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Well?

  • Seventh Gen (360/PS3/Wii/)

    Votes: 182 24.0%
  • Eighth Gen (PS4/Xbone/Switch)

    Votes: 545 71.9%
  • Wii U

    Votes: 31 4.1%

  • Total voters
    758

HomespunFur

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
1,271
I only really play on Nintendo consoles and I prefer the switch to the wii and wii u
just a lot more games I am interested in and so many amazing indie games which weren't there previously.
 
Jan 3, 2019
3,219
I didn't backpedal, you used the term ALWAYS. You may be right about it just being more noticeable in that era.

And yes, I'd rather have a console that doesn't have hardware problems and randomly removed features and one that does.
That's a weird straw to grasp on. This entire gen is better because early models of a console used to have a higher failure rate than current gen.

When do you start considering other aspects? Is the Atari 2600 the greatest console of all time, those things will last forever.

When next gen starts, will you wait to see the failure rate statistics before you say which is your favorite console?
 

Chackan

Member
Oct 31, 2017
5,097
This generation started amazingly with the PS4 and now continues to be with the Switch.

Last gen was great, but this one was almost PS2-gen quality.
 

banter

Member
Jan 12, 2018
4,127
That's a weird straw to grasp on. This entire gen is better because early models of a console used to have a higher failure rate than current gen.

When do you start considering other aspects? Is the Atari 2600 the greatest console of all time, those things will last forever.
LoL no, and it wasn't just early ones. I had a X360 Elite RRoD and the odd looking slim ones that came later on me but thankfully those were around when they started actually covering them under warranty. They had stopped making fully BC PS3 when mine yellow lighted so I was definitely upset about that. People were selling them for thousands.

Oh, that's another shitty trend that picked up last gen, scalping games. It's more a fault of it just becoming more mainstream, but it definitely ramped up last gen.

Maybe it's more personal to me because I feel like it was a gen where a bunch of franchises I liked went down severely in quality (halo). Even ones that started in that gen got worse because of trends of the gen like multiplayer being practically mandatory (Dead Space, looking at you). I just feel like this gen has been much smoother in regards to hardware and franchises being treated more cautiously (there are exceptions... mass effect).
 
Jan 3, 2019
3,219
Yep. This gen got some real recency bias going on with people, either that or most of Era only started gaming with this gen.

It sure has some gems, and Japanese developers are doing better, but almost every big western publisher got so much worse it's not even funny. The gaming industry is in a sad shithole made of GAAS.
The biggest hangup I have isn't that the sheer amount of games last gen had is ignored, but the amount of new franchises.

If you list all PS3 games by metascore, of the top 10, 6 games were from franchises were created that gen. Of the top 20, 12.
If you do the same on PS4, you get 0 for the top 10 (4 of those games are on PS3 mind you). Of the top 20, 4 are new franchises, 3 of which are indie titles.

That's right. The only new AAA franchise in the top 20 PS4 games is Bloodborne. Top 50? A total of 4 Games were from AAA franchises where the first installment was in that gen, as opposed to 23 on PS3.

It really brings home the point that current gen is more of a continuation of last gen than its own thing.
 
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Crashman

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,115
I went with 8th gen. I'm really Nintendo-centric, so it's mostly just Switch vs. Wii here, and I actually didn't care much for the Wii as a whole. I'd probably go with Wii U in the end over Wii. I just may have been down on video games in general for that time frame, since I'd also put the DS under both the GBA and 3DS (and Swith) with no hesitation.
 

Acetown

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,297
I voted for eight gen but I'm frankly not sure. The biggest issue is that games keep taking longer to develop so it felt like a lot more was happening during the previous generation. Rockstar released, what? Six games during the previous generation? Versus one this generation. That might be might be an extreme example but it illustrates a broader trend. I can't believe we're going a whole generation without an Elder Scrolls game.
Also since I own Sony hardware I can't help but feel that the PS4 was kind of a downgrade, obviously not in processing power, but in terms of the broader experience. The PS3 was fully backwards compatible and accepted just about any disc you fed it (vs not even adding 4k blu-ray support to the PS4 Pro), it had a much more elegant and much more powerful UI, free online, great media server features. It was a seriously cool machine. I imagine the bean counters had a much greater say in the creation of the PS4.

The biggest improvement is that Japanese developers are doing much better, Capcom in particular, which is important. Also, Nintendo's hardware feels a lot less primitive, which is probably due to diminishing returns.
 

Latpri

Banned
Apr 19, 2018
761
The last gen of consoles, and the games that came on them, were probably the worst in history outside of the generation that caused the video game crash. Its no contest.

I pretty much straight up stopped playing video games between 2006 and 2015 outside of STALKER and a few other PC releases.

Last gen had the utter dominance of the third person and first person shooters to the almost complete exclusion of everything else, the fumbling by Japanese devs of almost everything they made for a decade, the games in that gen started some miserable conventions that got really popular like the slowly walk n talk down a hallway to deliver exposition.

I mean just look at the sort of stuff that was winning GOTYs back then. Things were so dire that everyone was prasing Batman. I mean, Im not going to pretend like Batmans an awful game, its tight and fun and the combats simple but addicting but almost unianimous praise? Everyone throwing GOTYs at it? That doesnt happen except when youre in a video game desert.
 
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nDesh

The Three Eyed Raven
Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,075
The last generation definitely had more great games and new IPs, but the average quality of games is higher in this generation.
 

nDesh

The Three Eyed Raven
Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,075
the results are truly mindblowing, put a list of the greats of each generation and there's no contest.

Maybe, maybe at the end of next year it will be more comparable.
 
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Deleted member 31817

Nov 7, 2017
30,876
Hmm, the advent of the wii for motion games was still really cool and online gaming blowing up meant a better sense of community and nostalgia for me, other than that though this generation is probably better just for being more consistent. There were a lot of standout games from last gen though that are hard to top.
 

Detail

Member
Dec 30, 2018
2,948
I think last gen had games which were more fun to play imo, this gen the focus on grinding and microtransactions and DLC has really killed a lot of the hype around big game releases for me, the indie space however is far better this gen imo.

Just yesterday I was playing that racing game Split/Second, honestly, I haven't had that much fun playing a game for quite sometime and the unlock system, whilst hard and challenging, didn't feel like a grind at all to me, it reminded me of what was so great about last gen, all the EA big titles, stuff like Bad Company 2 etc.

Yeah, last gen for sure for me.
 

Deleted member 19533

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
3,873
Eighth gen, easily.

7th gen was missing so much. There were no big JRPGs, and fighting games were on death's door, there was an absurdly small amount of 3rd person action/character action games. It was almost all open world games and FPS, two of my least favorite genres, on hardware that couldn't really handle it. Games ran so poorly last gen with tons of tearing and sub par frame rates it was absurd. The consoles simply weren't good enough for HD gaming. I almost quit gaming.
 

NuclearCake

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
9,867
While there are seemingly less games being made i think the overall quality is higher than ever. This generation delivered more of what they 7th gen was trying to achieve but kind of failed due to inadequate hardware.

It feels like this generation was for HD development what the 6th generation was for 3D games development after the rough 5th generation.
 

Betty

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
17,604
This gen has been WAY better than last time.

I feel like we've gotten higher quality and wider variety. Digital distribution coming into it's own really helped, as did the numerous great sales.
 

Canucked

Comics Council 2020 & Chicken Chaser
Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,417
Canada
Switch is not next gen. Generations are contemporaneous things existing at the same time.
 

kubev

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,533
California
The multi-tasking capabilities of the current-gen consoles make it really difficult to go back to the previous-gen consoles. Honestly, that's one of the things I most look forward to seeing improvement in for the next consoles. Also, Forza Horizon 4 and Sunset Overdrive are two of my all-time favorite games.
 

amprainy

Member
May 31, 2019
189
The technical improvements we saw this generation were a notable leap. Last gen felt like a transition period as HD was becoming the standard for devs. Now, it's hard to really become impressed with graphics because the fidelity and realism are things we seem to take for granted. We may be nearing a peak in game development as we are seeing massive amounts of time and resources dedicated to making them, even for independent developers.

Lots of great games and diversity for both gens. However, this gen to me improves on both the quantity and the quality of games that have come out and includes Bloodborne. For my preferences, it is this one and we still have a ways to go.
 

shinobi602

Verified
Oct 24, 2017
8,371
Last gen gave me Mass Effect but this gen gave me The Witcher 3.

giphy.gif
 

Deleted member 52823

User requested account closure
Banned
Jan 29, 2019
342
I'm not sure what happened to Wii U. Did it not exist?

I would say Wii U was with PS4+Xbox One considering it released only one year earlier and was constantly compared to the next gen consoles.

Switch didn't come out until like 4 years after PS4/Xbox One. It's not even two and a half years old and has plenty of games still coming. Far from over. Whereas 16 months from now the Xbox One and PS4 will be replaced, the Switch likely still has three more years before we're talking Switch 2 or whatever Nintendo comes up with.

Either way, it's obvious most people are more happy with Switch than Wii U.

The rise of the Battle Royale genre is certainly notable. Whether it sticks around forever remains to be seen.

Call of Duty has sustained its success throughout two whole generations. Impressive. The stage is set for Black Ops 5 to be the major launch title on next gen consoles. Activision seems invested in the Crash and Spyro brands after the success of the remaster trilogies and CTR. It's obvious those franchises will get more attention moving forward.

CDPR has emerged as a premier publisher on consoles with The Witcher 3. Have to see if Cyberpunk can keep the momentum going. Roughly four years between big games. Not bad when compared to Rockstar and Naughty Dog, for example.

Sony's first party studios have emerged as major players. God of War received critical acclaim. Horizon was a huge success for Guerrilla Games following mediocre games like Killzone. This is a huge boon for Sony; now that Guerrilla has a major success, they have strong brands coming into the next generation. God of War, Uncharted, Horizon, Gran Turismo, The Last of Us, and MLB: The Show are major exclusives that trump Microsoft's lineup of Forza, Gears, and Halo. They also have two very important partnerships with Insomniac and Kojima Productions.

Microsoft had a horrendous start with Xbox One. An ill conceived product designed to capitalize on the casual market, they released a console at $499 that flopped. Geared towards a market that doesn't exist (tv watching, guitar hero playing Kinect users ready to spend $500 on a new box). Not to mention, the product was released with no loss taken on the box; at cost hardware, less powerful than the competition with features no one cares about. They even let Sony steal a tremendous amount of Call of Duty players as Sony's box was more powerful and they lost their marketing agreement with Activision, instead partnering with the less popular brand in Battlefield (which ran better on PS4 anyway). And where's Battlefield now? 5 flopped whereas Bo4 was a success and the market is looking forward to Modern Warfare. They also let one of the biggest e-sports IP in Street Fighter go exclusive to Sony's machine.

With Scarlet, they have a much better chance at regaining market share. Their box is powerful, they have a new Halo at launch, GamePass is a quality service.

Nintendo righted the ship with Switch. It has four must have titles (Odyssey, BotW, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Smash). Their games have been coming at much faster intervals (despite a drought in the first half of this year). It has much more third party support. There's lots of games coming the next few months, a new hardware model, Pokémon for Christmas and a major IP in Animal Crossing releasing in March 2020.

The stage is set for Nintendo to continue the Switch brand unlike the Wii. They have strong first party, an online service that's rapidly gaining users, and their console has a compelling software library that offers loads of exclusives that aren't available on Sony and Microsoft platforms.
 

Grapezard

Member
Nov 16, 2017
7,788
I'm just glad games are more colourful and interesting to look at these days, seventh gen was just a blur of greyish-brownish.
 
Feb 9, 2018
2,636
Tough call.

Last generation had a lot of really solid games. Super Mario Galaxy and BioShock rank among my favorite games ever. Microsoft actually had a lot of solid exclusives for the 360; Bungie produced three solid Halo titles, and the original Gears of War trilogy were the first third-person games that (to me at least) felt fun to play. Sony ramped up their first-party output considerably, producing gems like The Last of Us and LittleBigPlanet. Nintendo brought us new ways to play with the Wii's motion controls, and Super Mario Galaxy remains one of the best 3D platformers ever. Third-party titles that really stood out to me included BioShock, Bayonetta, and Far Cry 3. Also, Mortal Kombat was successfully rebooted after some lackluster titles in the previous generation, and Mega Man was brought back to his 8-bit roots for some of the finest old-school-style releases of the generation.

On the other hand, the 360 suffered from serious hardware issues that resulted in abnormally high failure rates (I had to send mine off for repairs twice), and most of MS's exclusives derived from third parties, which dried up quickly halfway through the generation as those third parties couldn't ignore the rapidly growing install base of the PS3. Sony kicked off the generation with an overpriced console, and even after they got to price parity with the 360 once the Slim was released, the PS3 still lagged behind the 360 for most of the generation in terms of online infrastructure, plus the DualShock 3 retained the same clunky, uncomfortable shell the original PS1 controller had. And Nintendo's foray into motion controls, despite resulting in some fun games, were ultimately a novelty that did not move gaming forward in any meaningful way, and in many cases a simple button press would have been preferable to all the "waggle." The Wii was treated by third parties primarily as a dumping ground for shovelware and party games.


This generation, the hardware has advanced enough to where full HD resolutions and 60fps frame rates have become the norm. The amount of polish that newer technology has allowed for has been nothing short of outstanding, seeing as that, in general, 3D graphics tend to not age well. Nintendo has produced some of their best output ever over the past six years, and the Switch is arguably their best console since the N64. Sony has produced what is perhaps their most consistently strong first-party efforts in the history of the PlayStation brand. Sony also kicked off the generation with a system with a reasonable price and a good online infrastructure, plus they finally got around to making a good controller for a change. Since the release of RE7, Capcom has had some of its best output in a while after years of questionable decisions. Doom 2016 was an outstanding reboot, with the focus on gameplay that mixed the best of the old-school with some newer innovations producing some of the most pure kinetic fun I've had in a game in a long time. Alien: Isolation was perhaps the most authentic Alien experience in a game ever, with some solid survival horror gameplay. Indie games have proliferated to a degree never before seen. And the generation (at least on Sony & MS's ends) appears to be ending with a bang, with Cyberpunk 2077, Final Fantasy VII Remake part 1, and Halo Infinite (a cross-gen title) being scheduled for next year, with The Last of Us Part 2 and Ghost of Tsushima being likely 2020 releases as well.

On the other hand, this generation has seen several high-profile games launch in absolutely broken states, at least as far as online was concerned (The Master Chief Collection and Driveclub being notable examples). Arguably predatory business practices pioneer last generation accelerated with aggressive microtransactions and other monetization schemes came to a head with the "loot box" controversy. "Games as a service" is a concept that rapidly spread, with a host of online-only games being produced, including a multitude of multiplayer-only titles and quasi-MMO titles, and frequently plagued by the aforementioned aggressive monetization schemes. Microsoft's first-party output has been less than impressive, with only a single main series Halo title produced (and I don't have a lot of love for Halo 5's changes to the series' core gameplay formula). Nintendo's online infrastructure continues to be stuck in a pre-XBL design mentality.


Overall, both generations have had their fair share of highs and lows, so I think it comes down to the games, and in that regard I think this generation edges out last generation, if only slightly.
 

vestan

#REFANTAZIO SWEEP
Member
Dec 28, 2017
24,640
Last gen had like a dozen games that are universally considered one of the best games ever made and almost all of them rank in most Top 20 lists. Really can't say the same for this gen outside of BotW and Red Dead Redemption II.

I feel games on average are way better this gen though, but that doesn't change the fact that last gen has a bunch of all time classics and that this gen doesn't even begin to come close to that.
 

RedSwirl

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,063
I would say the two messiest console generations ever were 5th gen and 7th gen.

5th gen was a painful-but-necessary transition into 3D. Even if most of those games don't hold up today, at the time they felt innovative and revelatory, and that gen produced many of the most influential games of all time.

7th gen faced pressure from the transition to HD, some technological shortcomings that held back developers (the slow-walk segments were actually just interactive loading screens), and the global economic recession. The result was many developers just straight dying, Japan retreating to handhelds, western AAA games getting a lot more homogenous, and whole genres going into decline.


The last gen of consoles, and the games that came on them, were probably the worst in history outside of the generation that caused the video game crash. Its no contest.

I pretty much straight up stopped playing video games between 2006 and 2015 outside of STALKER and a few other PC releases.

Last gen had the utter dominance of the third person and first person shooters to the almost complete exclusion of everything else, the fumbling by Japanese devs of almost everything they made for a decade, the games in that gen started some miserable conventions that got really popular like the slowly walk n talk down a hallway to deliver exposition.

I mean just look at the sort of stuff that was winning GOTYs back then. Things were so dire that everyone was prasing Batman. I mean, Im not going to pretend like Batmans an awful game, its tight and fun and the combats simple but addicting but almost unianimous praise? Everyone throwing GOTYs at it? That doesnt happen except when youre in a video game desert.

This is more or less how I feel. I thought Arkham Asylum was pretty good but not the most amazing shit ever. I think people were just impressed someone dared to make a 3D Metroid in an era of Gears and COD clones.

Last gen however was when immersive sims got really popular on consoles between Bethesda games, the first two BioShocks, and Human Revolution. Still, one of the reasons I think current-gen is better is because we got several legitimately great immersive sims, and kinda-immersive-sim-like games. Dishonored 2 is honestly in the same ballpark as Thief II, Prey 2017 is an excellent translation of System Shock 2 into mainstream console gamer language, and Mankind Divided was pretty good too. Breath of the Wild is clearly inspired by immersive sims and does a great job of evoking their qualities. Metal Gear Solid V Phantom Pain is great for having many of the same qualities.
 
Oct 27, 2017
5,804
This gen wins out for me simply due to having an easy way to redownload games without looking through your previous purchase lists. PS3 and 360 suck so much at that.
 

Sumio Mondo

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,937
United Kingdom
This gen gave me/will give me some of my most long awaited games ever in Shenmue 3, The Silver Case HD, The 25th Ward, Fire Emblem & SMT both finally on home console again (first time in like a decade), RE2 Remake (finally), Kojima finally making a new IP and it looking amazing (Death Stranding) DMC5, 428: Shibuya Scramble, FFXII HD, SaGa: Scarlet Grace, Street of Rage 4, Persona 5, Fist of the North Star by Yakuza Studio, Detroit, Until Dawn and so many more that I was waiting so long for and they all exceeded my expectations.

And some of my favourite games in Yakuza 0, Bloodborne and Yakuza 6. It really feels like Japan has made a big comeback this gen for sure. Which is why I prefer it. Their game output has on the whole been so high quality.

Last gen had NieR (the original), Deadly Premonition, Demon's Soul, Dark Souls (one of GOAT games), Yakuza 3/4/5, Catherine, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2, Sin & Punishment 2 and erm...first person shooters? So much so that it's put me off the genre forever, I got that bored playing so many of them. And some of my most disappointing sequels/games I've ever played (Drakengard 3, MGS4, GTA4, Mass Effect 3).