Eighth Generation general discussion

I thought that we could use a thread in which we can discuss our desires and expectations for the Eighth Generation, which are set to get into gear this year or next year at least.

I'm still expecting 2160p support from Microsoft and Sony's hardware, since they'll probably wanting to jump on to support where Nintendo can't.

I just hope dev costs don't jump too high in the next generation. Otherwise, we'll be seeing more AAA games that play it safe and sell a bunch of copies just to break even instead of games that try to do something meaningfully new, don't sell as much, yet still end up profitable.

What examples are there of those kinds of games that "play it safe"? There've been a whole lot of new IPs from every developer this generation.

The multitude of samey military shooters with the same realistic color palette and same overly scripted, Call Of Duty style single player campaigns with unlockable-based multiplayer, for one.

edited 24th Jan '13 6:32:32 PM by Nettacki

Another problem is sequel stagnation. If a new game is highly successful, it's pretty much expected that the game will get a new sequel ether yearly or half yearly. A good example of this is Assassins Creed which over the course of 6 years has had 12 games be made.

Half of them aren't sequels though. Some of them, like Bloodlines and III:Liberation, are spinoffs.

And it's technically incorrect, there are only 10 Assassin's Creed games.

edited 24th Jan '13 6:52:21 PM by rmctagg09

I would like to see more new game play. I was impressed by old series like Ghost N' Goblins with Ultimate, Exite with Bots, Kirby doing Canvas Curse, Metroid with Prime three, Mario with Galaxy, all treading new ground without managing to derail themselves. Geometry Wars, Big Brain Academy, Lost In Shadow, Dementium, Fluidity, those made me a little hopeful for the future of console games.

Hopefully the new X box and Playstation will be offering some new ways to interface, something their predecessors cannot duplicate. The touch screen controller of the Wii-U has not really impressed me but it is nice to see Nintendo is at least trying.

I would also like to see shorter load times and more effort being put into providing larger worlds and more content on the screen. If system power is really that important it might as well go toward ways to innovate right?

So what's the likelihood of the new Sony and Microsoft entries getting announced this coming E3?

Quite likely, actually. When they come out is another matter entirely.

Haven't they outright said that they're going to reveal their new consoles this E3?

No, not at all.

I'm really hoping they don't try to "push" the hardware.

AAA games are having trouble keeping up as it is. Just let them sit pretty for a few years so we can get back to innovation and games that are actually different from one another.

I think I'm going to just stick with the Wii U for the majority of the generation. Sony consoles usually don't become wortwhile for a few years and Xbox consoles are so user unfriendly.

Well I've started saving. I'm excited for this upcoming generation, though I feel it may be the most delicate.

I can't shake the feeling that this gen is going to be awful and everyone should have hung back for a few years..

To be honest, I heard that every time a new generation is created, so, lets just wait, Im personally indifferent on this, cause im still on PC, unless games like Spec Ops or Skyrim are considered on this generation

More dev studios are closing now than ever before, which means we still haven't even fully adjusted to the tec of this gen yet.

For the next Xbox & Playstation. Yesss. Just by looking how the studios are, and the games being release with them. A big chuck of them turned out depressing. But i don't think so for the handheld's and Nintendo's console. Which actually looks like it might be a great path for them.

Developers adapted to Seventh Generation technology pretty quickly. It's just that development costs were a problem with those developers. I'm sure they'll get onto Eighth Generation hardware pretty well, no matter the development cost.

Eh, if it pushes small devs to PC (especially Linux), I stand to benefit from this, though, so I have at least something of a conflict of interest.

Small devs have already found their haven on mobile devices.

If the rumors and word on dev kits are true, there shouldn't be as many hurdles, since the next Playstation and Xbox are supposed to be based closer on PC hardware.

Eh, I have one of those, too, but most of that crap isn't the kind of stuff that I'd expect to see ever make it to a real system.

I swear to god, if developers start pushing DRM like some do on PC already on consoles, I'll stick with Nintendo forever.