next gen only" killer app.

 

[BossLackey]

The medium isn't living up to its potential. Not even close. Pisses people off because it could be so much more.

Can you give me an example as to what the potential is?

 

[SlimySnake]

Some people are still clinging to the old times, when a new gen felt like this massive leap. Those times are gone, unless there's some big technological breakthrough from now on new gens will likely just be small incremental upgrades.

I think zelda proves that its the devs who no longer have the passion, the talent or the ambition to pull off these massive leaps we have come to expect. Everyone wondered why the PS4 gen was just an extension of the PS360 gen. People blamed jaguar CPUs. Devs blamed HDDs. Some blamed bigger budgets, open world and gaas trends for a lack of a meaningful upgrade in gameplay which saw little to no innovations gen on gen even last gen. Then zelda comes out with a way worse processor than the jaguar CPUs, no ssd, and a GPU even worse than the PS3, and showed everyone that anything is possible if you actually want to do it.

I always wondered why Far Cry 2 was far more physics based and interactive than anything that came after it. Same with Crysis and to a lesser extent Infamous, GTA4 and Mass Effect 1. We got a pretty decent GPU bump in the PS4 era (9x) and a massive VRAM jump (10-20x), and devs just kinda forgot about interactivity and went all in on graphics and vast (empty) open worlds with no real interactivity or simulations. Surely, some of that couldve been offloaded to the GPU but they didnt even try. Nintendo tried and got it all to run on PS3 era hardware.

No one will convince me that with the massive increase in CPU and SSD bandwidth, we should be expecting incremental upgrades. Some dev said that Nintendo was showing up AAA devs working on 10x more powerful hardware. It's actually 63x if you go by tflops and compare the handheld tflops 0.190 to xbox series x's 12.1 tflops. Just imagine what Nintendo could do with the 3.5 ghz 8 core 16 thread CPUs and then ask why we are getting such incremental upgrades this gen.

Again, not even talking about visual upgrades here. There is so much to do in terms of technological breakthroughs and innovation and so much power at their fingertips and they are just coasting. Thank God for Zelda.

 

[oji-san]

I'm having a great time nowdays, the last 6-8 months i played Atomic Heart, A Plague Tale Requiem, High On Life, R&C Rift Apart, GoW Ragnarok and Horizon Forbidden West.. So i'm eating good, good like a stuffed pig.
Overall i enjoy games today just like i did 20 years ago.. some of my all time favs are "modern" games like RDR2 and TLOU2.
But i understand some of the complaints people saying.. the rise on the price of games, the fact that we used to get sales on PSN like buy $100 get $15 back.. they don't do this anymore and it's a shame as i can't afford buying at launch price. Also i do get that there's some quality decline in some games.. we used to get more and better games. So while i do sympathize with some of the issues and i don't think people making this out.. no one want to be bummed out with his hobby.. i still think people sometimes overreacting and to me while there's issues there's still very good times and lots of games to play.

 

[mitch1971]

First World Problems for some.

I've got more games than I know what to do with by paying less than a tenner a month.

 

[hinch7]

Just seems like a lack of new idea's and IP's and publishers afraid to push the boundries. Last generation carried over IP's from the previous franchises plus quite a few new additions.

This generation feels like a continuation of last gen. And feels somewhat like (thus far) a stop-gap gen. With a lot of the same old IP's and games, but enhanced. Lots of games remade or remastered and charged at full price. And whats worse is that a lot of the heavy hitters have been cross gen muddying waters even further. Then we have price hikes, online MP games with more and more predatory MTX's etc.

Adding even more insult to injury is getting even more rushed out and incomplete games that run like trash on day one and needs updates to get it where it should be. Granted we're getting some decent new games now.. its just more of the same. Which is not necessarily bad thing.

 

[near]

The medium isn't living up to its potential. Not even close. Pisses people off because it could be so much more.

 

[TheBROgamer]

Most of the good games are sequels to long standing franchises.

Essentially there is a lack of new and GOOD, in gaming today.

A lack of games that push the envelope forward.

Inb4 indies

I'm talking on an AAA level.

Kthxbai

 

[Roni]

I keep seeing people on this board, Twitter, Reddit, etc. complaining about how shitty games are these days and I'm having a hard time agreeing.

Yes, there are loads of incredibly greedy business practices, crunch for developers, broken promises, your "Red Falls" and "LOTR: Gollums" and myriad issues plaguing the industry. PC hardware prices have been bad recently and there has been a piss-poor track record of ports this last year or two.

But at the end of the day, we're getting some pretty damn incredible games very frequently. Despite my absolute best efforts, I simply cannot keep up.

This year alone has been a non-stop force-feeding of incredible game after incredible game. whycantIholdallthesegames.jpg.

Tears of the Kingdom just came out and while I'm reeling from that. BOOM. Diablo 4, Street Fighter 6, Final Fantasy XVI. Hell, even Boltgun is awesome and just came out!

Are people just playing a few genres and getting frustrated when something good doesn't fall within their limited view?

If you're one of these people, I'd love to know your reasoning.

How many of those are really pushing the medium forward? For people pushing 30's, 40's and 50's, we grew up seeing games change dramatically from one generation to the next. At the time we could only imagine what it would look like in 20, 30 years.

Turns out, not that different, because it's more profitable to sell the same games to different people rather than push the envelope and surprise the same hardcore audience over and over again.

 

[Success]

You must be new to gaming OP.

People complaining about games happens every generation.

From the shovelware on the Wiii.

To the forced multiplier segments in single player games on the PS3 and 360.

 

[Wildebeest]

It's great entertainment watching the messed up releases, why complain.

 

[coffinbirth]

 

[TLZ]

You just answered your question. Every single one of those are easily possible on a PS4. Why do we need this new generation?

Because this happens at the beginning to mid of every generation. Then we see the better Nextgen looking games later. It's just the nature of progress.

 

[Topher]

I was fine with this generation until it all became about corporations buying other corporations.

Nintendo is the only one that has their shit together.

 

[LavitzSlambert]

I think zelda proves that its the devs who no longer have the passion, the talent or the ambition to pull off these massive leaps we have come to expect. Everyone wondered why the PS4 gen was just an extension of the PS360 gen. People blamed jaguar CPUs. Devs blamed HDDs. Some blamed bigger budgets, open world and gaas trends for a lack of a meaningful upgrade in gameplay which saw little to no innovations gen on gen even last gen. Then zelda comes out with a way worse processor than the jaguar CPUs, no ssd, and a GPU even worse than the PS3, and showed everyone that anything is possible if you actually want to do it.

I always wondered why Far Cry 2 was far more physics based and interactive than anything that came after it. Same with Crysis and to a lesser extent Infamous, GTA4 and Mass Effect 1. We got a pretty decent GPU bump in the PS4 era (9x) and a massive VRAM jump (10-20x), and devs just kinda forgot about interactivity and went all in on graphics and vast (empty) open worlds with no real interactivity or simulations. Surely, some of that couldve been offloaded to the GPU but they didnt even try. Nintendo tried and got it all to run on PS3 era hardware.

No one will convince me that with the massive increase in CPU and SSD bandwidth, we should be expecting incremental upgrades. Some dev said that Nintendo was showing up AAA devs working on 10x more powerful hardware. It's actually 63x if you go by tflops and compare the handheld tflops 0.190 to xbox series x's 12.1 tflops. Just imagine what Nintendo could do with the 3.5 ghz 8 core 16 thread CPUs and then ask why we are getting such incremental upgrades this gen.

Again, not even talking about visual upgrades here. There is so much to do in terms of technological breakthroughs and innovation and so much power at their fingertips and they are just coasting. Thank God for Zelda.

I’d argue it’s the companies and management, not necessarily all the devs. But I do agree there seems to be a lack of passion with a lot of the AAA garbage being churned out, and people have a right to be upset with it.


At the same time, I feel like I’ll never catch up with the amount of excellent content being put out nowadays. Games as a whole have never been better, and while they are often not as revolutionary as ones that came in previous generations, I am still having a blast with so many and it feels like a corner has been turned in game design that has raised the bar in general.


About the spec argument, most of the low hanging fruit has been plucked. We’ve seen 2D to 3D, low res and low polygon counts to HD where art style takes precedence over visual fidelity, alternate control schemes, online connectivity, etc. The last generation finally did away with loading screens at large, and this generation is doing away with the forced walking/trickery that disguised load times. In terms of immersion, that makes a big difference.


Going forward from here the focus will be less on revolutionary new capabilities in games resulting from hardware, and more so the miniaturization and mobility of games with existing quality. VR is another area we will continue to see improvements with both graphically and the gameplay itself. This is where your leaps and bounds progress is being made - it’s just not everyone is experiencing it, since the market is still small.

 

[Raonak]

You just answered your question. Every single one of those are easily possible on a PS4. Why do we need this new generation?

Have you actually tried playing a PS4 recently? PS5 is so much better in every single way.
From obviously better performance, to better controller, to better download speeds, to a smoother user experience. This is the first time... in maybe ever that the hardware feels flawless.
Do people forget about the fact that the PS4 was literally a jet engine, and even stuff like PSVR2 is so much better than VR1.

I don't understand why anyone would want to stay on a last generation machine.

Sure, some current gen games work "fine" on the PS4, but that's just a reflection of easier development environments allowing easier porting than anything to do with the quality of a generation.
Between Demons, Miles, Astrobot, Returnal, Ratchet, RE8, GT7, Horizon, GOW, ER, PSVR2, and what feels like an endless amount of games appearing on PS+ extra, in addition to full backward compatibility to all my PS4 classics.

Simply put, this might be the best generation to be playing games.

 

[Mr.Phoenix]

The truth? A very vocal minority. As is always the case.

On the other side of this coin, you will find that games are going on to sell or make more money than they ever were. Consoles are selling faster than they were....etc.

If you form opinions based on what you see on forums like these, or what you would find on other such game-focused message boards, you would find that you are always amongst a very specific kinda crowd. And if you take them seriously, it's enough to make you quit gaming.

These `hardcore/enthusiast gamers complain about EVERYTHING. like, every, single, thing. Sometimes, those complaints are warranted, and are for the best, but because they complain about everything, that ends up being like a 1 in 10 type thing.

Think about it... is there anything at all that has been announced/revealed/shown...etc as far as gaming goes in the past however long that you didn't at least see a dedicated contingent complaining or making some sort of negative spin on it on here? Hell, there are posters that just do it to appear or seem different.

And that's what enthusiast forums like these have become now... just a place to go and mostly complain about shit. And in some of the more extreme (though they would claim to be the more inclusive) forums, if you are on the wrong side of the complaining you can get banned. There they complain about what you can complain about too.

 

[Danjin44]

I'm enjoying a lot of games (mostly from Japanese games), I have not much to complain about.

 

[Fbh]

I think zelda proves that its the devs who no longer have the passion, the talent or the ambition to pull off these massive leaps we have come to expect. Everyone wondered why the PS4 gen was just an extension of the PS360 gen. People blamed jaguar CPUs. Devs blamed HDDs. Some blamed bigger budgets, open world and gaas trends for a lack of a meaningful upgrade in gameplay which saw little to no innovations gen on gen even last gen. Then zelda comes out with a way worse processor than the jaguar CPUs, no ssd, and a GPU even worse than the PS3, and showed everyone that anything is possible if you actually want to do it.

I always wondered why Far Cry 2 was far more physics based and interactive than anything that came after it. Same with Crysis and to a lesser extent Infamous, GTA4 and Mass Effect 1. We got a pretty decent GPU bump in the PS4 era (9x) and a massive VRAM jump (10-20x), and devs just kinda forgot about interactivity and went all in on graphics and vast (empty) open worlds with no real interactivity or simulations. Surely, some of that couldve been offloaded to the GPU but they didnt even try. Nintendo tried and got it all to run on PS3 era hardware.

No one will convince me that with the massive increase in CPU and SSD bandwidth, we should be expecting incremental upgrades. Some dev said that Nintendo was showing up AAA devs working on 10x more powerful hardware. It's actually 63x if you go by tflops and compare the handheld tflops 0.190 to xbox series x's 12.1 tflops. Just imagine what Nintendo could do with the 3.5 ghz 8 core 16 thread CPUs and then ask why we are getting such incremental upgrades this gen.

Again, not even talking about visual upgrades here. There is so much to do in terms of technological breakthroughs and innovation and so much power at their fingertips and they are just coasting. Thank God for Zelda.

Yup, totally agree.
I think games like TotK prove that the issue was never the power of the hardware but just stagnant game design and a hyper focus on visuals above everything else.
Ps3 feels like the last gen with a sense of innovation, ever since then it's like most of the industry stopped trying to innovate and push things forward and just started to focus on refining a handful of proven formulas and improving the size and visuals of games. Most Ps4 games already felt like they weren't bringing many new design ideas compared to the Ps3, and now it's the same except diminishing returns mean even the visual upgrades aren't as impressive as they used to be.

At this point I'm fairly certain Sony could release a new PlayStation tomorrow with an Rtx4090 and a Ryzen 7 7800X3D and we'd still get the same types of games, just with better ray tracing, higher res textures and stuff like that.

All of that said I do think people are at least partially to blame as so many just seem to only want graphics. Look at the Spiderman 2 threads, the main focus of the conversation is how it compares graphically to the first one instead of how we are seemingly still just doing the Arkham City formula 2 console gens later. Genres like immersive sims which are some of the few that still feel like they want to focus on interactivity and player freedom usually tend to have poor sales despite strong reviews.

Most of the industry has trained people to expect nothing but better graphics so that's what everyone looks forward to. The only big outlier is Nintendo who stopped focusing on graphics a long time ago and actually has an audience that doesn't really care about that stuff.

 

[Romulus]

First generation in the history of console games that didn't display a clear graphical leap. Not to mention the games have been pretty shitty until recently. Double whammy.

 

[MagnesD3]

It's called why are the 1st parties not making masterclass games, why do I own my Consoles, why are remakes the best games and new games trying push things not being made, where is the innovation in the exclusive or AAA space.

 

[Danjin44]

I think games like TotK prove that the issue was never the power of the hardware but just stagnant game design and a hyper focus on visuals above everything else.

You see this mostly on western games, in fact most western devs idea moving gaming forward is not about coming up with fun mechanics and interaction and more about get away from their games feeling "gamey" in order to be "cinematic" and "immersive" and to me very wrong direction to go.

I bet you anything R* mostly thought about how to make their more "immersive" rather than making gameplay fun to play when making RDR2.

 

[ReBurn]

It's been the least creative to me by far. Mostly remakes, remasters, and numbered sequels.

 

[Represent.]

Can you give me an example as to what the potential is?

I feel like that shouldn't be my job.

I feel like... When dozens of talented and creative people sit down, and brainstorm ideas, and then have hundreds/thousands of people executing said ideas... If the best they can come up with is... The same shit we've had since the PS360 era, then they are not utilizing this medium to its full potential. Point blank.

The fact that no other game has physics as profound as Zelda.. And that game runs on PS3 era hardware.. speaks VOLUMES. Devs are simply not trying hard enough. Not ambitious enough. Or not creative enough.

If Nintendo can pull off TOTK on a PS3 level device...

Then I should be experiencing War games with extremely large scale combat. Destruction. Advanced A.I, next gen graphics, physics, etc.

Why is there no destruction in Call of Duty? The Ground War mode specifically?

Instead... They want to remake and remaster a bunch of classics.

Instead... Look at SpiderMan 2. The gameplay demo they showed us was a set piece I've played dozens of times already. Naughty Dog practically invented that set piece in 2009 with Uncharted 2. Whats next?

It boils down to will, skill, and desire. No one is even trying to push forward and break new grounds. We've been playing the same games since the PS360 era. I dont know how people dont see that?

Honestly, my tag should say "Fact Speaker." Someone with bad opinions gave me this tag.

 

[HazukiSensei]

I personally think if you dont notice there is a difference in gaming today...then you are part of the problem.

Either that or you are like...15-20 yrs old.

In 2007 for example:

Half life 2 ep 2
Portal
God of war 2
Mario galaxy
Halo 3
Mass effect
Bioshock
Crysis
Uncharted
Modern warfare
Assassins creed 1

Was all released in the same year. Nearly any of those titles could have won game of the year. Ass creed and crysis having a harder time ofc

The next year was arguably just as good. Not to mention the generation that came before that.

Lack of risk, fewer releases, lack of exclusivity, lackluster releases for this gen in terms of exclusivity. I mean how do you NOT notice this, thats my question to you OP. Please answer I really want to know.

Its quite easy to objectively verify that game of the year quality releases are not happening at the same frequency.

 

[Bridges]

Simply because there are no games*

*Obviously there are games, but this generation lacks the feeling of a true leap like previous ones did. I am personally very happy with my Series X just being a way faster One X, but that really is all it is. The last three years have given me a lot of time to chip into my backlog which I am thankful for, but outside of Nintendo there haven't really been any radical new ideas pushing the medium forward. All the other major players continue to push towards live service content and loot-based games. It's not the consoles but the industry, just kinda sad. It takes devs 5-7 years to put out games and half the time they are just copying the flavor of yesteryear (Payday/Overwatch/Destiny clones). If you look at the first three years of the Xbox 360 & PS3, you had massive new exciting IP like Bioshock, Dead Space, Mass Effect, Gears of War, Prey, Portal, Rock Band, Skate, Crackdown, Assassin's Creed, Blue Dragon, Uncharted, Heavenly Sword, F.E.A.R., Left 4 Dead, LittleBigPlanet, Resistance, inFAMOUS, Mirror's Edge and I could go on and on and on.

The last 3 years on these new consoles? We've gotten sequels/remakes of a couple of the things I just mentioned and then more iterative sequels and... Returnal? I think there is just a very palpable feeling that there are simply less new ideas to get excited about these days, and as things stand right now neither Sony or Microsoft have given us much to look forward to in the immediate future.