I guess I'm just curious what unique games I would be playing in a world without "PS4 holding us back" and from the examples I'm seeing I'm looking at games that primarily use keyboard+mouse and VR games. Power certainly plays a part in the latter but not the former.
Yeah, I'm reading through this thread, and I'm not finding much inspiration for a new generation leap besides cleaner graphics.
We missed out on Dynamic Global Illumination (which was originally showcased as this generation's breakthrough tech when UE4 was giving us our first glimpse of the next generation, but Epic apparently underestimated GI's demands; in the meantime, we've gotten other swipes at GI as well as various work-around methods.) Otherwise I'm not hearing lots of murmurs about awesome next-gen tech that we just couldn't dream of with our current boxes. VR is laying bare the limitations of our consoles, but most people don't want VR anyway and few VR experiences can afford to push technological boundaries with sales so thin and pricing so limited. Next-gen animation and deformation seem to be limited by sheer conceptualization of solutions rather than horsepower.
Is there technology on the horizon we should know about that will make these platforms seem obsolete? I feel like I've gone a generation and a half expecting the "next big thing" to come along, but so far, we've mostly gotten really good games and fairly solid engines improving upon what's already come before.
Why do people always ignore the fact low - mid end PCs hold high end PC back just as much as consoles do?
Right, we're in an era of scalable engines and a wide range of hardware expectations. Our future is in the middle of the high-end and low-end of the market, and unless something comes along that requires next-generation processors (so far VR has been the most clear indicator that we need what most homes don't have, but even that has tremendous range,) that's where things will stay. I can't even think of any arcade/entertainment installation experiences designed for bleeding-edge PC technology (and I'm including some of those VR experiences that are popping up in LA/NY/SF from Starbreeze and others.)