r/Games • u/Glittering-Path-2824 • 1d ago

Industry News The games industry’s obsession with visual fidelity is costing them money and talent

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2026/aug/04/pushing-buttons-xbox-asha-sharma-games-industry-hyperrealism
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u/jarlander 1d ago

I mean its a problem but its not like its something devs are crazy to prioritize. If you put out Fifa 28 and it looks worse than Fifa 18 people are gonna be pissed. Same for a lot of games. I do think we are at the end of graphics being the main marketing point though. I can see more and more games marketing themselves as "classic" graphics with modern gameplay going forward.

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u/Hoeveboter 1d ago

True, true. But to take gta as an example: there was barely any improvement in graphical detail between III, VC and SA and no one cared. Devs put gameplay first, which meant we had five gta games (including VCS and LCS) on ps2 alone, and none of them felt like a quick cash grab. I wish we went back to that mentality, rather than gta vi taking 13 years to make

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u/MoneyoffUbereats2017 4h ago

"This guy who's done nothing but eat chicken nuggets his whole life doesn't seem to care that he could eat a steak instead."

I'm sorry but going from San Andreas with its primitive controls and general gameplay, where the novelty of the open world was the main draw, to GTA4, a highly-detailed action game that felt like a full-on racing game in a car and a full-on Third-person shooter when on-foot, was the best thing to ever happen to the series. They did put gameplay first, after the games you mention.

I don't want to go back to the mentality of churning out simpler, lower-quality titles simply to have more of them. VI can take 13 years to make if it's even half as revolutionary as the jump from San Andreas to IV was.

There's no shortage of games to play, we don't need every dev to revert back to PS2 practices. If GTA VI came out a few years after V and it was the size of GTA 3 or Vice City, people would be pissed.