I'm afraid that if they keep making 'superior' versions of the same generation of consoles that we'll end up with 'semi-exclusives' anyway. Simply because those will run a lot better on the more expensive hardware, and what I'm most afraid of is that a lot of developers will get lazy in optimisation, because why the hell would they bother if they can just make it run good enough on the 'high-end' platform so to speak.

And bet you that Sony will encourage developers on this too, because they're gonna want to have reasons to sell the Pro, especially if there are no exclusive titles to promote it with.

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 3 points 1 month ago

They were already lazy because the hardware was powerful enough to hide a lot of sins.

FF7 Rebirth for example. It looks much better on the Pro, but frankly, it should have looked much better on the base console. And it came out well before the Pro was announced.

But at the same time, the majority of PC gamers are happily still playing at 1080p. Resolution was always overrated and an expensive thing to chase.

The only semi-exclusive from last gen was Cyberpunk, and I can't really see things being much different. If a game engine was capable of running at 60 if you reduce the graphics, they'll still offer that. If it wasn't, then the Pro won't be able to run it faster either. It's pretty much the exact same CPU under both.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 2 points 1 month ago

That may be the way consoles go.

We aren't seeing the kinds of innovation happening in hardware that justifies dropping backward compatibility and the AAA gaming market hasn't released games in the quantity they did before.

So Sony and Microsoft can update the hardware in a way to maintain backwards comparability and game companies have the option of developing to the current generation only, both generations with different graphics, or the older generation.