Some do. If you only had an SDTV, would you really need an update to Katamari Damacy? Or to some of the fighting games like MvC2?

To be totally fair Katamari Damacy could look much better on an SDTV.

Graphical changes are at the point where only so much more can be done. What really needs fixing it the actual movement of the characters. Jerky movements, bad lip synching, etc. are things that they just can't seem to get a handle of.

I don't know about Katamari since I have no interest in that sort of game, but if you're pretending like all else is equal except a graphical update, sure it wouldn't be much of an upgrade. Still, I'd say there's still many noticable graphical benefits that can be had on an SDTV.

Exactly, collision detection still has incredible room for improvement. Also, it's time to get rid of "rag-doll" physics. We aren't rag dolls. Joints don't bend just as easily in either direction because you get shot.

Aren't there some games out now that do have more realistic physics for the movement of characters? I seem to remember a game or two advertising it but I don't remember what they were.

I just know at this point I wouldn't buy the next gen's console for sheer graphics alone. Although I'm pretty sure I said that before on rec.games.video.sony regarding the PSX.

After all I spend half the time playing xbox live arcade games where the graphics aren't even why I play them.

This will never be an issue for me as my favorite games are always akin to this:

West of House

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.
>

To this day, no one has bettered the writing in those original adventures and they look great on everything from a Commodore 64 to a state of the art PC to my iPod Touch.

Even on XBLA, I love having everything in HD. Games like Geometry Wars are even more playable especially multiplayer. Games like Castle Crashers, Penny Arcade, GW2, among others, are graphical showcases for the system.

One game that stands out in pure graphical standpoint is the pc game Crysis. But this is where PC's have the advantage over consoles in terms of chips, ram and processors. It really takes not only a lot of "horsepower" to push realistic textures but space as well.


While the demand for more realistic textures go up the older the 360 and PS3 will become. With PC's changing a video card or updating a processor is the norm every year and the consoles simply are not made for keeping up with technology. The hope for that is we console owners don't get wrapped up with "eye candy" for the sake of pure gaming in itself.

I've upgraded my PC several times, and I still can't play Crysis beyond being a slideshow. The only thing left to upgrade is my processor which is one of the early dual core models.

I finally cracked open Oblivion this weekend. I have such a huge backlog of games ,and this one came out in 2006, I believe. For a 3 year old game, I was blown away by the sheer beauty of the open world. It was the first time I felt like I was in a realistic open world with mountains in the background.

I just can't imagine that one day Oblivion could be an eyesore.

Go play Morrowind. Oblivion will indeed be an eyesore one day.

I agree with others that gameplay is the most important thing but graphics are also important. I'm a big Nethack fan and have been forever but now i prefer to play it with graphic tiles (or roguelike games like Shiren) or even play RogueTouch on my iTouch compared to going back to the old Ascii version.

That being said, i agree with the poster who said writing has never gotten better than the old text adventures. I really wish there were things of the quality of some of those old Infocom games.

Yeah, Morrowind was the first thing I thought of as well. I remember being amazed at the water at the start of the game back when it was released, and now it looks pretty crummy.

Yeah but Morrowind was all yucky brown and gray. Oblivion has beautiful colors. The facial models are pretty bland though. I imagine when we get graphics engine to show realistic facial expressions and emotions, Oblivion will become quite dated.

It may depend on what you define as "graphics." Are frame rates, resolution, and smooth edges part of that definition? For consoles at least, frame rates are still an issue, 1080p isn't common, and even basic anti-aliasing often has to be left out. Then there's talk of 3D games (I mean real 3D), where the system will have to render two complete images for each frame.

Textures may be great now, if you look at them from a certain distance. In Oblivion, for instance, they can look very blurry when you get up close. It's going to take more storage to be able to have textures that look great at any distance, and they're still improving the lighting of those textures. Flat objects like walls and roads may look great now, but special cases like water, trees, and hair still have a ways to go.