With the latest information surrounding Nintendo NX, it appears the console will indeed be more powerful than its competition. Although that should not come as a surprising revelation, there is a danger in it.
The biggest problem with the advent of more powerful gaming hardware is the effect on art creation both in detailing and quantity. Therefore, there is a need to handle the issue of making Nintendo NX more powerful carefully.
Increased art detail and quantity costs more money when it comes to development. To some level, the money spend to create high-end visuals surpasses what the market can support, according to Forbes.
According to Trusted Reviews, the problem happened many times in the last 10 years as a huge number of studios fell on the way when the cost of developing these types of games skyrocketed. When hardware becomes more potent, it tends to force developers to show that off visually.
However, there is an option that is still visual viable although not in a convectional film-based way. Towards the end of the PS2 period, Genki created "Demon Chaos." The game was a fascinating title and instead of making its visual more photo-realistic, the developer chose to take a different route to cause a change.
As opposed to concentrating on a few high-end characters, the game enabled the development of 65,535 basic ones, with the visual effect emanating from the player's interaction with a veritable army rather than something more scripted and cinematic.
Even though the game was not entire successful or that good, it indicated that taking functional route to impart a visual effect was an alternative and one that did not depend on very expensive beastly art production.
If Nintendo could emulate this, as they possess a peerless insight of gaming functionality, then there could be a solution to this unsustainable graphic arms race.