To be fair.. they're tiny animated gifs. That hides a lot of the actual quality. I doubt there will ever be another Crysis game as good as Warhead. I'm still waiting for the real sequel.

I don't want your money.

I want your soul.

Especially when you keep changing the rules. We'll be down to 480p and 15fps by the time the deadline expires. And it will be the new meaning of monster.

By 2018 (5 years after new consoles are released) there will be games, running on the new console hardware, that make Crysis PC look bad.

It isn't how many shader cycles or triangles you push, but how you use them. Crysis is not very efficient and 5+ years of work on DX11.1 hardware many-core systems with robust memory models (compared to the lower end targets Crysis had to accommodate) will result in MAJOR visual leaps.

In some genres, like racing title, console titles will own current PC racing games by 2015--consoles have a richer asset budget, have larger teams dedicated to their development, and will have a higher technology "floor" than the current PC crop.

By 2018 consoles will have games that make Crysis PC (2007) look bad. Them some braggin' rights ;)

Ok, there will be 2013 next gen console games that best 2007 Crysis PC on high end 2007 PC hardware, too.

Ok, put another way, the new consoles obviously don't put a 680GTX in it's place. It lacks the raw compute, texel, and pixel fillrate.

Games like Crysis 2 and BF3 push more pixels (4MP) than the consoles can wish to do.

But the new consoles in their target resolution (1-2MP) and fixed framerate will produce better looking games by 2016 than BF3 looks like on the best PC hardware today. Ditto Crysis 2. And certainly racing games.

Grift, even you would admit going with a clean slate, targeting 3.5GB *minimum* (512MB is the min. due to consoles), HDD standard (Optical is current min. standard due to consoles), D3D11.1 (D3D9.x is the current standard due to consoles), many-core standard (8 Jag cores will require many-thread focus, currently low end PCs with 2 cores and 3 core Xbox hold the standard), etc.

For AAA games using the consoles as a benchmark you won't have APUs and budget discreet GPUs with 1GB of 50GB/s memory holding things back. The bar will rise, more efficient techniques--and efficient use of D3D11.x hardware--will make their way into standard practice, and developers, *most importantly*, will find the best balance of budgets for their geometry, shaders, etc. It is not uncommon for titles later in a generation to "cut back" in certain budgets (e.g. model polys or textures) and just make better use of them.

So no, new consoles will never max the peak rates of a 680GTX or the raw pixel pushing certain games demand, but games shortly will make much better use of those resources. 1.2-1.8GFLOPs is too low for the consoles IMO but that is a big architectural leap AND big performance leap over the bottom end.

That sad BF3/Crysis 2 will continue to stand out because the biggest limiter is budgets. It ain't cheap to make a game like those.

This is why I'm still excited about next gen despite Durango. Software can only benefit from bringing the lowest tier up a little.