2015 was a year packed with releases of all kinds, notable video games like Splatoon, Black Ops III, or Metal Gear Solid V will turn 10 years old in 2025.
It’s the diminishing returns on additional processing power enabling them to look better, e.g. instead of unlocking entirely new effects that were obviously missing from games before, they’re just getting slightly more accurate. Also gpu prices inflated by crypto and AI mean top of the line gpus are less available in both PC and consoles, so it’s not worth it to develop a game that mainly targets top end hardware.
Agreed for the most part, but that’s not really the gaming industry’s fault. I will say environmental graphics (e.g. ambient details, texture depth, lighting, amount of miscellaneous background and ground clutter density) have gotten much better. If you play The original W3 (before the official “remake” and/or mods), it definitely looks very aged versus something like Black Myth Wukong or Cyberpunk 2077. Bloodborne even more so (although, I’d argue that game’s graphics were never its strong point to begin with, but it did have excellent art direction, as From’s games always tend to have).
That being said, they all have aged pretty well for the most part. And the difference between a game made in 2000 vs 2010 is definitely a way bigger difference than something made in 2010 vs 2020.
It‘s also crazy how they‘ve aged. Do top games nowadays look better? Yes. Do they look a decade better, though?
It’s the diminishing returns on additional processing power enabling them to look better, e.g. instead of unlocking entirely new effects that were obviously missing from games before, they’re just getting slightly more accurate. Also gpu prices inflated by crypto and AI mean top of the line gpus are less available in both PC and consoles, so it’s not worth it to develop a game that mainly targets top end hardware.
Agreed for the most part, but that’s not really the gaming industry’s fault. I will say environmental graphics (e.g. ambient details, texture depth, lighting, amount of miscellaneous background and ground clutter density) have gotten much better. If you play The original W3 (before the official “remake” and/or mods), it definitely looks very aged versus something like Black Myth Wukong or Cyberpunk 2077. Bloodborne even more so (although, I’d argue that game’s graphics were never its strong point to begin with, but it did have excellent art direction, as From’s games always tend to have).
That being said, they all have aged pretty well for the most part. And the difference between a game made in 2000 vs 2010 is definitely a way bigger difference than something made in 2010 vs 2020.