How is the 8th gen gaming era in general to you? (PC, PS4, Xbox One, Wii U, 3DS, PS Vita & Mobile)

Dear gamers in the Giant Bomb

Here I go for another retrospective in gaming!

In the last year, the Nintendo 3DS and the PlayStation Vita both officially turned 10 years old on February 26th 2021 and December 17th 2021 respectively, the 3DS appears to have commercial success, while the PS Vita, unfortunately, its commercial is a failure, due to the popularity of mobile phone gaming raises, the price for this portable console and memory cards are expensive.

This year the Nintendo Wii U is going to be 10 years old by November 18th, 2022, meanwhile, PS4 and Xbox One are both turning 9 years old by November 15th and 22nd respectively, unfortunately, the Wii U failed in terms of commercial because of the name wise, concept and its hardware is underpowered compared to the PS4 and Xbox One.

Initial launch dates for these consoles:

• Nintendo 3DS: February 26th, 2011
• PlayStation Vita: December 17th, 2011
• Nintendo Wii U: November 18th, 2012
• PlayStation 4: November 15th, 2013
• Xbox One: November 22nd, 2013

Other iterations for these consoles' launch dates:

• Nintendo 3DS XL: July 28th, 2012
• Nintendo 2DS: October 12, 2013
• PlayStation Vita PCH-2000: October 10th, 2013
• New Nintendo 3DS: October 11, 2014
• New Nintendo 3DS XL: October 11, 2014
• Xbox One S: August 2, 2016
• PlayStation 4 Slim: September 15, 2016
• New Nintendo 2DS XL: June 15, 2017
• PlayStation 4 Pro: November 10, 2016
• Xbox One X: November 7, 2017
• Xbox One S (All-Digital Edition): April 16, 2019

Here are my personal thoughts:

To me, it's an okay generation gaming era. Despite some games that may appear to have a smaller amount of content compared to their respective predecessors from the past generations, which could have reduced the cost of development or licensing issues they managed to improve in terms of gameplay, physics, etc.

I also personally prefer the PC, PS4, and Xbox One more than the Wii U, 3DS, PS Vita, and Mobile because of the library of racing/driving games that I prefer plus the ability to use the racing wheels that support force feedback such as the Fanatec Clubsport V2.5, Thrustmaster T300/TX, etc. This gives me a realistic feel of virtual driving race cars and performance cars by proportionally controlling the steering wheel to the correct angle, throttle, and braking on corners, plus having vibration too, also handbrake and gear stick shifter are sold separately too, so it is best to be played on the Sim Racing cockpit.

I'm a Sim Racing, Rally Sim, and Simcade racing fanboy after all, but not saying the sub-genres of arcade-style racing games like street racing, kart racing, and futuristic racing are bad.

Here is my experience with PS Vita which I used to play back in my local gaming stores. A lot of games had optimization issues (Running below 30 FPS or something) which made me want to skip it but don't get me wrong, I still can enjoy games on 30 FPS, 60 FPS, and above (Depending on the genre).

P.S. For the Nintendo Switch, I believe this is more like part of the 9th-generation gaming era.

Edit: Bigsocrates pointed out to me how the PS Vita and Wii U both failed in terms of their respective commercials so I edited this thread.

I can’t overstate how much Dark Souls 3 owned my entire existence this generation. I’ve probably played through that game at least three times per year since release (including dlc), not to mention all the times I quit halfway through because I don’t like my build.

I always have some reservations about the Wii U being part of last generation. It’s such a footnote and Nintendo are pretty much doing their own thing separate from MS and Sony to the point that the Switch is completely out of sync with the new consoles (I do love the Wii U, Mario Maker was my game of the year in 2015).

I also think there is a lack of signature franchises last generation. Most games were either great standalone titles or continuations from previous generations. When I think NES I immediately think Mega Man, Zelda, Mario. PS1 I think of Tekken, Gran Turismo, Tony Hawk. Generation 8 I think of Dark Souls 3, God of War, Forza Horizon 3(or 4), RE7 and RDR2. I guess Destiny would be the closest thing to a generation defining franchise off the top of my head, but I didn’t play it much past the beta.

Until I finally started building PCs in 2015, I guess the Vita was the highlight of the previous generation for me thanks to Persona 4 Golden and Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus.

I'm curious to see the exact dumpster fire that would result in me trying to run Cyberpunk with a 750 Ti, Celeron G1840, 4 GBs of RAM, and a hard drive.

It’s easily one of the best gens. There were growing pains in the PS3/360 era transitioning to HD kinda like when polygons were introduced during the N64/PS1 era. The PS4 gen is when HD became completely normalized like polygons were during the PS2 era. Developers just started cranking out great games cuz they were used to the environment/tools.

First of all the claim that the Vita failed because it lacked games is just plain wrong. The Vita failed for a number of reasons (the rise of cell phones, the memory card fiasco and cost in general, the misunderstanding of the portable market) but a lack of games is not one of them. It more lacks games because it failed than the other way around...the first couple years it got a lot of great games and then that tailed off because the market just wasn't big enough to support the development costs and it got a ton of great indies but not a lot of bigger stuff after that. But the Vita library is outstanding, especially when you include multi-platform games.

The claim about why the Wii U failed is even more wrong. The name was a problem but the real issue with the Wii U was that the entire concept was a flop. It was underpowered compared to its competitors and the vast majority of its games didn't do anything with that second screen so all it had was the Nintendo stalwart franchises to prop it up, and even those had some lackluster iterations during the Wii U period.

Anyway, misreadings of history aside, the 8th gen was probably the best generation we've had yet. Yes there were a lot of problems, but the absolute explosion of indie games meant there was always something great to play. Meanwhile the highs from the AAA space were very very high and even the lows were not actually all that bad. A lot of preference for older generations amounts to rose colored glasses and the time that people were in during their lives at that point rather than the games actually being better. If you go back to play earlier games (which I regularly do) you can see how much things have actually improved. Do I like every trend? Not at all. But if you go back and play old games you see big flaws that basically don't exist anymore, even among the best games from past eras.

Vinny is right. It is basically always the best time to be playing video games.

@bigsocrates: Oh, thanks for the correction about the PS Vita and the Wii U.

For indie games in the 8th generation era, a lot of them are amazing but one thing that I'm disappointed with is Megacom Games' Power Drive 2000 appears to be either on hiatus or cancelled, as I know this game was announced back in 2015, I was hyped up then 2 years later, never seem to release at all.

That's interesting to hear that you started building PCs back in 2015, but for me, my first PC build was back in 2020 which I mainly use to play Assetto Corsa Competizione, using the recommended system requirements.

@gtxforza: For driving games specifically the 8th generation was not great all around. Forza Horizon was fantastic but basically every other open world racer ranged from decent but flawed to outright bad. There were some decent indie titles like Horizon Chase but racing games are more expensive to make than most of the genres the indies focus on. Meanwhile the Gran Turismo series had one game, not even part of the mainline, and Forza Motorsport stumbled with 5 before getting somewhat better with 6 and 7 but not really soaring.

Even then your beloved Asseto Corsa series was an 8th gen game, and there were a bunch of AA racing games like the DIRT Rally titles and all those Kylotonn games, along with Project CARS.

I think you can make an argument that for racing games the 7th gen was better because there were a lot more high profile games and the Need for Speed series was definitely stronger, but if you go earlier than that you start to run into tech limitations.

I loved the 8th gen. Not the trends that emerged, per se, it was just a great era of gaming, and desperately welcome after the seemingly neverending 7th gen. I expect similar with the current gen once... y'know, everything... settles down. As it is, it still feels like the PS5 and Series are freshly launched and trying to find their space, so it's hard to predict.

@bigsocrates: I agreed that in the 7th gen era's lineup of driving games is better than the 8th gen.

The Sim Racing games that I really loved are:

• iRacing
• Race 07

I really wished if I had a chance to play GTR 2 on PC which is a very good game!

Simcades that I've enjoyed are:

• Forza Motorsport 3
• Forza Motorsport 4
• Gran Turismo 5

The arcade-style racing games that I loved are:

• Race Driver GRID
• Project Gotham Racing 3
• Project Gotham Racing 4
• Forza Horizon
• Ridge Racer PSP
• Ridge Racer 2 PSP
• Ridge Racer 6
• Ridge Racer 7
• MotorStorm
• MotorStorm Pacific Rift
• MotorStorm Arctic Edge
• Excite Truck
• Shift 2 Unleashed
• Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2010
• Burnout Revenge (Xbox 360 edition)
• Burnout Paradise

Also, the 6th gen era's lineup of racing games is still better than the 8th gen too.

@liquiddragon: Very true.

I enjoyed the PS4 generation. I played soem great games, but I was in my late 40s and early 50s for it, I without a doubt played more games form PS, PS2, and PS3 without even trying. In every way the PS4 worked out the way I think SOny had hoped PS3 would have worked out - a smooth very nice experience. THe really weird part is I THINK that PS3 has "the best games" on it. I I were to really stack up all teh fantastic games of each generation I think the Xbox 360, PS3 era was top level - I was at a good age and the games were actully dialed in for 3D perfectly at the point. PSOne = stone age; PS2= Heroic Age; PS3 = Golden Age

But, very, likely no matter how good PS5, PS6 and PS7 are; I will never enjoy them as much as PS and PS2 : I'm old - I'm tired - I don't have the time or stanima. I will likley alwasy play video games, but teh older i get the less different titles I want to play. I think medial science would littrally have to punp me full of stem-cells, hormones, and enzymes for me to play like I used to play.

overall it was a good gen , with strong games in both AAA-indies. that said i think i prefer the previous gen more for the games simply cause at least in terms of open world games they didn't overstay their welcome as often.

@monkeyking1969: Yep, 8th gen is pretty good so far, sorry for the late reply.