Part of the problem is the lack for AAA studios to take big risks. They keep iterating on old ideas that do not take advantage of powerful hardware. The exception to this is photorealistic graphics, but that obviously limits the type of games that can be made. Only games like GTA 6 will be leveraging hardware in this way, but for most other games the graphical ceiling has been reached. Most games have more than enough resources to render whatever art style they want, barring photorealistic details.
The innovation that needs to happen is along the lines of leveraging lots of physics and entities in real time. I'm talking about zombie games with thousands of zombies on-screen, or RPGs with towns that have a realistic amount of NPCs, all of which can be interacted with at some capacity. The problem here is that this currently isn't leveraging GPU as much as CPU resources, but it doesn't have to be that way, especially with the new AI pipelines.
That said, consoles are now glorified gaming PCs. The advantage back in the day was that it provided a platform for developers that was already optimized and designed for games, but software tools have matured enough that this can be achieved in any hardware with engines like Unreal.
You lost me at '... that do not take advantage of powerful hardware.' The risks they should be taking are in making new kinds of experiences ... for existing hardware. There is plenty of room to innovate. They are scared to innovate so you propose that they innovate _and_ require costly hardware upgrades?
I meant in other ways than just pretty graphics. Powerful hardware can be used for game mechanics, adding more interactivity, physics, etc., but AAA mostly just upscales graphics.
Powerful hardware can help innovate in areas other than pretty graphics, but they're not taking those risks, and I'm pointing out that powerful hardware is mostly on the GPU side, but it doesn't have to be that way. Games could take advantage of powerful CPUs, but at the moment you just need a powerful GPU for the most part. CPUs would be needed for game logic and mechanics, but since there isn't a ton of innovation in that area then it hasn't been a requirement for games. At the same time GPUs could be leveraged for things other than graphics like AI based animations to allow for generative animations, etc.
The innovation that needs to happen is along the lines of leveraging lots of physics and entities in real time. I'm talking about zombie games with thousands of zombies on-screen, or RPGs with towns that have a realistic amount of NPCs, all of which can be interacted with at some capacity. The problem here is that this currently isn't leveraging GPU as much as CPU resources, but it doesn't have to be that way, especially with the new AI pipelines.
That said, consoles are now glorified gaming PCs. The advantage back in the day was that it provided a platform for developers that was already optimized and designed for games, but software tools have matured enough that this can be achieved in any hardware with engines like Unreal.