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[Mr Hyde]

I never bought in to the mid gen refreshes. I stayed with base PS4 entire gen with a tv that barely did 1080p. When I upgraded to a PS5 with a 4K screen I was blown away when I got to play Demon's Souls remake for the first time. Jaw to the floor the entire time. It felt like a true generational leap for me.

 

[Unknown?]

Nah if anything it's the targeting of 60fps. Last gen lots of games were only 30fps. If more modern games did 30fps only it would show.

 

[BlackTron]

to be fair 60fps games aren't new.... lol

Pretty much. PS4 Pro added enough power for the games to truly go insane.

The visual jump on PS5 isn't that much larger when considering PS4 Pro to PS5, you're in it for everything else. But the Dualsense features and the fast loading IMO were supposed to be a compliment to 4k, 60fps and the improved general visuals, not the main thing. thus, people jumping from Pro won't feel like they really had a generational jump. And it's also probably why many people stay on PS4.

Pretty much this, my Pro with a SSD has been enough Playstation for me. At this point we are about to start getting exclusive PS5 games that are still on PS4 game engines. I think we all expected to drift away from that as the cross-gen phase ended, but we're doubling down on it.

 

[MALpractice311]

That's a different conversation. Obviously the current gen consoles and first gen RT cards on PC are not very powerful, and devs either settle for using RT in a very limited way, or major compromises on performance.

But that's changing. Thanks to massive improvements in both AI and RT performance, the newest nVidia cards can play Cyberpunk fully path traced at 100+ fps, for example. So if the question is about running the game at 200fps with no RT or 100fps with full path tracing, I think most people are going to opt for the latter.

Maybe on super high end PCs. I'm speaking on behalf of me and my fellow console peasants. For the hardware we have for at least the next three years, it's just not there and should not be prioritized over frame rates.

RT hardware isn't ripe yet, but it's getting there. In two-three years RT shadows & GI have taken over from pre-baked with minimal fps hit.
Don't forget that RT comes with two fold improvements; Everyone wins. It's not just more true to life, but it makes the dev cycle faster as well. No more need to particularly ligh every scene, the hw just does it itself. That frees up alot of "man-years" (Im not sure if the word is the same in english, since we have a specific word for it in norwegian) internally at the studios.
Edit: Path tracing is even further away, but is the "holy grail" and will be the goal.

People have been touting the benefits of reducing man-hours and is there actual evidence of this yet? RT and PT seem to cause as many problems as they solve.

 

[RaySoft]

I think diminishing returns limited the impact from all consoles after the PS360 generation.

There won't be any more generational leaps as mind-blowing as we had each cycle from Atari 2600 to PS2.

Are you ready to die on that hill? Because there will. I have always hated the "diminishing returns" frase, cause it's so easy to throw around as a layman term.
When you know what to look for, you will see the cycles. BUT I know what you mean.. the jump from crude pixels in Quake to hw BF and AA had an instant impact on gamers. This was in the advent when 3dfx cards hit the market. Simple stuff done in hw, with a huge difference on screen. Big return for the consumer.

The quantification of graphics should always be compared to real life imho. And with that we know we have a long way to go.
For each stride in graphics the more important the details become. RT will go along way of making things more true to life. Full path tracing are still some years away, but when it hits and the hw is able to cope, a new paradigm will start.

There will always be opportunities to do something better than before. The devil is in the details.

 

[supernova8]

No because the fact that PS4 and PS5 are both running on x86 (specifically AMD APUs) means that they were always going to drag out the cross-gen shenanigans.

 

[RaySoft]

Maybe on super high end PCs. I'm speaking on behalf of me and my fellow console peasants. For the hardware we have for at least the next three years, it's just not there and should not be prioritized over frame rates.

People have been touting the benefits of reducing man-hours and is there actual evidence of this yet? RT and PT seem to cause as many problems as they solve.

It's kind of simple to compute... 1. Make an artist specifically light a room (wich is EVERY room you enter in said game), OR just let the hardware do it automatically. RT is still too new, and the hw isnt up to snuff yet for the audience to reap the benefits... but it's comming.
Edit: I'm sorry I misunderstood your post. I agree 100% with you. It's still early days, and RT is too weak on consoles to really leverage it, but the buzz you know..:-(

 

[supernova8]

Def. doesn't, but the expected baseline is at least moved up a bit. Problem is that there are so many last-gen consoles sold that to leave that market alone would be a less-than-savvy business move when the investments are so substantial to create something.

I do think we'll start seeing things that actually feel next-gen very soon even if we've had some amazing and underappreciated examples across the platforms the last few years. I also think that with how ubiquitous development tools are becoming that we're gonna start seeing more unique things on consoles in the indie/AA space that will be far more interesting than the recycled trite we get from MSFT/Sony.

I think this is a dodgy argument.

Sure the PS4 has sold over 100m units, but the PS3 sold over 80m units and yet look at how quickly the first party devs dropped the PS3 like a sack of potatoes.

Xbox 360 also sold over 80m and yet that was also dropped fairly quickly.

I've said it before and will say it again, it's just because this is the first generation where last gen was essentially the same architecture. I'm no expert but I understand at least that optimizing a game for PS3 would be totally different than for PS4, whereas PS5 is really just a much faster PS4. As a result, the cost of simultaneously developing for PS4 is probably way lower compared to PS3.

 

[cireza]

Mid-gen refreshes are pointless.

That being said, the issue here is that neither PS5 nor Xbox Series have started being correctly used. Still waiting for games to unlock the potential of the consoles, meaning no PS4/Xbox One versions.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Possibly. It's basically like the PC effect now.

New cards come out and the IQ gets better on these "scalable" engines, but not a generational jump.

Diminishing returns are a thing as well and we are reaching that on current rendering pipelines.