The way I read it, they are saying the gameplay can’t be any different, it’ll just look better on a mid-gen refresh. Which yeah, isn’t wrong, but so what? Gameplay hasn’t evolved a ton since the PS3/360 era, we’ve got massive CPU and storage improvements this gen and it’s not like that’s brought a huge host of gameplay improvements outside of load times. For the most part all we are doing is improving graphics at this point. I don’t know that there are a ton of impossible gameplay ideas that publishers have but are just waiting for powerful enough hardware to be able to build it.
The only thing that’s really blown me recently was Returnal. That gameplay was definitely different than anything I’ve experienced before, just in terms of gameplay, and using all kinds of new stuff like fast load times, amazing haptic feedback and adaptive triggers. All of that made me say that this is a game that makes you feel like you finally arrived in a new generation of gaming. It’s just sad no other game really matches that feeling, apart from graphical improvements.
