The 7th Generation and its Glass Ceiling Innovation
The Xbox 360 has been in stores for 6 years, count them, 6 years! It is currently the sales leader (not in overall sales, but month to month it’s winning right now). Microsoft has not officially announced a successor to the 360, and with Halo 4 supposedly coming next year to the then 7 year old system, I seriously doubt we will see any hardware from them until at least 2013.
The PS3 and Wii are both 5 years old. The Wii, already a generation behind in the hardware dept, has a successor coming next year in the Wii U. Sony has been quiet about PS4 release timeframes. They’ve touted the PS3 as having a 10 year life cycle, but much of that is lip service. Both the PS1 and PS2 had 10 year cycles that heavily overlapped each other, expect that to happen again. The soonest I would expect anything from Sony is at least 2013, possibly later.
Yeah, remember that?
Typically the need for new hardware arises about every 5 years. Since the third generation (NES and Master System), the average time between consoles is 4.8 years. We are at 5 and 6 years into the seventh generation with no end in sight. This delay can be attributed to multiple factors. Updatable firmware, graphical diminishing returns, and consistent hardware sales are factors, but the biggest thing in the way of the new generation is the economy.
The current economic climate initially didn’t affect the games industry, but now that we are 3 years into the recession, less money is being spent on everything, including software. The argument goes both ways, on one side sales could be down because there are no new consoles, but on the other side consumers might not be able to afford new hardware. Right now, both Sony and Microsoft are more comfortable rolling out stop gap upgrades and peripherals to prolong what is becoming the longest generation since the Atari 2600 days.
What that means for game development is that the innovation typically tied to new hardware is being stifled. The more developers work with consoles the better they get at exploiting the strengths of its features. That’s why first generation games on every system are ugly. Go back and play Perfect Dark Zero, or Motorstorm and tell me you don’t agree. Its not just graphics, its physics, lighting, shaders, enemy AI, crowd dynamics, or basically anything a game does that needs to leverage the hardware strength. We are getting to a point where the software wizards making games cannot get anything more out of the hardware.
I don't get it, I he supposed to be on fire?
Battlefield 3 on PC is evidence that there is a better looking graphical standard out there. This difference is a relic of a bygone era. It used to be that PC games were looked at as the future; “This is what games will look like on consoles in 4 years!” The decline of PC gaming is causing development to flip and instead of games being built for PC and ported to consoles, consoles are getting top billing and the PC games are upres-ed ports of console games.
Without PC developers pushing the boundaries of what can be done in a virtual space, console makers are content sticking with their current horse as long as the sales are consistent. Developers are hitting the glass ceilings created by processing bottlenecks, and unavoidable power limitations. The games being released this year are evidence that this is a growing problem that will only get worse until the next generation kicks off.
The top tier games this year are all still great, but they don’t have the innovation that came from their predecessors. Uncharted 3 is great but basically its just another Uncharted game. Sure it does alot of really impressive things, but I wouldn’t say anything in it is groundbreaking. Modern Warfare 3 is basically the same game that was released 2 years ago in Modern Warfare 2. The settings are different and the perks are adjusted, but again, no innovation.
I promise you, nothing in that game is nearly as epic as this painting.
Assassin’s Creed Revelations, Batman Arkham City, Gear of War 3 and Battlefield 3 are all guilty of being more of the same. Outside of some nifty Motion Plus features, Skyward Sword is exactly like every other Zelda game. The only real innovation that I hear coming from Game of the Year candidate Skyrim is that its scope is huge and you have a lot of choices, two things that don’t need new hardware to improve upon.
I’m not saying these games are bad, but they aren’t the generational milestones that their predecessors were, and outside of Bioshock Infinite, I don’t see anything coming down the pipeline that has “milestone” written on it. I hope you were pleased by the games released this year because chances are you will be playing them again next year and possibly the next. Come on guys, bring on the PS4 and Xbox 3, I’m ready for genuine excitement.
