Be Excellent To Each Other

Battlefield 3 on the consoles certainly needed more processing umph. Outsides of car games and large military shooters though I'm struggling to think of other types of games that could benefit with more power right at this very minute.

I'm not giving it much thought to be fair though...

What about 'proper' RTS games on the next consoles, but a lot of the buttons mapped to the screen controlled by Kinect? Would be easy to select groups of units just by drawing circles around them with your finger...

I think nearly all open world/sandbox type games would benefit from being more densely populated. Presumably this would be a benefit which could be very quickly realised too.

I bet World of Warcraft will slip in once consoles get more powerful.

Aside from indie games and some of the smaller Arcade games I'm struggling to think of any games that couldn't benefit from more power; it seems really odd to single out a couple of very specific subgenres.

Ok, well, I was thinking more about the games I'd played this year and whether I'd like to fork out for a brand new machine to play them on with a bit more grunt.

Dark Souls was perfectly fine. Dead Space 2. Fine. Modern Warfare. Fine. Deus Ex. Fine. Could have loaded up a bit quicker but it was perfectly serviceable. Portal 2. Gears 3. Resistence 3. Would they benefit "substantially" from more power? I doubt it.

As hard as I bum it, it does struggle in Blighttown and a couple of other places briefly.

Yeah, but would you shell out for a brand new console just for an increased frame rate in one area?

When the designers are so obviously struggling to get it running ok it seems astonishingly unlikely to me that their ambitions weren't being limited in large part by the hardware.

That's a bit of a trick question though. That wouldn't be the only reason he'd shell out. He's just saying that Dark Souls would've benefited.

You cite Modern Warfare as an example of something that is perfectly fine - sure - but that's because it's running on an ancient engine that has seen only incremental improvement over the last six years. It runs at 60 FPS, sure, but at the cost of looking pretty ugly and rendering at a sub 720p resolution. A new console CoD would - I hope at least - run on a new engine that could do more impressive things.

And same goes for the rest of your examples. "Would they benefit from more power?" Well, not really because they were designed within the constraints of the consoles they run on. More power would just make them smoother and possibly rendered at a higher resolution. Had they been developed for a more powerful console, they might be entirely different games with more sophisticated AI, larger, more impressive environments, more players in multiplayer, etc. This isn't just about frame rates and resolution, as we've been discussing for the past few pages. See my Ass Crud example.

Excellent point. I shall back away with my tail between my legs. I've just been wondering what someone like the Team Ico lot could do with more fire power too. They might have released The Last Guardian already.

I'm ready for the next gen now.

EDIT: you can stop editing your post now WTB. I've seen the error of my ways. More power = even more awesome Dark Souls. I'm sold.

Doubtful. The WoW engine is 7 years old now and can be run on a netbook, and is actually quite impressive in terms of scalable performance. You can make it look very pretty indeed, or basic but still playable.

If it was a power consideration, it would already be on console. I expect it is more a market choice and input problem that keeps it off consoles.

And Microsoft's platform control.

I do wonder if they've got something lined up for consoles with their next MMO. It'd be a massive challenge in so many ways.

I'd be perfectly happy with another 5 years of this 'generation', but then I'm impervious to the lure of graphics. I notice them for 5 minutes, and then thats it.

Indeed. I'm not sure it makes sense, it's not like they will need the extra possible revenue. The next MMO by Blizzard will sell in the millions and make them billions regardless.

I'm more "why not?" than "why?" when it comes to this sort of thing. I've been excited about improvements in gaming hardware and graphics for as long as I've been interested in games. I am also incredibly wealthy compared with when I was 10. I say bring it on.

The next gen will have hardly anything to do with games. Market research shows that games are one of the last things people want in games consoles. Instead people want a portal to Cuntbook and Twatter. The Xbox 7203746591202384012019301010 will be a large iPhone where people can tweet that they're using it, post photos on Instagram of themselves everytime they glance toward the machine, and download apps to shake babies.

A new CoD will look prettier and play exactly the same, because that is the formula that works. The set-pieces will be louder, prettier, but still ultimately player involvement will be exactly as it is. Forza 6 will look and sound utterly stunning, but it will still be cars round a track.

I'm not having a go at the Ass Crud example, but whenever I read a developer saying "we had loads of great ideas that we just couldn't implement due to hardware", I hear "we had loads of great ideas that we just couldn't implement due to budget, management or the fact that they just wouldn't work." Molyneux syndrome.

Bigger, better, faster, more is a bad thing in games. 500 cars in Forza? Why not have 600? 1000? It doesn't matter, because people will use only 20 of them. Busier cities in GTA 6? Why? That much going on will prevent you doing what you want to do, not allow it - you'll be bumping into other cars and pedestrians, then getting angry and spraying them with bullets and getting a wanted level. Reminds me of the race in tech specs, bigger this, faster that.

It also completely ignores the success of the Wii and DS, which succeeded because they offered something different (and I'd argue, better) not something more powerful. The biggest successes of this gen have been things that have differentiated themselves, not done the same as before just louder.

Races that load instantly in Forza, cities in GTA where you can enter buildings without loading screens. It's not about more of the same, it's about doing it better.

I love how people are taking 'more powerful consoles' in whatever way winds them up the most. New consoles are coming folks, dealwiddit! Also, amen to markg's sentiment. As a fellow adult, I agree wholeheartedly, even if I am skint right now.

I've basically decided I'm going to get the Wii-U and the next Xbox at release anyway, assuming the pricing isn't too absurd. I might tend towards being cynical in general, but new consoles are still exciting.

I've elaborately decided to get the new Cuntbook portal at release, too. I hope it can stream books to me one word at a time. That's the sort of thing I like.

You and Bluce need to go on Grumpy Old Men.

I'd like that. I'd like to sit next to AA Gill and be rude to lesbians.

Um... Am I the only one that thinks that doesn't make sense?

More cars in the same Forza is more of the same.

Cars with better physics, or races without loading times is doing it better.

I've really enjoyed a lot of games from this generation of consoles, more so than any other really. Many of those games would have been either impossible or much worse on the last generation. Would Fallout, Crackdown, Assassins Creed, Just Cause, Gears Of War, Resistance, Uncharted all really have been no worse on an Xbox/PS2? I'd even argue that the sequels are qualitatively different, the current Forza, Halo are much finer games than their last-gen counterparts. Of course there are going to be genres and franchises which emerge and have enduring popularity, I don't really see anything wrong with that. Like I said earlier I think that someone who enjoys shooters is no more wrong for wanting a new version to play than a golfer is wrong because he fancies playing on a new course. And at the same time it seems to me that there's a tendency for some to knock established genres that are popular whilst raving on about Yet Another Indie Dev Vertical Scrolling Bullet-Hell Shooter or Tedious Platformer - This Time It's Greyscale as though they were some strikingly original piece of arthouse cinema.

As for Nintendo, my DS hasn't even left the drawer in four years and apart from when they were new and promising I haven't felt the need to buy a Wii. Most new games for those platforms seem to be low-rent shovelware garbage. I guess if you define success in terms of units sold then maybe they were pretty successful although Nintendo seem to be very much on the back foot these days, with even most of their fans having deserted them.

But I heard exactly all this before from , last time around (although to give him his due he has, from what I've seen, remained obstinately grumpy about most popular games) and just as before the only truly satisfactory response would be if I had the vision to pull from my arse a list of all the excellent games that haven't even been made yet. Obviously I can't, but I'm willing to bet that there will be.

Someone give this man a cookie.

Not as much as new games.

Worst Lemonparty ever.

Which come on new consoles. The reason I got a 360 was because of Dead Rising - if it had been able to be released on the Xbox 1, I wouldn't have bothered.

Yeah... but the console isn't exciting* it's the content that you play on it.

*unless you like plastic boxes with lights on.

I thought that was pretty obvious, so I didn't mention it.

I think you've underestimated your stupidity.

I love that our belmoids are in sync.

More of the same, but better, no?

Not that I care, I'll be buying them as soon as they hit the shops anyway.

Except for the Vita. Fuck that.

We already have the best game possible, Dark Souls Bayonetta 3D Deathchase, so why bother?

So wrong. It's both.

Grim... loves his faceplates!

I have one! It came free with a game - but I can't remember what game or what the picture was of

I, to be fair, find plastic boxes with lights on quite exciting.

I miss JC.

I don't think I've ever bought a games console within its first year, but there's a fair chance I'd go to a midnight launch day opening for a new Xbox. I've got the money; i like gadgets; why the hell not?

Maybe not midnight launch, but I expect I'll preorder it. The closest I've ever got to a launch console was the Nintendo DS Lite.

I'd probably only get it straight away if there was a launch title I wanted. I like new stuff too but I wouldn't spend £3-400 just so I could go home, unwrap it, prod around in some menus for a bit then turn it off and put the old one back on, because that would be mental.

Yep.

They'll probably give an achievement for that though.

I probably would have bought Call of Duty 2 at the launch of the 360 (despite also owning it for the PC at the time) - everything else was gash.