I keep noticing a lot of posts on various forums of people bashing some of the next-gen graphics and gameplay that we've been privy to thus far.
I look at some of these teaser videos and gameplay demos and wonder how the hell anyone could look at this and say they're not impressed. The only possible reason I can come up with is that gamers of the latter generation have become oversaturated with the latest and greatest technology.
From the standpoint of an old school gamer (I started back in 1981 on an Atari 2600 at the age of 5), to see the level of ingenuity and realism that games are achieving these days is staggering to the mind. We have games that cover hundreds, if not thousands, of virtual square miles, all of it packed to bursting with unbelievable levels of detail.
Maybe it's like an old Vietnam veteran that's just killed too many people for death to impress or even stir him anymore. We've seen gaming come to such heights, that those gamers born in the last 15 to 20 years aren't impressed with what's coming down the pipe anymore.
Or possibly, it's simply lamenting the passing of what they were used to.
Anyone who has played World of Warcraft has seen this. You always have those players in the chat going on about the "good old days" of vanilla. To hear them tell it, WoW was just simply better back when it first started up. Well, just to be clear, that's nostalgia talking. WoW wasn't that good in the beginning. BUT, with the coming of newer updates, expansions, optimizations, and so forth, it improved dramatically (at least up til Cataclysm), but it'll never be the same for those that played back in the beginning.
The same can be said for Call of Duty. Sure, it's the same gameplay, the same engine, and the same premise. But whether you're willing to admit it or not, the game has improved with every iteration. It's just that players who got in on the ground floor look back at CoD and fondly remember the hours of fun they had playing with their friends back then. To them the newer games are a joke. But to someone who has never played a single one of them, picking up the newest version is like the greatest thing ever.
Like I said, it's all about becoming oversaturated in the latest, greatest thing, and when you've constantly seen the cutting edge, it starts to look a little dull. Whether it be the next-gen console, or the next chapter in a franchise, people always seem to want something more, when what they had before was less, and they were happy with it.
Sometimes I think gamers need to take a day or 2 to go back and play some of the older titles, just to see how far we've come and be impressed all over again. Or to at least realize that 40 man Onyxia really wasn't so much epic as it was frustrating.
Just my take.
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
The charity event will be streamed live from Gamescom in August.
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
People are just blinded by nostalgia. Granted we're dealing with newer issues like DRM these days, gaming has still gotten better.
Nostalgia says that games were harder back in the day and today's games are too easy. Reality says that games were poorly balanced years ago with the intention to get you to buy magazines with secrets and tips (which basically also got their game more advertisement, because plenty of people got Nintendo Power), books and accessories with cheat codes, and/or put more quarters into the machine. Lastly, it made their short as a straw games seem longer.
You can find plenty of games, especially on the indie market, that will kill you in unfair ways like megaman did if you didn't cross the exact right place between screens to avoid lasers, require that you go online to figure out cryptic nonsense, and be generally poor balanced.
As for myself, I'll just enjoy these newfangled games with story and balance and pretty/sharp graphics (even if it's just a 2D game like Rayman Origins) and all of those other great things that our games didn't generally have back in the day.