The more things change the more they stay the same. 20 year later we are back to Quake 3. Which begs the question, does all the expensive hardware, eye candy graphics, really make for a better game? Does better game play, game mechanics matter more?
No doubt that all that computational horsepower, billions spend in development, and billions more spent by people for the hardware is worth something, and has good application for things raning from AI to crypto farming. In the big picture do people like games more because of the eye candy or do they like it more because of the game play, game mechanics, all the non technological aspects?
It seems like even with all this fancy ray-tracing stuff, and really good graphics capability, in the last 5 years there has been no really compelling game to really justify all that hardware. Instead you get more stupid developers taking away even some thing simple like co-op play thru the story mode.