In the past few days, there’s been a rekindling of the good old “Do we really need consoles to become any more powerful?” debate among Japanese gamers. The topic resurfaced on X following discussion around new generational hardware shifts – particularly the Nintendo Switch 2. The console has seen immense popularity in Japan as an option that’s more affordable (especially the domestic version) than its high-spec competitor PS5, but still has “just enough power.”
While it’s just one side of the argument, some Japanese players expressed that with what current gen consoles are already capable of, there may be no need for more powerful (and by result, more expensive) consoles to keep appearing, especially as many games don’t appear to “max out” the potential of today’s hardware.
Additionally, some suggested that as increasingly powerful consoles emerge, this raises development costs too, as higher specs encourage higher-fidelity graphics, more details assets, bigger maps and longer development cycles, all of which raises costs and ultimately, the prices of games.
On the other hand, Amata Games’ CEO Hiromichi Takahashi (who formerly worked as a producer and game director at Sony and Tecmo) pitched in with a developer’s perspective on the topic.
Writing on X, Takahashi explains, “From the perspective of someone who makes games, the higher a console’s performance, the better. Even for games whose graphics may appear not to fully utilize that performance. That’s because higher specs reduce the cost of optimizing resources during development and let us cut down on production steps. In short, even if we build things a bit roughly, the game will still run properly.”
This appears to address arguments about developers underusing what high-spec hardware is capable of, as well as the theory that more powerful consoles equal higher development costs. Takahashi stresses that having some leeway hardware-wise is what reduces costs related to optimization.
Another developer added, “This. Regardless of gameplay, the higher the specs, the cheaper the cost of optimization becomes. Game development involves far more tricks, tweaks, and layers of fine-tuned optimization to achieve stability than players can imagine.”
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This sounds like an excuse for devs to put out unoptimized code, like borderlands 4 and cyberpunk. Its not even their fault, shareholders and higherups put too much stress on deadlines. Rockstar knows polish though. I don’t care how long GTA 6 takes, I know its going to play great.
TL;DR
The better the machine specs, the lazier, sloppier and more rushed games can be put out. Obviously, it’s good for conformist devs that still think “30fps is good enough”.
I bet that more talented devs that have no say in management are ashamed when a game they worked out runs like trash on current gen hardware.
As long as our hardware has the overhead to run sloppily coded or unoptimized games, devs will keep the status quo “good enough is good enough” attitude. For those of us fortunate enough to have more powerful hardware, we sit on our high horses and enjoy our games. The ones who suffer, though, are the budget hardware gamers. “Almost playable” is a torturous place to be caught, and the will they or won’t they hope of future updates hauling whatever game up to playable just plain sucks. I’ve been down that road, and have learned that it’s better to keep saving up and go for great hardware instead of good enough. DLSS and similar tech trickery is wonderful, especially for those with slower hardware, but it is indeed trickery that brings with it its own set of issues for some, and further encourages devs and corporate bean counters to omit what is (or used to be, anyway) arguably, the most important part of the process when nearing the end of the development cycle. I’m not very familiar with Unity, but if it’s anything like UE, the reasons for this kind of thing is obvious. There’s immensely talented people working on the games of next year and beyond, but I’d be willing to bet that as the available dev tools get more and more powerful, the people using them actually understand them less and less. They might know how to build a AAA game in Unreal, but wouldn’t have the slightest inkling of how to hunt down a bug in the C++ it’s blueprint engine spits out. I predict that The Witcher 4 is going to be the next best “eye candy” game by a margin that embarrasses other studios, it’ll also be a totally UE OEM mess under the hood, though I think CDPR has learned a thing or two from the facepalm shambles that was CP2077. No diss intended on anyone, game development is right up there in brainpower required as aerospace engineering, theoretical physics, and the like (for studios which push the boundaries further upward, I mean). As hardware gets more capable, new technologies arrive then game development tools become more complex, from simple rasterized graphics to RTGI, multi-path raytracing, and whatever comes next. But show me a studio which, in 2025, builds their own engine from scratch. MGSV’s Fox engine stands as an example of pros doing something right, which takes lots of investment, properly applied talent, and, (in the industry today) cojones de plata. It’s still done, I’m sure, but even if devs like the idea, investors won’t see the upside and the consensus probably arrives at one or the other: Unreal or Unity. As an Nvidia diehard, I used to go for the x80 of each generation (GTX era), nowadays the xx70 offers the best bang for bucks. Classified as midrange, something like the 4070 has loads of power to gloss over unoptimized code, but the 4060 will leave you butthurt if you’re trying to be all grown up playing in 4k, and the 4050, yikes. The 5xxx series probably has shifted that equation as each generation usually does but the budget offerings still leave someone frustrated. I don’t really mention “luxury tier” hardware like the 5090, people who have those are playing games, not reading about the petty concerns of mere mortals. There’s two things that would help alleviate the issues underlined here. First, gaming hardware manufacturers keep doing what they do, make more powerful hardware as new chips arrive. Second, game studios need to keep at least a couple of people around who understand the the underpinnings of the dev team’s tools. A couple of guys as comfortable with assembly as any newly graduated dev is in {insert scripting language here}, people who have been in the trenches and have heard the bullets whizzing overhead. Probably the last of a dying breed, most like the next generation of “devs” won’t be able to read, much less write code and will exclusively use tools that sit between the brain and raw C++ or Rust, which will probably hinder optimization work unless such things are just handed over to AI workers (which seems likely to me, and might actually end up being a good thing for benchmark numbers). In any event, I find it amusing that we’ve (the big we) had this conversation before and will undoubtedly have it again whenever the next big generational yeet arrives.
Ah yes… an excuse to be able to use spaghetti code. Tighten the specs and make devs optimize again.
Higher the specs the less Devs have to try hard to make a decent game. Devs nowadays are just lazy putting NES looking games on powerful consoles