With Nintendo's announcement of Cafe and evidence that Microsoft was hiring hardware engineers for a new console, we all know a new generation is coming in the next few years. On podcasts and in forums I commonly hear and see a lot of people saying they aren't ready for an Xbox 720 or PS4 yet. I'm not one of those people - here's why:
Let's Tighten Up the Graphics, or Take That Third D and Shove It (Until You Can Make it Better)
I often find myself getting obsessed with one particular genre, and for months I tend to ignore anything but my latest fascination. Right now I'm way into 2D fighters and 2D arcade shooters (shmups). While I could say this is because I'm busy and both genres allow me to get in quick play sessions without needing to commit to lengthy chapters or long quests, I think there's a different connection at work here - the number of D's. Why am I interested in two when I can have three? 3D is great, but when I start to focus on the fact that the 3D graphics we see on current consoles don't look so nice anymore, it becomes a problem.

For the past ten or so years, I played polygonal 3D games almost exclusively. There was enough advancement in relatively short periods of time that I felt like I was consistently wowed by each big new polygonal release. When you go back now and play those games from prior generations, they look atrocious. But the best examples were beautiful 3D renderings of gameworlds when they launched. What about games launching now? Over the past few years, 360 and PS3 games haven't seen a ton of graphical improvement - at least not enough to knock my socks off. I'm getting less and less excited about upcoming 3D releases, and more turned off by current-gen 3D graphics that are starting to show the age of the hardware. Instead, I'm going back to sprite-based (or at least highly-stylized) games with top-notch "pure" gameplay mechanics that will never get old.

It might seem odd that going back to 2D is an indication that I'm really looking for better graphics. But it makes sense. Underneath the once-amazing current-gen polygons, textures, and lighting effects are games that - certainly with some exceptions - haven't innovated much beyond Halo, GTA, KOTOR, Final Fantasy, Zelda, and Devil May Cry. And now that 360 and PS3 polygonal games no longer impress me visually, I'm left wanting. I need stunning 3D environments. I need humans that look, well, human. I need facial animations that push even beyond what we're seeing in L.A. Noire. I need hair that doesn't look like a follicular transplant from a rhinoceros. I need open-world games with beautifully-rendered exteriors and interiors. Until then, I'm going to play games that don't remind me that polygonal renderings of characters and environments are starting to look kind of terrible.

I know I know - it's all about the gameplay. That's true to some extent, and largely the reason I'm going back to shmups, 2D fighters, platformers, and other genres that had faded into obscurity until a few years ago. But if you're going to continue building the same kinds of triple-A games with only slight changes to core mechanics and graphics that are starting to turn me off? Yeah I'm going back to 2D. And I'm not the only one. I don't think the timing of the sprite/2D/"retro" resurgence is a coincidence. 

So bring on the new consoles and graphics that start to approach what higher-end PC's can do these days. I'll even play Call of Duty again, I swear.

I Want More Memory and Processing Speed
I am far from an expert on console hardware. But I do know that more memory and processing speed could improve games in lots of ways. How about AI behavior so complex that it actually creates the illusion (or reality) of reactive decision-making instead of flowcharts or simple preset routines? And on a scale that populates a gameworld with hundreds (or thousands!) of unique characters with their own motivations and truly emergent activity? Or a GTA game with a city that feels densely populated (like a real city)? Or an RPG with a complex economy that evolves and reacts to markets within the game, based both on your actions as well as those of NPCs? Or more advanced physics engines that turn canned set-piece events into sequences calculated and rendered in realtime, such that they never happen the same way twice? With more powerful hardware, developers could make much more convincing and immersive worlds to play in.

New Tech Can Inspire New Ideas. An I Need to See Some New Ideas.
Radical shifts in mainstream game design tend to follow breakthroughs in hardware. Obvious examples include the flurry of new ideas seen with the development of 8-bit consoles (especially the Famicom/Nes), the rise of 3D as polygon counts rose and textures improved, the shift from cartridges to high-capacity discs, breakthroughs in multiplayer games with the development of networked and online-enabled PC's and consoles, or the evolution of the modern controller. The next generation of hardware will make new ideas possible, and I'm incredibly excited about what those might be. Until then, the best new ideas seem to be relegated to smaller, cheaper downloadable games. Not a bad thing by any stretch - this is an awesome development. But its just not the same as big, triple-A games that push limits and break new ground in all areas of game design.

So Bring It On
New consoles will spur developers to step up their game(s), whether they like it or not. More advanced hardware makes game-changing breakthroughs much more likely, and the competition will heat up when larger leaps are made in less time than we're seeing right now. I'm not even looking for some fancy new controller or for a developer to figure out a way to connect my toilet to my Xbox to create a New Gaming Experience. I just want games that I've truly never seen before. I want that feeling I got when I first saw GTA 3, or Mario 64, or Mode 7, or played my first game online. I still like playing games, and I do look forward to some releases on this generation of consoles. But I'm starting to get a bit bored and a bit less excited about games I'd normally be drooling over. I feel like its damn time for a new console to kick us in the pants. I know I'm ready - are you?

Lots of us use Metacritic, even if we don't necessarily think the site's score-computing methodology is fair or reflective of how we think of review scores. The site's greatest value comes from the database of scores and reviews, followed by the ability to sort games by Metascore (although the most recent site redesign doesn't make this easy). I use it to find older releases I may have overlooked that I could still pick up on the cheap.  

But Metacritic is a black box. While the score translation system is relatively transparent, the weighting system is not. If you simply add up all of the scores and divide by the number of reviews (a true mean) you won't get the same resulting "Metascore." That's because the site assigns secret (and proprietary!) weights to each review outlet.  So maybe Giant Bomb's Halo Reach score is worth double that of Gamereactor Sweden. Or maybe half. We don't know.  

 If people want to debate aggregate scores in forums, or if game publishers want to use them for PR or to drive incentives (ugh), they need a normalized system like this. The weights can’t change, and they need to be the same for everybody. But if I’m just using reviews to inform my own purchasing decisions, why would I want to use a score aggregator with a secret weighting system I don’t understand and probably don't agree with? I like the idea of a score aggregator, but for my purposes a Metascore™ is kind of useless. 

 What if I did know how they weighted review outlets, and I could change those weights to fit my own tastes? And what if I could fine-tune how scores were translated? That would be kind of cool, wouldn’t it?  

So that’s my idea. Create a site with Metacritic’s review score database and the same links to the actual reviews so I can dig deep, but let ME decide how I want to weight each outlet. And let ME decide that I want all scores to be set to the five-star scale (or 20 points, or 100, whatever), according to a crosswalk that I customize. Once I establish my weights and score translation system with a slick user interface, all aggregate scores - new and old - are updated to reflect my own custom system.   I could go further and assign weights to individual reviewers.

What do you guys think? Anybody want to steal my idea? Has it already been stolen?