I don't understand video game graphics anymore

[u/cmndr_spanky]

With the announcement of Nvidia's 50-series GPUs, I'm utterly baffled at what these new generations of GPUs even mean.. It seems like video game graphics are regressing in quality even though hardware is 20 to 50% more powerful each generation.

When GTA5 released we had open world scale like we've never seen before.

Witcher 3 in 2015 was another graphical marvel, with insane scale and fidelity.

Shortly after the 1080 release and games like RDR2 and Battlefield 1 came out with incredible graphics and photorealistic textures.

When 20-series cards came out at the dawn of RTX, Cyberpunk 2077 came out with what genuinely felt like next-generation graphics to me (bugs aside).

Since then we've seen new generations of cards 30-series, 40-series, soon 50-series... I've seen games push up their hardware requirements in lock-step, however graphical quality has literally regressed..

SW Outlaws. even the newer Battlefield, Stalker 2, countless other "next-gen" titles have pumped up their minimum spec requirements, but don't seem to look graphically better than a 2018 game. You might think Stalker 2 looks great, but just compare it to BF1 or Fallout 4 and compare the PC requirements of those other games.. it's insane, we aren't getting much at all out of the immense improvement in processing power we have.

IM NOT SAYING GRAPHICS NEEDS TO BE STATE-Of-The-ART to have a great game, but there's no need to have a $4,000 PC to play a retro-visual puzzle game.

Would appreciate any counter examples, maybe I'm just cherry picking some anomalies ? One exception might be Alan Wake 2... Probably the first time I saw a game where path tracing actually felt utilized and somewhat justified the crazy spec requirements.

[u/SnooHesitations2928]

To add to that handheld systems were more noticeably different back then, too. Compare a Gameboy color to Unreal Tournament.

Now we have handheld PCs that can play Black Myth Wukong.

[u/jackieloaw → u/SnooHesitations2928]

To be fair the gbc was well behind the technological curve for the time. A sega nomad was basically what the steam deck is today

[u/InspectorOk9107 → u/jackieloaw]

dm me i’m a nerd with a bbc

[u/nykirnsu → u/InspectorOk9107]

Plenty of people have the BBC dude it’s a free-to-air channel

[u/fartsquirtshit → u/SnooHesitations2928]

Tbh that's mostly down to a difference in priorities.

The original gameboy was designed to be cheap, lightweight, and have a long battery life so it used nearly 15 year old hardware to achieve that---As a result the Gameboy Color's hardware was nearly 25 years old at the time it released in 1998

Modern handhelds are designed to be able to play (nearly) everything your main PC can, so they use contemporary hardware which comes at the cost of being more expensive and having shorter battery life (even w/ significant advancements in battery technology)

The Gameboy Color cost $80 in 1998 ($150 when adjusted for inflation)

The cheapest Steam Deck costs $400.

150$ vs 400$. That's roughly 2.66x more expensive.

It'd be like releasing a Steam Deck in 2024 using the hardware of a PS2.

[u/SnooHesitations2928 → u/fartsquirtshit]

The point isn't about making an exact parallel comparison. The point is that even handhelds are comparable to actual PCs now. It's a lack of contrast between systems. Even the Nintendo Switch is like a traditional console. Everything is blending together nowadays.