Crytek deserves all the praise they get for their hard work in rendering...<p>...but...<p>Why are we conditioned to think that "the future of gaming" is solely a function of a game's audiovisual quality? I would like to see a "future of gaming" video that shows off highly-interactive (rather than just very pretty) gameworlds and characters. NPCs that notice you are trying to put a bucket on their heads, for example.
From PONG to this.<p>This is perhaps the most accessible way to appreciate just how much the increase in computation (both 'general purpose' and 'graphical') can be done on high end hardware these days.<p>True story, I was a big fan of Empire (ran on terminals, later became known as Bright's Empire) and when I went to Intel and worked on their 'high end' graphics chip (82786, used in exactly one video card from Number 9) we thought maybe someday you would be able to see the units battling cities rather than have your A turn a city '*' into an 'O'. Little did I know ...
I'm fine with more realistic graphics as long as that's not the whole point of the game (I'm looking at you, Skyrim). What I really have yet to see is AAA games put effort into making human behavior realistic (in real time, I mean, not in a cutscene). Like, would it kill ya to actually make the sound match up with the mouth once in a while?? This is 2012 and still there are only a handful of games that get even remotely close (Mass Effect, Battlefield 3 and then of course L.A. Noire and other mocapped games - I'm sure there are others, I don't play games but they're all the same to some extent). I think the thing about graphics game companies don't realize is, the better you make the graphics, the better you have to make everything around it to match -- character behavior, gameplay mechanics, etc. -- because the differences between the different parts of games are exaggerated -- you leave out some detail and the magic disappears. Games are just multi-faceted magic tricks, same for TV shows. The better you can hide the magic -- that's where the realism lies. Better graphics is just one part of the puzzle.
Even current gaming engines can be used to produce some very amazing visuals, but games still have to be able to run on hardware that is 5 years old.<p>Its not very cost effective to create content at a quality that only a small number of users are going to be able to see.
The top paid game apps in the iTunes app store right now are: Draw Something, Angry Birds Space, Clear Vision, Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, TETRIS, Bejeweled, Skylanders Cloud Patrol, and Cut the Rope.<p>None of those games would be improved by increasing photorealism.