Lots of PS2 games look similar, too with lots of games with colour palettes being variations on the theme of brown. So I'm not sure it's a new thing, but I do get what you mean when you see the "Triple AAAAAAAAAAA" game of the day.

Well, could I interest you in a Nintendo Switch?

Switch games still have markedly diverse graphic styles (and _great_ art direction).

Only because they are underpowered with old hardware. Just overclocking gives better performance but still dips below 60fps on first party titles. But they had to make those sacrifices because it's a portable console first with a tv dock. Nintendo always had slowdowns from the beginning with nes, SNES, N64. But these days it's just not acceptable to have those kinds of performance issues.

My wallet and battery life thank Nintendo for these compromises.

> But these days it's just not acceptable to have those kinds of performance issues.

Somebody show this guy the PS4 sales compared to the Switch. If you actually believe this, you won't believe your eyes.

> Only because they are underpowered with old hardware.

yes, adversity breeds character. did Star Wars get better when Lucas got unlimited money and green screens?

Having hardware limitations forced devs to scope their vision appropriately and focus on the aspects they actually wanted to emphasize.

one of the issues...i think. if you make a game now, it has to scale to different resolutions for different displays.

so to do that cheaply you need to use some kind of vector art. which gives everything this kind of vector smoothness which eliminates some of the roughness which gives character and charm.

but i agree that the switch is the closest remaining thing to that past era.

It’s actually just because they all use unreal.

4k also requires upscaling or minimizing work per pixel, which encourages everyone to use similar methods.

To be fair, most games showcased were first party. And I believe they each used some proprietary engine.

FF7 and Hogwarts do both use Unreal, yes.