Current-Gen Consoles and Expectations
The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S have been out for almost three years now. It’s unclear exactly how well the new Xbox consoles have sold, but we do know that PS5s recently crossed the 40 million mark—which seems pretty healthy.
But some game fans have been troubled by a still quite frequent occurrence: cross-gen games, or games that release both on PS5 and PS4. Every time one gets announced, you see people in the comments asking “Where are the true next gen games?”
One example of this sentiment I saw the other day was this “delightful” tweet, which had quite a lot of likes, in reaction to the news that the recent Star Wars Jedi game will be ported to PS4 and Xbox One:
(Hi I don't feel like reuploading the image so I'll just tell you what the tweet said: "We absolutely have to admit the current console generation is a failure." 8/5/25)
I have no idea by what metric a console that sells 40 million units could be considered a failure. I suppose this is just ridiculous hyperbole, which on Twitter is bound to get more attention—but hey, it’s fine if I engage with it indirectly, right?
So, what is causing these reactions? What exactly are people expecting?
Well for one thing, usually at this point in a console’s life, you’d expect to see a number of new games that are only on the new console. In reality, there have not been many. Demon’s Souls and The Last of Us Part 1 are PS5 exclusives, but they’re also remakes of PS3 games. Gran Turismo 7, Horizon Forbidden West, God of War Ragnorok, and a couple other Sony titles are on both PS4 and PS5. Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is now available on PC. Every new first-party Xbox game is available on PC. So, do you really need a new-gen console?
It’s clear circumstances are a bit different for these consoles compared to the previous gen, which began almost a decade ago. How did we get here? And why is it… not actually that surprising? Here are some points to consider.
1. Modern consoles are not much different from PCs
Years ago, console hardware was usually quite different from your typical PC. The majority of PCs have been using the x86 architecture for decades. But if you look at the PS2, it uses a unique system-on-a-chip designed in-house at Sony. The PS3 and Xbox 360 both used PowerPC-based CPUs, except PS3’s used a brand new microarchitecture called Cell that was designed for better multitasking—but was actually kind of a massive headache for devs to learn to use.
After PS3 launched, Sony realized they should probably change their approach, and so they started developing PS4 around what would be easiest for developers to work with. Long story short, PS4 uses the familiar x86 architecture—and so does Xbox One (the original Xbox does too, actually, but not Xbox 360. Weird).
You know why PS4 wasn’t backwards compatible? Because making the code written for PS3’s unique CPU work on PS4’s takes some extra work, and Sony couldn’t be bothered.
You know why PS5 is backwards compatible? Because PS5, like PS4, uses x86. It’s like when you get new PC hardware. Everything works the same way; it’s just better now.
I point out the similarity of consoles and PCs as a reminder that we knew exactly what we were getting with this hardware. There is no hidden magic trick. You can compare PS5’s specs directly against PC specs. And what you will find in doing so is: the PS5 is a pretty good value. Especially with how expensive GPUs have been the past few years.
Really, there’s a lot to appreciate about consoles. The ease of use, the price, the included controller.
But I think there’s an inordinate level of hype that some fans put into new consoles, as if they will bring capabilities we’ve never seen before.
Of course, at the end of the day, it’s the games that really blow our minds. And that’s where generations do make a difference. See, even though PC hardware outclasses consoles quickly, you rarely ever see hype for a new game that can only run on a high-end PC anymore. Most AAA developers are prioritizing consoles, even when they’re aging, because there’s a large audience there. Once new consoles come out, however, developers can actually start to push the boundaries more. So generations certainly do matter. However….
2. Huge generational leaps are a thing of the past
The advancement of computer technology throughout the 20th century was incredible. And in the 90s we went from the Super Nintendo to the PlayStation and Nintendo 64. 3D graphics. What a crazy thing that must have been. I mean, I wasn’t really around for it, myself.
What I do remember is the GameCube/PS2/Xbox/Dreamcast generation, and man, as a kid, I did not adequately appreciate how good those graphics were. I sometimes wish I could go back. I love the way these games look. And compared to the previous gen, it was a massive leap in how realistic everything looked.
Then with the Xbox 360/PS3 generation, one of the big talking points was HD resolutions. However, what impressed me more about these games was all the fancy lighting and shaders and whatever. That stuff added so much more realism and beauty. And it simply wasn’t possible to do on the Wii, which was only a little more powerful than the GameCube.
I remember seeing NBA 2K Xbox 360 graphics when I was like 14 and thinking “this looks just like real life!” Today I look back and wonder what was wrong with me—but seriously, those graphics were highly impressive at first glance.
Anyway, that generation lasted a while. And then you get the Xbox One and Playstation 4. Definitely a noticeable improvement.
But it’s worth asking: would a non-gamer actually be able to tell the difference between one generation and the previous one? With each subsequent generation, my confidence that they would decreases.
It’s diminishing returns, here. We’re getting more and more detail, but the “wow” factor simply doesn’t increase as much.
The PS4 and Xbox One generation had a weird little thing where both consoles got mid-gen upgrades to offer 4K support. But you have to wonder if going from 1080p to 2160p is all that important to most people.
With the new gen, what they’re giving us is 4K… but for real this time. (Ok so the PS4 Pro had a little trick to uspcale games to 4K, but it wasn’t natively rendering 4K). So that’s that.
Of course, with a lot of PS5 games (and Xbox too I assume), you get the option to have a higher framerate if you play at a lower resolution, and honestly that might be the way to go in most cases. Can most people actually tell the difference with 4K anyway?
The current gen also provides ray-tracing support, which you can see in action in games like Spider-Man with all those fancy reflections. Ray-tracing can look impressive and add more beauty, but it also just doesn’t seem like that much of a game-changer, and in some games, you don’t even really notice it.
Actually, what might be the most important upgrade is the solid-state drives. Cause uh, stuff loads super fast now. Fun fact about that: in the previous gen, many games had multiple copies of certain data in order to speed up access. The use of solid-state drives is one of the features developers wanted most for the new consoles—but I guess it doesn’t exactly feel brand new, does it?
Man, in the PS2 days, it was like no matter how good or bad of a developer you were, your game was probably gonna look better than the average PS1 game simply because the console was much more powerful. We are not in those days anymore.
So, if you bought a PS5 with the expectation that your mind would be blown the same it was by a game console twenty years ago… sadly, you might remain disappointed.
Well, I’m sure some insane-looking games are gonna come out eventually, but….
3. AAA game development takes too long now
Red Dead Redemption 2: visually, it offers some of the most stunningly realistic depictions of American wilderness I have ever seen. You know how many people worked on that game? You know how long it took?
To really blow people’s minds these days with video game graphics, it takes not only incredible art direction but a ton of people, time, and money (and by the way, not everything can be sped up by simply adding more people).
Oh and I forgot to mention the part where you actually make the game fun to play.
I think this is truly where most of the trouble is here, to be honest. It’s like the industry demands single-player AAA games to look better than anything ever released before and tell a moving cinematic story, all while offering at least forty hours of gameplay. And some studios can do all that, but it’s gonna take at least five years to make.
When you also factor in COVID’s disruption of studios’ workflows, it’s no wonder the generation started out slowly.
We’ll have to see how the next few years shake out, but the reality is that right now, games we would consider AAA take a long time to make.
Hopefully, this means that within the next couple years, some really impressive games will come out. Due to the previous point about diminishing returns, I’m not sure if they’ll live up to people’s wildest fantasies, but the power of current gen should certainly allow for some more complex stuff than we got before. What that means exactly, I personally don’t know.
But honestly, I think I’d prefer if most studios didn’t try to be cutting-edge. Really, shouldn’t more studios try to be like SEGA’s RGG Studio? You know, focus on entertaining writing and mini-games while keeping the core gameplay pretty simple and re-using technology and assets as much as possible? The pace at which they’re able to release games using that strategy is perfect. Well, alright, maybe not everyone should try to be them, but a few should!
I think another company that has managed to achieve an impressive pace for quality game releases is Capcom. They don’t make “80-hours-to-beat” games, they just make solid games you know you’re gonna have a fun time with. Their recent Resident Evil games have all been super replayable and brilliantly fun. I dunno how they do it—but maybe other studios could take note.
4. Ignoring a hundred million PS4s isn’t very smart
PS4 was a runaway success. With 117 million units sold, it beat PS1, Wii, PS3, Xbox 360, and many more. And I mean, 58 million Xbox Ones is no small number either.
So when it comes to last-gen games, if EA can put a popular game on a system with an install base as massive as the PS4’s is, of course they’re gonna do it. They’d be stupid not to. It’s not their job to sell PS5s.
Now, Sony’s job is to sell PS5s, and it seems like they are done with publishing their own PS4 games for the foreseeable future—though never say never. But now that PS5s are actually consistently in stock (there was a chip shortage, remember), they probably want to give people more reasons to make the upgrade.
But uh, yeah. Combined with the previous points on how these consoles are basically PCs, it’s kind of obvious that if you can make more money by putting a slightly worse version of a game on a console that a lot of people still use, you might want to do that.
The game will look worse, it’ll have longer load times, but in most cases, it will probably be a fine experience.
5. PC ports probably don’t hurt console sales, because PC and console gamers are (mostly) two different groups
Earlier I said that, under the hood, PCs and consoles are not all that different. However, in terms of user experience—they are pretty different.
Consoles have always boasted a plug-and-play experience, and that’s largely still true today. Granted…you have to install the game first. And that takes a while. And consoles have had software updates ever since they started connecting to the Internet. And there’s a bunch of online account stuff to deal with. And you gotta choose “Performance” or “Fidelity” mode in these new games. But still! It’s pretty easy! More complicated than it was in the 90s, but still easy.
Now, I wouldn’t call PC gaming “difficult.” But I have been into computers for a long time, so it’s a little hard for me to see it from the perspective of someone who hasn’t.
In any case, there are generally more places for things to go wrong if you’re trying to get into PC gaming.
Starting with choosing a PC. You can buy a prebuilt one—but even then, if you’re a novice, you gotta learn what all the specs mean, because how else will you know if it can run the games you want to play (besides just asking someone else)?
Now, I honestly have not bought a pre-built Windows PC for myself in ten years. I did, however, build a PC nine years ago. I’ve replaced some of the parts since then, and you know, it still works. But I’m actually looking to build another one soon, on a limited budget. Which might seem kind of dumb since I don’t really need it… but it’s a fun thing to do.
Am I getting too off-topic here? Yeah, I am.
The point is that the majority of people in this world have no interest in doing all that research. They want to play the cool game they heard about. Can the console play the game? Yes? Then I want the console.
Many PC gamers are enthusiasts who are willing to spend more money to customize their experience and uh… you know, get more frames, and stuff.
How much overlap do you think there really is between console and PC players who have a high-end rig?
In my opinion, the reason Sony has started releasing more of their games on PC is that there is very little overlap at all. Sony sells a bunch of copies of a game on PlayStation, and then a couple years later they make more money selling it to people who were probably never gonna buy a PlayStation anyway.
So, when people say “PS5 has no exclusives because the games are also on PC,” I think it’s a silly argument. How many people actually have a PC with a similar level of power to a PS5? And how many of those people were ever thinking of buying a PS5 anyway? Assuming the answer to that second question is “very few,” that’s why it’s not a bad thing for anyone if a game is “only on PS5 and PC” instead of “only on PS5.”
But what about my bragging rights? What about my console war trophy? I need people to know that I can play a game on this thing I bought and they can’t, because they didn’t buy it! It’s very important!
6. Cross-generation games aren’t new (but there are more this time)
One of the most-anticipated games early in the Xbox One’s life was Titanfall. But did you know Titanfall also made its way to Xbox 360? So did Rise of the Tomb Raider and Metal Gear Solid V. And from what I’ve seen, they were playable. Certainly not the ideal way to play them, but hey, if you couldn’t get a new console just yet but wanted to try out some cool new games, there you go.
Remember how they made Wii versions of Call of Duty? (The Wii was in the 360 generation, time-wise, but as I mentioned earlier, the hardware was far behind it). The Wii and Call of Duty were both insanely popular in their own ways, so it only made sense for Activision to try to release CoD on Wii. Were these versions as good as the normal ones? No. But fundamentally, it was CoD. Was the Xbox 360 generation a “failure” because those versions exist? No?
Face it: in few cases is the “essence” of a game dependent on the hardware it was released on.
They ported The Witcher 3 to Switch. That game always looked impressive, and you wouldn’t think it could have run on the Xbox 360 gen. I haven’t played it, but I understand the Switch version looks pretty crusty. But I mean, it’s still playable, right? It’s still the same game, at the end of the day… I think?
I’m just saying, versions that are “the same game, but uglier” aren’t new. And the opportunity to play “the same game, but prettier/smoother” actually is a reason to upgrade to a new console, for many people.
7. Faster storage isn’t always a literal game-changer
I touched on the SSDs a bit already. Obviously, fast SSDs make load times quick. That’s something that makes your life better—I mean, the first time I played the PS5 version of Resident Evil 2, it was so shocking being able to just jump back into the game without waiting. But it doesn’t necessarily change the actual gameplay.
But sometimes it does. For example, in Marvel’s Spider-Man, there’s a limit to how fast you can swing, because they don’t want you to swing faster than the console can load the game world. I’m hoping that in the PS5-exclusive sequel, they’ll let us go suuuuper quick thanks to the vastly improved load times.
But yeah, there are only so many cases where an SSD enables something you couldn’t do at all on a HDD (without an awkward interruption to allow the game to load more, at least).
For that reason, it was easy to buy into the marketing for Ratchet and Clank’s dimensional rift feature, where the player is whisked from one world to another in an instant. They said it was only possible because of the SSD. Then in 2023 they made a PC port and didn’t rule out HDDs. Hmmm.
Well, it turns out the experience is pretty bad with an HDD, from what I’ve heard, so they weren’t totally lying.
8. The importance of console generations has changed
It’s safe to say the market has changed in the last ten years.
The PC gaming market has massively grown, gaining greater presence all around the world—and seemingly more console games than ever get PC releases.
Some of the biggest games in the world today are free-to-play multiplayer shooters that run on all sorts of devices.
The Nintendo Switch launched in 2017 and changed players’ expectations for handheld games. No longer are you getting a game based on a home console game; you just get the full home console game, on the go.
The Switch also blurred the lines of console generations. Nintendo had to abandon the Wii U after just four years, which led to the Switch launching only three years after the PS4 and Xbox One. This was quite unusual. Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo had always launched their consoles within about a year (at most) of each other’s ever since Microsoft joined the console market, which made defining generations simple.
Nevertheless, the Switch was on the shelves next to the PS4 and Xbox One. It didn’t have the horsepower they did. But what it did have was an unprecedented “hybrid” console design, and some real good Nintendo games.
What most people probably didn’t expect back when it launched is that the Switch would still be going today, six years after its launch and almost three years into the new generation’s life. Not only that, it also just had one of the biggest games of the year in Tears of the Kingdom.
Maybe the concept of a console generation just isn’t what it used to be?
Gaming is bigger than ever, and there are games for all sorts of different tastes. Indie developers from around the world have been able to release creative and innovative games—many of which can also run on basic PCs.
Does the existence of shiny new boxes actually shift the type of games that are being made today? It seems that it’s only when a good, fresh gameplay idea catches on that the gaming landscape truly changes. And I’m sure developers will have some of those ideas during this generation.
Now, will the implementation of those ideas be possible only through the improved capabilities of the new consoles’ CPUs, GPUs, and/or SSDs? Well, probably a few will—but once again, I think those games will take a long time to make, unfortunately.
Really makes me wonder... Is there actually a way to make a fun game with insane-looking graphics that doesn’t take five years and doesn’t require long periods of employee crunch?
…………
It’s like a PS4 Pro PRO
If you’re someone who’s wondering where the “next gen” games are, is my overall message to you here really that you should lower your expectations a bit? …Yeah, pretty much.
Well, that’s not a very fun message.
I just think that given current circumstances, you can’t really blame anyone in particular for the lack of insane “next gen” games right now. But I don’t know, maybe it would’ve felt better if they had just delayed the new consoles a couple years?
Now, personally, I love my PS5. It’s basically like a PS4 except better in pretty much every way. It’s super quiet. The menus and overall user experience are smooth and quick. It’s just a joy to play on. So to me, it’s absolutely a worthwhile upgrade and it would be a little painful to go back. But if you’re deciding to get one, you gotta know what it is and what it isn’t.
(Really, everything that I’m saying was better summarized years ago by videogamedunkey. Wouldn’t really be writing this if people had just listened to that video).
Anyway, it would be fun to go back in time twenty or thirty years ago and experience the evolution of video games all over again. Because right now, things just don’t seem as fun, if you’re someone who wants to geek out over tech. Improvements aren’t as noticeable. And games are expected to look so realistic and give you so many hours that they take forever to make.
But honestly, if you can look past your expectations for what the new gen should be, it’s actually an amazing time to be a fan of video games. Zelda. Resident Evil 4. The Star Wars game that brought up this whole conversation (I haven’t even played it). Diablo 4. Street Fighter 6. Hi-Fi Rush. Final Fantasy XVI. Baldur’s Gate 3. Pikmin 4. This year is insane, and that’s not even including future releases! Plus, if you’re like me, there’s an endless back catalogue of games you haven’t gotten around to yet.
After all, you know what’s better than pushing a GPU to its limits? Playing a fun video game.