It means people get to enjoy more indie games with good designs, instead of having FOMO for cool graphics without substance.
Not all games need to be that, but Ghost of Tsushima in GBA Pokemon style is not the same game at all. And is it badly designed ? I also don't think so. Same for many VR games which make immersion meaningful in itself.
We can all come up with a litany of bad games, AAA or indie, but as long as there's a set of games fully pushing the envelope and bringing new things to the table, better hardware will be worth it IMHO.
The whole point is to convey details of an area you never lived in, of an actual place you never visited.
I'd make the same argument for Half-Life Alyx or BioHazard, the visceral reaction you get from a highly detailed and textured world works at a different level than just "knowing" what you have in front of your eyes.
Your brain is not filling the gaps, it is taking in the art of the creator.
RE 7 Biohazard was made for the PS4! And its VR version and Half-Life Alyx probably do require higher graphical fidelity, as VR games are not exactly the same thing as regular video games.
That might be the fundamental divide, for that category of games I'm more on the VR camp and will settle for 2D only for convenience or availability.
I see it with different expectations than games like Persona or Zelda (or GTA?) which could compete solely on the mechanics and a lot more, and I get the feeling you're comparing it more to these genres?
Biohazard on PS4 was very meh to me, at that level I feel it could get down to Switch graphics to prioritize better game mechanics and more freedom of play. I never loved the clunkiness, as an action games it's pretty frustrating, and the VR game is even worse in gameplay quality. The immersiveness in VR is the only redeeming quality IMHO.
VR, sure, you want a lot of frames on 2 screens, that requires beef so the visual fidelity on same GPU will be worse than on screen, but other than that if anything graphical part of games have flatlined for me.
Also, putting the money literally anywhere else gonna have better results game quality wise. I want better stories and more complex/interesting systems, not few more animated hairs
To note, cost and hardware availability is I think one half of the critical reasons people don't get into VR (other half being the bulkiness and puke ?). In a roundabout way, GPU melting games helped get better hardware at mainstream prices. Until crypto and AI happened. And now the Steam Frame faced with the RAM price situation.
> 5 years
I don't play it, but Infinite Nikki comes to mind, and the visuals are the core experience. I wonder how much a game like Arcknight Enfield taxes the player hardware, given they're pushing the 3D modelling side.
I agree with you on the plateauing part, in that the gaming industry seems to have mostly shoved HDPI in the corner. It costs so much more to produce a game at that visual quality in the first place, and PC makers and benchmarks focus on FHD performance, so ROI is that lower on the marketing side.
It kinda makes me sad, like being told "8-bit art is enough for images, we should focus on composition, how many Vermeer or DaVinci like painters do we expect anyway ?"
Me neither but recommended requirements on Steam are like.. RTX 2060, so 6 years old mid grade video card. We really don't need more power than we already have to make beautiful games.
> It kinda makes me sad, like being told "8-bit art is enough for images, we should focus on composition, how many Vermeer or DaVinci like painters do we expect anyway ?"
Except it isn't ? At this point more power is only really needed if you want to go hardcore into photorealism, and to actually use all that power you need massive budget just to produce all the assets at required quality.
It's like saying "if only painters had even smaller brushes, we could get photographical quality paintings." Does it really make art that much better ?
Steam's recommended specs are on the conservative side, usually adapted to play with the average settings.
Pushing the game setting to ultra at 4K gives it a mere 100fps on a RTX 4090 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rju22K1lfQY
That's a lot of dedication, but yes, some people will really enjoy the game in its full splendor. Telling them what they need or don't need, or what they should enjoy misses the point of games IMHO (avid players have probably already spent more than a top end gaming PC on the dresses)
> Does it really make art that much better ?
Putting a technical limit on what makes or doesn't make art better sounds fundamentally off to me.
I kinda understand your point on diminishing returns, except we haven't even reached a good frame rate at HDPI for 24~32"ish screens. And we'll always move to the next level.
"XXX should be enough for everyone" kind of assertions have never panned out well IMHO.
Let's be real, the twitch FPS CoD players aren't going to give that up and play a boring life simulator.
This has the potential to harm a lot of businesses from hardware to software companies, and change the lives of millions of people.
Theres a LOT of games that compete with AAA-massive-budget games on aggregate like Dwarf Fortress, CS, League, Fortnite, people are still playing arma 2, dayz, rust, etc Rainbow Six: Siege still has adherents and even cash-payout tournaments. EvE: Online, Ultima Online, Runescape, still goin'
These games have like no advertising and are still moneymakers. Eve and UO are like 20 and 30 years old. Heck, Classic WoW!
I feel like league of legends has, wrt the genshin $s, I honestly haven’t checked!
Many gacha titles now offer amazing pc graphics on nvidia cards compared to mobile.
It will probably be a bigger blow to people who want to run LLMs at home.
It gonna be ok.
Can you elaborate a little? What, exactly, is your concern here? That you won't have nvidia as a choice? That AMD will be the only game in town? That gpu market will move from duopoly ( for gaming specifically ) to monopoly? I have little to go on, but I don't really want to put words in your mouth based on minimal post.
Not a locked ecosystem console or a streaming service with lag!
I think if nvidia leaves the market for AI, why wouldn’t AMD and intel, with the memory cartel. So DIY market is gone. That kills lots of companies and creators that rely on the gaming market.
It’s a doom spiral for a lot of the industry. If gaming is just PlayStation and switch and iGPUs there is a lot less innovation in pushing graphics.
It will kill the hobby.
Separately, do you think they won't try to ingratiate themselves to gamers again once AI market changes?
Do you not think they are part of the cartel anyway ( and the DIY market exists despite that )?
<< So DIY market is gone.
How? One use case is gone. Granted, not a small one and one with an odd type of.. fervor, but relatively small nonetheless. At best, DIY market shifts to local inference machines and whatnot. Unless you specifically refer to gaming market..
<< That kills lots of companies and creators that rely on the gaming market.
Markets change all the time. EA is king of the mountain. EA is filing for bankruptcy. Circle of life.
Edit: ALso, upon some additional consideration and in the spirit of christmas, fuck the streamers ( aka creators ). With very, very limited exceptions, they actively drive what is mostly wrong with gaming these days. Fuck em. And that is before we get to the general retardation they contribute to.
<< It’s a doom spiral for a lot of the industry.
How? For AAA? Good. Fuck em. We have been here before and were all better for it.
<< If gaming is just PlayStation and switch and iGPUs there is a lot less innovation in pushing graphics.
Am I reading it right? AMD and Intel is just for consoles?
<< It will kill the hobby.
It is an assertion without any evidence OR a logical cause and effect.
So far, I am not buying it.
Firmly in old-guy “this content should not exist” camp
PC was largely ignored for gaming, until finally EGA/VGA card, alongside AdLib/Soundblaster, became widespread in enough households to warrant development costs.
That cartel is imply flying high right now, convinced they got the market by the balls.
They don't. Just give it most of 2026 and you'll see.
If my hobby is ruined and I can’t have fun, I’m going to be an asshole and make everyone else unhappy.
CoD is also huge on Playstation.
Totally niche appeal, yeah right.
Oh, we can only hope!
>This has the potential to harm a lot of businesses from hardware to software companies, and change the lives of millions of people.
Including millions of gamers, but for the better.
Why can’t you let people enjoy their hobby?
But what's most insane is trying to draw any parallels between gaming and these other things - something that was literally engineered to ruin human lives, biologically (hard drugs) or psychologically (gambling). The harm and evil caused by these two industries is incomprehensible (especially the legal parts of them, like alcohol and casino gambling/sports betting/online gambling), and trying to fit gaming in among them both downplays the amount of suffering inflicted by gambling and hard drugs, as well as villainizes normal people - like the hundreds of millions of people who play games in a sane, non-problematic way or indie game devs who make games because they want to express themselves artistically.
Anyways, I gotta log off HN for a while. I can feel my gaming withdrawal kicking in. I've bankrupted myself four times by only spending my money on gaming, and I've been in and out of rehab centres and ERs as I've been slowly destroying my body with gaming in a spiral of deadly addiction. I think I'll have to panhandle and threaten strangers on the street to buy some Steam cards.
Yes.
Or to put it more succinctly, would you want your obituary to lead with your call of duty prowess?
Excellent satire.
Thank you for your consideration.