Would you be ok with AAA games going back to early PS4 level graphics, if it meant devs no longer needing 3+ years to make new games and sequels?

I would be fine with it, if better games were made instead, i still play games from that era anyway like the Dishonored's and a lot of newer games dont look miles better anyway
 
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We have never left PS4 graphics. I would argue we didn't even leave the best games from PS360 era. We improved resolution, framerates, and pushed fidelity in more open areas. But it is still not that much better than the best games from PS360 gen. Anything more we allegedly attained is pointless.

PS360 visuals in 1080p@60fps are largely enough. No need to bother going further.
 
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It's PS4 graphics what are destroying the industry since they are scaling them to full open worlds, protagonist details on NPCs, cutscene background details everywhere and above all voxel based GI that takes ages to reiterate and compile. The path forward is RT (as much as I hate it, I hate the performance penalty for almost nothing and I think that SSR are ok). Hopefully they don't find another way of shooting themselves in the foot again.
 
The Order 1886 graphics still rocks to date. Most nowadays games take so long not because the dev were pushing graphics.

rofif rofif had a great thread about it.


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I think it's one of the best looking games and nails the whole 'cinematic game' better than Naughty Dog. Especially compared to A Thief's End I thought O1886 was much tighter and told its story in a vastly superior way. I really mourn us not getting a sequel as I think that's where the team would have truly shone.
 
I think there's a few issues with why modern games take so long to make and I don't think it's just graphics that are to blame.

1. Mismanagement - I know people have already mentioned it but I think there's a lot of mismanagement going that never used to be a problem.
2. Overly long games - Game lengths have increased. Whether it's trying to please people or because of ambitions, they are bound to make dev times far longer than they need to be. I loved God of War 2018 and Spiderman, but their sequels went on way too long.
3. Lack of crunch - I hate to say it, but I feel crunch made games better.
4. D&I - These type of people spend time pushing their agenda than working hard.

I'm sure there are many more!

Back in the day, so much dev time was spent trying to fit into a consoles specification and optimise. Now that's less of a hurdle and things have gotten worse!
 
They aren't so far removed, it's not like higher resolution rendering and such specs (hell, in many cases even textures are sourced from higher resolution than what ended up in those games, hence PC ports often having higher options, they don't recreate them after the fact) make them take longer. Also other newer technologies like RT lighting are for faster development so they don't spend so much time baking lighting in textures/assets and compiling the levels and what not, at least for games that don't have the option to turn it fully off (and still look good with alternative lighting tech) 🤷‍♂️
 
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I think there's a few issues with why modern games take so long to make and I don't think it's just graphics that are to blame.

1. Mismanagement - I know people have already mentioned it but I think there's a lot of mismanagement going that never used to be a problem.
2. Overly long games - Game lengths have increased. Whether it's trying to please people or because of ambitions, they are bound to make dev times far longer than they need to be. I loved God of War 2018 and Spiderman, but their sequels went on way too long.
3. Lack of crunch - I hate to say it, but I feel crunch made games better.
4. D&I - These type of people spend time pushing their agenda than working hard.

I'm sure there are many more!

Back in the day, so much dev time was spent trying to fit into a consoles specification and optimise. Now that's less of a hurdle and things have gotten worse!

Don't care for DEI but I can definitely agree with the first 3. I don't think there's one contributing factor here, but I do think the push for better and better visuals is one of them. Although I regret not mentioning in my original post that the pressure to make games bigger and bigger is also a huge problem. Making games bigger and better looking has cooked the industry.
 
A lot of lip service will say "yes," but sales will not back up that data. The second a graphical comparison can be used to confirm pre existing opinion on a game, people will do it.
 
How sure are we that games need 5-6 years of development now, and this isn't just a plandemic-induced anomaly? COVID essentially shut down the game industry for 2 years as devs didn't work in their pajamas from home.
 
Graphics aren't the reason games take 7 years, it's cause most developers fake work from home now and have no real or enforced deadlines. They went from pre-covid 40-60 hour work weeks with supervisors constantly hovering around their cubicle's and studios being shut down for missed milestones, to now rolling out of bed at noon and spending an hour fiddling with something, then quitting for the day. And the mega publishers largely let them continue to delay out to infinity cause they don't want Jason Schrier writing a hit piece about toxic work culture, crunch, or mass firings.

Metroid Prime 4 is an uprezed texture enhanced Switch 1 game (i.e. predominantly PS360 grade assets) that took 6 year for Retro's portion alone. The problem is zoomer and younger millennial post-covid work culture, not graphics.
That sounds to me they got spoiled from unreal jobs like YouTubers, cause on camera they basically indirectly saying look! we're smarter than you and we don't have to do anything ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha ha.
 
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