Now that we're in the ninth generation, can we now consider 7th gen (PS3/360/Wii) to be "retro"?

[TDIRunner | 2,726]

2 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Super Mario Bros. is retro

Crysis is not

That's just my hot (improvised) take

I can't define "retro," but I know it when I see it. 

[Estil | 1,261]

1 hour ago, TDIRunner said:

I can't define "retro," but I know it when I see it. 

You mean like what Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said in 1964 when asked what exactly constitutes pornography/obscenity/etc?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

[TDIRunner | 2,726]

1 minute ago, Estil said:

You mean like what Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said in 1964 when asked what exactly constitutes pornography/obscenity/etc?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

Yes, I'm always referring to that quote whenever I say that (which is quite a bit).

[Estil | 1,261]

2 hours ago, TDIRunner said:

Yes, I'm always referring to that quote whenever I say that (which is quite a bit).

All the more reason I err on the side of free speech.  There are just way too many examples, both real and fictional how even the most well intentioned attempts at censorship from "hate speech" or "blasphemy" or "smut" or what not can go horribly wrong.

Edited February 2, 2021 by Estil

[koifish | 555]

8 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Super Mario Bros. is retro

Crysis is not

That's just my hot (improvised) take

It's funny because Crysis got "remastered" for modern platforms and it's actually less detailed than the original release. I don't know what happened. It feels like in the 2000s, things just really stopped developing dramatically. Maybe the bottom fell out on what was essentially an unsustainable industry, or maybe the money disappeared, or maybe the generation of gamedevs raised by games just didn't measure up. It feels easy to point to one thing and assert it was the cause, but I bet it was a mix of causes.

One thing I point to as a big world changer was the cost of game dev. The day I read a news story saying that MGS4 would need to sell half a million copies just to break even was like a revelation. That combined with all of the stuff that happened with arcades, then with console expenses, and with time to develop a game, there is just so much more at stake now than there was. The Famicom was so cheap to develop for that a game released could almost guarantee an ROI. That reality is very far removed from where we are now. The thing that would be an entire famicom game is sometimes not even considered as being worth paying for today, or is considered merely a minigame, a small part of a fuller experience. The expectations are so high, and the costs are so high, did games just reach this point because there was no other option for survival? These are the kinds of things I wonder about often.

[NEET.dreams | 49]

Wii is definitely retro. The other two I'm not so sure. Feels like gaming has kind of stagnated since 360/PS3. Nothing has really evolved since then. We haven't even had a new GTA game since PS3. Does the word retro still apply when progress stops like that? Like if I had a hammer made from a rock tied to a tree branch I'd call that a retro cave man hammer but a store bought metal claw hammer from the 1980s isn't really any different from one you'd buy today. 

[DoctorEncore | 3,690]

10 hours ago, koifish said:

It's funny because Crysis got "remastered" for modern platforms and it's actually less detailed than the original release. I don't know what happened. It feels like in the 2000s, things just really stopped developing dramatically. Maybe the bottom fell out on what was essentially an unsustainable industry, or maybe the money disappeared, or maybe the generation of gamedevs raised by games just didn't measure up. It feels easy to point to one thing and assert it was the cause, but I bet it was a mix of causes.

One thing I point to as a big world changer was the cost of game dev. The day I read a news story saying that MGS4 would need to sell half a million copies just to break even was like a revelation. That combined with all of the stuff that happened with arcades, then with console expenses, and with time to develop a game, there is just so much more at stake now than there was. The Famicom was so cheap to develop for that a game released could almost guarantee an ROI. That reality is very far removed from where we are now. The thing that would be an entire famicom game is sometimes not even considered as being worth paying for today, or is considered merely a minigame, a small part of a fuller experience. The expectations are so high, and the costs are so high, did games just reach this point because there was no other option for survival? These are the kinds of things I wonder about often.

The biggest new games have to sell like 5-10 million just to break even now. It has gotten insane. Thankfully, passionate game developers are still forming small teams to create cool stuff like Cyber Shadow.

[austin532 | 467]

The Wii is very much an Analog system and definitely feels older than it really is.

- It could only go up 480p over Component while 360/PS3 could do 1080p over HDMI
- It only supports Dolby PLII 5.1 over analog while 360/PS3 could do Dolby Digital 5.1 over Optical or 7.1 over HDMI
- It doesn't support DVD playback while the 360/PS3 and even XBOX/PS2 did
- Most games centered around using motion controls which are pretty much non existent now
- All of the servers are offline while most 360/PS3 servers are still up
- It did not have an online service like XBL or PSN or Achievement/Trophy system
- All Wii games had to be bought physically on discs

[Tanooki | 4,930]

Wii (and as such in the same boat the DS) the uncanny valley of what is and isn't retro despite the years it existed for those very reasons in the post above.

[koifish | 555]

On 2/2/2021 at 4:47 PM, austin532 said:

- Most games centered around using motion controls which are pretty much non existent now
 

That's the only point I take issue with, in that wii actually is very futuristic in that regard. Motion controls are a standard feature now of mobile phones and are the basis for virtual reality games. The wii was in some ways the first mass-market prototype for what we now see commonplace in VR systems.

Anyway, I don't see its technology as defining it being old or new; I see more that it had online capabilities, and an app store, and regular console firmware updates, and that to me makes it more of a new-age system than an old one to me. The weirdo in the room for me is dreamcast, which is like a last great hurrah for arcade and all it meant, but also has online games and even a web browser. Pretty strange.

[TDIRunner | 2,726]

On 2/2/2021 at 3:47 PM, austin532 said:

- Most games centered around using motion controls which are pretty much non existent now
 

That's news to me.  

[austin532 | 467]

I guess what I mean is when every company was trying to cash in on gimmicky motion controls. Yes PSVR and even the Switch still uses them but it's not like it was 10-12 years ago.

[phart010 | 1,705]

I think there’s a cutoff. Find a new word to use 

[OptOut | 8,881]

It's all retro to me, as soon as the new system comes out!

The day PS5 launched, PS4 was officially retro. Even the games that haven't come out yet.

[SpoonMan Abrams X | 697]

I would say no, even though we've long since hit a point imho where it's all relative and nothing anymore is going to truly be "out of time" in a manner of speaking.

Case & Point; considering that games like Skyrim are (for better or worse) perpetually relavent because of remaster/releases, HD up-scaling and endless mods, most if not all will probably never reach that threshold where they become truly irrelevant except when specifically designed as such (i.e. MMOs)

Also not helped by the fact on the flip side games are being specifically developed/designed with "retro aesthetics" in mind (i.e. a vast majority of Indie Games)

Edited April 20, 2021 by SpoonMan Abrams X

[mbd39 | 2,017]

No.