This idea that the xbox 360/ps3 era was some sort of golden age has to stop. That was the era of no good RPGs, the worst popamole, the rise of the bland Ubisoft checklist game, the boring "cinematic" shit like Uncharted, motion control shovelware.
The "PC gaming is dead" era.
I know it's been long enough that nostalgia has reared it's ugly head, but trust me, that's all rose coloured nostalgia. It sucked.
I don't think many have fond memories of that era. Maybe some but im not one of them. Around that time I built a very powerful pc, and then i realized all the power meant nothing because good graphics and performance don't make a bad game good, not to mention that most of the games were an afterthought at best or a console port at worst.
I did rather enjoy the mid 90s to early aughts gaming. Great pc games pushing the boundaries. The jump from pixels to polygonal "ugly" 3d, to true 3d, gave huge leaps in tech that warranted new hardware and created new ways for developers to use these technologies in unique ways. I think this peaked in about 2004. Half Life 2. San Andreas, Snake Eater. This is where graphics got realistic enough for me to create believable worlds and animations whilst still allowing small teams to do something interesting without these astronomical budgets and unrealistic sales expectations. Unfortunately following that the move to HD made development much more expensive and many creatively brilliant studios couldn't make the jump, or their attempt didn't meet sales expectations. This has gotten worse with each console generation and it affects pc specs very negatively since most devs don't care to optimize their games at all, nor do they care about compressing their game data. There are very few pc centric devs and most of those are independent and aren't necessarily chasing cutting edge graphics, which is a good thing in my view.
There are some decent games from the ps3/360 period but it was definitely not as impressive with gameplay often taking a backseat to graphics and cinematography. I guess there are some good titles that did well even with that. It was clear to me then that I wouldn't bother trying to keep up with the crazy system specs and I enjoyed some titles on ps3. Once we got to the ps4 graphical upgrades were even less noticeable and even more great studios died because they couldn't keep up with the expensive trends. Well, the market has spoken. The masses prefer slightly better lighting or water physics in a game that plays identical to all others. Still, even here there was some good stuff, particularly with Fromsoft putting out Bloodborne and Sekiro. MGSV had amazing gameplay but is left forever unfinished, a shell of what could have been. Each generation saw broadly less creativity in gameplay, unified control schemes to appeal to cod fans, and let's not forget in game loot boxes or paid cosmetics, all things that in the past would have been unlocked through gameplay.
The future of gaming is bleak and Sony/microsoft will learn a hard lesson as the amount of studios capable of producing a hit game at these levels of fidelity is dwindling ever lower, with mass layoffs and closures continuing. Soon, enough these types of "AAA" games will be seen on the whole as unviable. I do not have faith these companies will learn the right lessons though. At least there is KCD2 to look forward to, and a new Underrail hopefully before my 3 year old becomes and adult.