While I'm not quite on board with you and Matt in saying this whole generation could be skippable, I do think the sophistication of the hardware has now pushed back when a system hits its limit. I mean, I only have a PS2, and plenty of games look lush and incredible on it. The same thing goes with my DS; I just got done with The World Ends With You, which was just so unique and interesting to me.
Anyway, as the hardware has gotten more complicated, I think expectations and hardware have gotten so advanced that it's harder to really max out either. A game like Spore would have been impossible five years ago; now we're disappointed that it's not as refined as we would have liked, despite years of development time.
I think that's going to be the big conflict in the future - Truly revolutionary games, outside of the "simple is better" category, will take years to develop and to push a system's boundaries. Outside of Blizzard and (I think) Rockstar, that isn't the development cycle most companies take.
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Anyway, as the hardware has gotten more complicated, I think expectations and hardware have gotten so advanced that it's harder to really max out either. A game like Spore would have been impossible five years ago; now we're disappointed that it's not as refined as we would have liked, despite years of development time.
I think that's going to be the big conflict in the future - Truly revolutionary games, outside of the "simple is better" category, will take years to develop and to push a system's boundaries. Outside of Blizzard and (I think) Rockstar, that isn't the development cycle most companies take.
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