Older Gen consoles need to lose support for gaming to move forward meaningfully.

Submitted by Big-Golf4266 t3_yxeq36 in consoles

I feel like we're stagnating in gaming, because for some reason we seem hell bent on supporting all the way back to the ps4 and xbox one, these consoles have been supported for significantly longer than their predecessors and i can't for the life of me figure out why.

I feel like games are relentlessly held back due to the limitations of old gen platforms, as whilst graphics can be horrendously bastardized in order to allow these consoles to run them, i think we're still seeing limitations in areas other than graphics such as the overall scope and mechanics of the game.

ill use an example, the game no man's sky is a game that is just making some incredible changes, but i can't help but wonder if some of the major issues that still plague the game, i.e blander terrain generation than one would like as well as horrendously shallow oceans are simply an artifact of this game still maintaining support for the original xbox one and ps4, as whilst you can lower the graphics i cant imagine those consoles would be capable of handling such huge amounts of liquid physics.

Maybe im completely wrong but i was so excited when the next gen dropped, for reference im primarily a PC player and whilst i dont typically care much for console gaming as its just simply not my preference i am always excited at next gen consoles as its usually accompanied by a huge leap forward in gaming as typically the weakest supported console is used as a baseline for development. But i havent seen even a hint of this occuring with the latest console drop and i cant help but assume its because of the huge amount of support the original consoles have.

don't get me wrong, it SUCKS that in this scenario there are people who lose out on updates and games simply because they can't afford to upgrade, but ultimately i think it would hurt far less people than it would help. my excitement for the latest gen of consoles has completely died, i was so impressed by the price point of the new consoles due to their pretty impressive power but now im just left underwhelmed as we still see, years later, games catering to the old gen consoles, that i honestly don't even understand why people would want to play most of these games on anyway. My uncle had an xbox one S, which is marginally more powerful than the original xbox, and even that machine made new games look almost unplayable due to how the older consoles seem to maintain visuals for a few feet and then absolutely kill the visuals making every game feel like you're rediculously near-sighted.

do you think im wrong? do you think we're gonna see a shift of old gen consoles losing support? or are we in for a few more years of devs doing everything they can to keep games running on this hardware that is over a decade old (due to how old the tech was even at launch) though i will say its a testament to how well games can be optimised when you have such a slim range of hardware options, honestly the fact they can get these games running on these consoles is truly astonishing.

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barbanonfacitvirum t1_iwogt9l wrote

Personally, I disagree. I wholeheartedly believe that the shortening of life cycles in order to render previous generations obsolete sooner and sell more consoles and more software over and over again across different iterations of the same console is a terrible practice and entirely anti-consumer. The PS4 is certainly getting a bit old, but in the grand scheme of things it could still go for at least several more years without its support window being unusual, let alone excessive.

I looked a few things up just to help contextualize this conversation:

NES was supported for 12 years;

Sega Master System was supported for 9 years, or even still currently depending on which region you look at;

TurboGrafx16 was supported for 7 years;

SNES was supported for 13 years;

Sega Genesis was supported for 11 years;

NeoGeo was supported for 14 years;

N64 was supported for 6 years;

GameCube was supported for 6 years;

PlayStation was supported for 12 years;

XBox was supported for 5 years;

PlayStation 2 was supported for 13 years;

XBox360 was supported for 11 years;

Wii was supported for 7 years;

PlayStation 3 was supported for 11 years;

Wii U was supported for 5 years;

Switch is currently at 5 years;

Xbox One is currently at 9 years;

PlayStation 4 is currently at 9 years.

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n1keym1key t1_iwq5tt9 wrote

Those older consoles were mainly only supported after a new gen was released by a few third party companies.

I agree with the OP, when a new console is launched after a year or so its time for the older one to be left behind. If third party devs want to continue supporting it then that fair enough but the console manufacturer should move on to support the new one only.

The problem we have currently is that new games are still being heavily pushed by both Sony and MS on the OLDER machines. Once they allow the older machines to become legacy devices and stop making devs release the game on both gens then we will finally see some true next gen games.

It never happened back in the day because the next gen was always a major jump in tech, this time around the next gen is really just a beefed up last gen.

We had new games being released on PS2 and the same game being released on PS1, the consoles were so wildly different inside that the 2 versions would have been developed using two completely different devs/publishers and we would get a version of the game that was suited to each console and used it to its ability.

The PS4 and Xbone need to die (a horrible death) before we see the true potential of the next gen machines.

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barbanonfacitvirum t1_iwqbvi4 wrote

My point was more that they're releasing consoles too frequently now.

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n1keym1key t1_iwqn8er wrote

No, tech moves faster now than it did in the old days, that's the reason for shorter lifespans, that and the fact that nowadays everyone wants the next big thing as soon as they have got their hands on the current big thing.

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barbanonfacitvirum t1_iwqnx43 wrote

You're kind of making my point for me. It isn't that I don't understand what is happening, it's that I think it is a bad thing. Shorter lifespans for equipment that costs roughly the same (with inflation taken into account) means that if something lasts half as long and costs the same amount, over a comparable period of time it costs the consumer twice as much money. I don't see how this sort of exploitation could be viewed as defensible, but if you're fine with it that's cool.

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n1keym1key t1_iwrrkrp wrote

Its the same with all tech though. Take TV's for instance. Back in the 90's I could go buy a Sony TV and know it was going to last for years and years barring any accidents and it wouldn't cost me £3k. TV's today just are not designed to last that long and they cost more too.

Many of those 90's/Early 00's CRT tv's are still going strong today and used by many in the retro gaming community. We won't be saying that about the flatscreens of today in 20+ years time.

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Big-Golf4266 OP t1_iwojvm3 wrote

this heavily dpeends on what you're considering "supported" as im mainly arguing for a transition of games no longer being released or heavily updated for the current console, which definitely hasnt been the case for 13 years on the xbox 360, the xbox 360's last release was in 2015, and im not suggesting we shut down all of the servers for old gen consoles.

And honestly i think a decade is more than enough support when it comes to releasing new games. when you think back to 2013, the release of the original xbox one and ps4 and think about what games looked like then vs now and then look at the hardware inside those consoles, retiring them seems perfectly fair, releasing content updates for the games currently on the console and supporting servers for another 3-4 year seems perfectly reasonable, i just dont think we should be releasing 90 percent of games that come out to these platforms still.

ofcourse this is just my opinion but i think that gaming is stagnating a little, though this is primarily visible in the triple A scene, i think the major reason we're seeing such messes from the triple A scene and really ONLY the triple A scene is because of the fact that they're trying to optimise their games for so many platforms, indie titles that are largely locked out of the console market are fairing much better and have become my primary source of gaming nowadays because the quality is honestly at such a standard that i dont think i'd consider buying any triple A games and havent for years because they simply release complete buggy messes that also fail to have anything truly desirable and new about them.

and to be fair, anti consumerism is literally the motto of the console world, these are the platforms that throw money at developers to lock their games down to their platform, charge you exorbitant prices to talk to your friends and unlock a lot of functionality out of your games and charge developers money to update their games leading to a practice of games becoming absolutely content barren on consoles on titles like payday and such, in many ways tightening the hardware gap lightens the load on developers and increases the ceiling potential in a way that i think benefits everyone whilst still allowing those who dont wish to upgrade to enjoy the games they own for several years to come simply being realistic and saying "yeah you know what this console simply can't run these games anymore" because honestly even rdr2 a game that came out 4 years ago, looks pretty much unplayable on an original xbox one... a pixelated grainy mess...

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Little-Livesey t1_iwpcc3j wrote

I'm not sure how "available" next gen consoles are atm. I managed to get a ps5 3 months after release and that was entirely through luck. Maybe availability isn't helping with dropping pre-gen consoles.

AAA games are stagnant because they don't set trends anymore they merely repeat what worked in the past with a shinier coat/ recycle ideas from indie games that have done well. they're not unique and graphics can only do so much to help a game.

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CCGamesSteve t1_iwqjorm wrote

"All the way back". They are literally just one generation previous.

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Big-Golf4266 OP t1_iwty1gd wrote

True but you're forgetting the upgrades within that generation, I'm not arguing the entire generation needs to go, just the originals. The xbox one and ps4, the pro s and x are all still pretty solid, the original xbox and ps4 are clawing tooth and nail to try and keep up with current games but it's just not happening

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BarryBeanflicker t1_iwpeeze wrote

People can't afford the new consoles but they can afford a new game. They're profit maxxing because of relative wage decline and two recessions. It's basically just economics.

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crashdude_ t1_iwrd38h wrote

I personally think the issue is that for some reason gamers think the ps5 and series X being able to push high fidelity and high resolution somehow makes games better, We need games to have better gameplay and better story's and such, using the series x to play a game at 4k120 doesn't really matter when the game is riddled with microtransactions, boring story, boring generic gameplay, cliche battle pass and same old level up system.

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Big-Golf4266 OP t1_iwtxwbr wrote

see THIS is where a lot of people go wrong, honestly graphical potential is the least of my worries, you can make any game run on any machine if the only powerh ungry thing about it is its graphics, because you can infinitely reduce those to a point of it running on literally anything.

my issue is that i find the old xbox and playstations have such weak processing power that more complex AI, larger scale worlds with more things going on as well as greater physics and thus water amounts are drastically hampered due to the older consoles heavy processing limitations, at this point graphics are at a level that i really couldnt care less if they never improve an inch more, hell i felt that back in 2016 era of gaming and i stand by it. I want more ambitious projects and i think once old gen consoles start losing support we will see that start to flourish more and more, ofocurse triple A devs will always be Triple A devs and release hot garbage every year, but i dont think ive bought a single triple A game in the last decade so for me thats not really a problem.

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SeriouslyFishyOk t1_iwuvwd7 wrote

Exactly. When developers keep making games for older hardware if not only holds back current gen consoles, but also PC users. They just keep holding newer hardware back which is very frustrating.

I think 5 years should be the minimum for console support.

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fanboyhunter t1_iwoyegn wrote

just buy a PC

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Big-Golf4266 OP t1_iwozjvp wrote

clearly didn't read what i put properly, my entire perspective was as a pc user.

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