With the current generation of consoles seemingly in its final years, a reader argues that there’s no need to create a new one.
I’ve been a gamer for over three decades now and normally there’s nothing more exciting than a new generation of consoles. It’s the point where everything changes, new games are invented, and graphics and other features take a great leap forward. So why is it that a new generation seems like such a bad idea right now?
I have not met a single person that wants a PlayStation 6 or a next gen Xbox, or thinks that it will be anything other than an expensive disaster. They all give basically the same reasons too, ones you would’ve thought would be super obvious to publishers, but still they push on.
We’re probably only six months or so away from the first real tease for the new consoles and yet to me it feels like six years would make more sense. Here’s why:
- The current gen never actually happened. It might be five years old now, but I think everyone agrees that the current gen feels like it’s barely started. There’s been next to no games that feel like they couldn’t have existed last gen and almost all the exclusives on PlayStation and Xbox are cross-gen. There is absolutely no appetite for a new generation from anyone I’ve ever spoken to and no sense that the current hardware has been pushed anywhere close to its limits.
- The graphics are not going to get any better. Another one I feel everyone agrees on but it’s super obvious that the improvement between the PlayStation 5 and 6 is going to be miniscule. Maybe Digital Foundry, or whoever, will be able to tell the difference, but no normal person will. There’s just nothing more for a console (or gaming PC) to do at this point, except for tiny improvements that will cost a fortune…
- The next gen is going to be hyper expensive. The simplest reason no one wants a new generation is that they don’t want to pay for it. Not only is it clearly going to increase in price, because that’s just what happens, but on top of that you’ve got the tariffs and RAM shortages thanks to AI. All of that is going to inflate the cost for something nobody wanted in the first place.
- Current gen problems are only going to get worse next gen. Another commonly accepted fact is that games are too expensive to make and take too long to develop, because graphics and everything else are more complex today. If you increase that complexity even more, you’re going to end up with even less big budget games and most developers are only going to be putting out one game every six or seven years.
- It’s going to be AI slop as far as the eye can see. We still don’t know why Xbox called its next gen console the ‘largest technical leap ever’ but let’s face it, it’s not hard to guess. It’s going to be disgusting AI slop, where Microsoft will lay off talented people in favour of having your games made by a trumped-up autocorrect. I don’t want any part of it, and I don’t even want to hear them talk about it with their ridiculous lies and solutions in search of a problem.
- You didn’t even need this generation. I do not see a single good argument for moving on from the PlayStation 4, let alone the PlayStation 5. Back in the last gen games looked great, they could be made in a reasonable amount of time, and there was a decent amount of variety and at least a few new IPs every now and again. All the problems of the games industry at the moment are because we started a new generation that offered nothing new and just made existing problems worse.
That’s exactly what’s going to happen next gen too, except this time things will be so bad the whole badly managed mess is going to implode in on itself. I like video games, I’d rather that didn’t happen.
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By reader Tusker
The reader’s features do not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.
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