Generally speaking, you need something about twice as powerful as the consoles to achieve similar results. For instance, to achieve slightly better than Xbox 360/PS3 level graphics, you would need at least a Core 2 with a Geforce 8800 card. That's why I'm holding off on upgrading. I know I'll need something at least twice as powerful as the PS4 and Xbox 720 to play next generation games on the PC. While I do need to upgrade, now is not a good time. I don't want to end up like people who built Pentium D/Athlon 64 X2 systems in 2005, or people who built Pentium 3/Athlon systems in 2000, only to find out that wasn't going to cut it when the new consoles arrived. And I actually do hope we see a big leap forward with these consoles like last time around. Gaming has gotten a bit stagnant because everything is designed with the limitations of 2005/2006, DX9 era console hardware in mind. I'd like to see what developers can do when DX11 GPUs and Ivy Bridge level CPUs are the lowest common denominator. I think we'll see some very impressive games.
They need a big jump in something other than graphics too...like dialogue, story, AI and animation (i.e., uncanny valley).
I would love to see a game with an A.I. partner that wasn't useless. Residen Evil 5 springs to mind. Having a smart and dynamic A.I. partner that can navigate the environment and make intelligent decisions would be a breath of fresh air. I'm also hoping for vastly upgraded graphics since the jump from PS2 to PS3 seemed far less impressive than the jump from PS1 to PS2.
I wouldn't count on that. The closer we get to realism, the stronger the hardware needed to make a noticable difference. It's the law of deminishing returns. Even with the huge 7-8 year gap this time around, the difference will likely be less than it was last gen. Much of the potential graphical improvements go towards graphics image quality improvement instead, such as increasing resolution, AA or just a smoother frame rate for a better gameplay experience.
L.A. Noire proved how backwards some of the current animation conventions are for game characters. Most games in the 360/PS3 era fall into the "enhanced mannequin" category for NPCs. The closer they get to realism graphically, the more those kinds of things stand out as hopelessly out of date.
LA Noire went into uncanny valley territory. The faces looked realistic, but the bodies were square and robotic in their movements. The result being that the NPCs looked like robots with human faces stapled on. I found it all very weird and creepy.
L.A. Noire is far from perfect, but it's literally the first game this gen that even attempted to have sophisticated facial animation. Most developers were content to use techniques that were barely changed from the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox era, despite all the new sophistication for models, lighting, and environments. That's why I think they really need to put more effort into that type of deeper realism for the next gen...and hire better writers for the stories and dialogue. As far as uncanny valley goes, the more realistic the NPC looks, the more uncanny it becomes with unrealistic movement...so L.A. Noire is actually far less uncanny than other video games of this gen. The faces weren't more realistic in modeling than other games, but they had more realistic movement.
I agree about what needs to change next gen. Graphics will change, no doubt, but animation, physics and general interaction with the environment and other players/NPC's needs a lot more work than graphics does. Physics that actually changes the gameplay could be amazing. Right now we have some archaic implementations that haven't really pushed far beyond 2004's Half-Life 2, and then some gimmick crap that doesnt effect gameplay from nvidia's proprietary Physx. If both next gen systems are HSA capable and powerful at OpenCL compute, I think we will potentially see some amazing physics that will really effect the gameplay itself. Rumour has it that Orbis has 4 of it's GPU's 18 compute units dedicated to compute functions. This would be good news if true. The other thing I'd like to see is a focus on more stable and smoother framerates. The chase for graphics has kept us at barely 30fps for way too long. I'd be happy with more devs targeting something like 40fps to be honest!
God this Guy is banging on, just show something. Just said the words PS4 at last. They confirmed they are showing PS4 stuff over the next couple of hours.
I am watching at GT. Showing live games in a second so hurry up. Just showing Dual Shock 4. It does have a touchpad and a camera that can track it.
Playing games as they download is a nice idea as is suspending a game and then powering it on and being straight ingame. Watching friends play, ha can watch Chi failing at everything.
Yeah, would help - get fed up waiting for save points. Watching others play live sounds cool - think onlive had that. Real life details online though? Fuck that. I'm faaaar too secretive.