What defines a next generation game?

I am writing this in reaction to reading a review of a Devil may cry 4 which labelled it last generation.


Sounds like a simple question doesn't it? However, every person you talk to seems to have a preconception of what next generation actually means. Some feel that next generation games should be in some way enhanced than any previous game they have played and every game should be better than the last generation of games. Some feel that next generation games should have better graphics and that is it. Some feel that next generation games are Massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft and that simple single player or deathmatch style games are last generation. Then there are those PC gamers who feel that next generation as defined by new consoles is an artificality that is only adhered to by the delusional.


Who is right? Is anyone right or more importantly is anyone wrong?


How do we define the next generation games which some feel we are playing just now on the playstation 3,  pc, xbox 360 and wii. The most basic definition of next generation is any game running on next generation hardware.


So is this definition a good one? The playstation 3 and Xbox 360 applied resolution standards primarily taken from hi definition television with their much touted 720p and 1080p resolutions. The PC had been gaming in these resolutions on monitors for years prior, one strike against any next generation there then. Technically though for consoles it was the next generation, a new hardware generation from the three big console manufacturers, Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft.


From this standpoint it is a new hardware generation, next generation hardware, but does this result in next generation games? This new generation of hardware means better graphics, more polygons hurled around at better frame rates by more and more processing cores. This jump in graphics alone can make a huge difference to games. For example higher resolution, does make a huge difference to games, try playing Burnout paradise on a high definition television and then play Burnout 3 takedown on the same television and see if you can make out the cars in front of you on the road with the same ease that much improved resolution gives you. The very fact that you can see a car in the distance as opposed to some speckled pixels means your performance will be enhanced and your game experience improved. The games then have better graphics, but are they next generation because of this?


Some people I have spoken to claim that it is features in games that make them next generation rather than the hardware. This doesn't need to be huge, simple things like for example in Ninja Gaiden sigma on the PS3 if you leave a room in which you are battling with a group of about five ninjas they don't follow you through the open door. It's gone that room no longer exists in cyberspace, forgotten by the game in favour of the room you are now in, it spoils the illusion. If the game was next generation as some put it then those ninjas would simply follow you through the door and fight with you. Does this stop Ninja Gaiden from being a good game? Not at all, though some would say it was last generation because of flaws like this, are they right?


Is it innovative features that make a game next generation? Things that have been slowly creeping into games over the years as each game is developed and the people that play them grow up and become game developers themselves. Today the gaming industry is in a position that it has never been in before. The twenty and thirty something people who I presume are in the majority in software development have all grown up playing games, a subtle difference to the last few generations who have been the people who really pioneered gaming, by inventing it in the first place. Today we have people who grew up with gaming and have their own ideas about what was wrong with it in the past and new ideas for the future. 


What has been the evolution in games over the past decade? The changes and innovations are too numerous to mention, I will try and list a few. Predominantly 2D games became 3d thanks to the PC and the power of the Playstation 1. Stories have came to the forefront, the majority of games now have strong story elements and strive to be cinematic to greater or lesser success. The consequences of in game death have changed, to avoid the frustrations of the past, gone are the days of old where you had three lives and then you had to start from the beginning of the game again. Most shooters have lost the health pickups and percentage health in favour of a shield level dropping or the screen going red as in Halo, Call of duty and many others. It was not that long ago in the days of the megadrive that saving your game on consoles was almost unheard of. The PC first person shooter now has mouse and keyboard as the only really considered option, I may be wrong but I think Doom or Wolfenstein started this trend, that wasn't that long ago, or am I just getting old? Turn based strategy became real time strategy with Westwood's Dune II. Like it or not changes are coming in the shape of casual games, games aimed at women, and the explosion of music games like Singstar, guitar hero etc. Where is the evolution of these games going? Real Guitar hero which actually teaches you a real instrument is already on the horizon.


The influence of the internet and the connectivity it offers have brought multiplayer games through similar much faster paced evolutions in the past years. Who knows where World of warcraft, Second life etc will take us. The Halo's and Call of duties have huge followings for their multiplayer deathmatch. Warcraft has broken 10 million users. Is a next generation game one which demands co-operation or conflict with real human beings and relegates a.i.'s to storekeepers?


In summary, it is my opinion that games evolve constantly, the next generation of games moves forward with every new game that changes things. The game that is successful and every game that come after in the same genre is influenced by is the real marker that ushers in a next generation. Hardware generations are irrelevant to these software generation, each change depends on human ingenuity and creativity.


This makes it much harder to track or to label the generation of game that we are in. Therefore, does it matter we are always in the moment next generation and last generation are places we can never visit like tomorrow or yesterday, we live in today.


Calling a game last generation as an insult is meaningless in my view, call it derivative, call it unoriginal, however, calling it last generation means nothing to me.

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