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Has the Console Arms Race Stalled?
An article at Eurogamer argues that even with a successor to the Wii on the horizon, the console arms race we've watched over the past few decades is in the process of changing dramatically, with base hardware taking a back seat to software and peripherals.
"Even the most basic yardstick for console improvements has become a little hard to read. It used to seem like a reliable idea that every five years or so, consoles would catch up to the PC — a platform which sees advancements every few weeks — and remain competitive for a while, before the PC's cutting-edge accelerated away. ... However, the upgrade cycle appears to have slowed considerably — with games that actually demand cutting-edge systems being few and far between, and core gamers far more likely to continue happily playing on two-, three- or even four-year-old PCs than they were in the past. ... If not a halt to progress, this is certainly a slowing — and probably one which is welcomed in most quarters. Consumers love improvements in graphical quality, but most would probably prefer to see any major increase in development budget being spent elsewhere — more detailed content, more expansive storytelling, more progress in areas that have been neglected in the former headlong rush to cram more polygons and effects onto every screen."
It's not really saying that the console arms race has stalled, but is instead saying that the graphics arms race has stalled, which is probably true, and that efforts are shifting, which is also probably true.
After all, just as dpi in printers stopped being a selling point once they all got "good enough", and just as megapixels are becoming increasingly irrelevant as a differentiating factor between cameras, so too are the graphics in today's games reaching a point where the return isn't worth the investment for the developers. Graphics are already "realistic enough" for most people, and trying to move things closer to photorealistic gameplay is probably not worth it, since the return they get is minimal, while the effort required is exorbitant. Instead, spending it on improved gameplay or other elements is a better return on their investment.
Games like Minecraft doing so well just hammers that point home.
The real problem is whoever is in the lead gets a truck load of shovelware, and that been happening since the Atari 2600...
It also doesn't help that monitors' resolution race has completely halted at 1080p.