What is truly the point of current gen consoles?

I remember preordering Series X and PS5 before their releases and looking forward to “next gen.” In my mind, Xbox One and PS4 were underpowered out the gate and was later proven with both consoles getting a mid-gen refresh.

With EA announcing that Jedi Survivor is being back-ported to last gen…to me, it’s just becoming annoying that this industry cannot seem to completely move on from last gen and take full advantage of current gen. Survivor was deceivingly touted by the devs as something “to take advantage of ‘next gen’ power” and at the time, we knew it to be current gen only…

The game releases and is a buggy, unoptimized, rushed game. I am currently playing it and it’s def a good game, but I think to myself “why are they putting resources into a last gen port when this current gen version needs more resources to make it a stable, optimized experience?” Why can’t we truly see what this gen is really capable of? There’s only been a handful of current gen exclusives since November 2020…which begs the question…what is the point of this generation so far, if we’re literally going into its mid-gen lifecycle in 2024 (documents show that next gen will be 2028 in the latest ABK acquisition), and we’re still porting games on a 10 year old system at this point?

It kind of defeats the whole “whoaaa…look at the new tech power of these consoles” before a new gen starts and looking forward to see what developers will extract from them. It’s just getting annoying at this point that developers are still holding onto last gen. I get it…the install base is huge. So was PS2’s, but PS3 fully moved on by 2007, only a year after its launch. Again, we’re approaching full three years later and games that were touted as “next gen experiences,” we’re finding out that there’s apparently really nothing “next gen” about it and 2013 hardware can provide the core experience.

I feel like this gen is a waste in this sense. I can’t understand why pour tens of millions of dollars into R&D for next gen consoles, just to under-utilize them and this far into their lifecycle.

This gen has barely started. I still haven’t seen a game that makes me see “a true generational leap” that PS4 and Xbox One could only dream of. Is that game coming 2025, 2026? I mean, that’s 5-6 years into the console. I remember seeing Gears of War in 2006 and it CLEARLY was recognizable as being a game that you knew wouldn’t be possible on OG XBOX.

That can still happen…I’m just still waiting for it this gen and how this industry is still keeping one foot in last gen is delaying that kind of seminal game, imo.

That’s fine if you don’t care about this kind of thing, but I do to an extent. Xbox One and PS4 is going to be eleven years old next year and I wouldn’t be surprised if devs are back-porting their “current gen only” games, just to milk more money from gamers.