Video game graphics already look good enough. They have for the better part of the last decade and we are at the point of diminishing returns. Imo, the thing that AAA studios should be focusing more effort on is physics simulation. That will help the game worlds feel much more immersive, by exponential amounts. I want to see reactive water, cloth, dirt, sand, trees, grass, everything.
Honestly I don't see much difference in graphical power from the PS3 era so I'm right there with you on that.
More than anything though I'd like to see games not be 100+ GB and needing the latest graphics cards JUST because it has more RAM. Let's start optimizing again rather than just throwing more and more resources at it.
@Beefki it depends on the game, but yeah even some ps2/xbox/gamecube look amazing with updated textures and a higher resolution. mario sunshine is downright amazing like that still, to this day. but like, uncharted 1 didn't age well at all.
there are some ps4 games that are downright gorgeous and destroy some stuff being released today. for how much shit order 1886 got, it is actually a beautiful game and that came out pretty early in the ps4's lifetime. people have done those comparisons between batman arkham knight and whatever the latest one was too, it's kind of ridiculous.
Definitely going too hard on graphics and graphics adjacent technology. Ray tracing is a neat idea, it's not worth the franky insane amount of time, effort, and compute power that perfecting it seems to demand.
Like I said, the PS3/4/5 have power differences, but it's really not that noticeable in a lot of cases. Genre depending.
Graphics are the bottom rung of game design importance. Dorf Fortress doesn't even have any by default and it's an insanely deep game with a fairly large and devoted fanbase. It's more important to have a good game than it is to have good graphics.
Graphics don't even sell games anymore, the indie boom has repopularized the retro aesthetic (though there's the question of how much of that is just the desire for games to return to being passion projects meant to fund the next game rather than profit driven cash grabs meant to appeal to the maximum amount of wallets)