The current Xbox 360 and PlayStation3 both offer decent graphics in HD resolutions, but not good enough. From everything I've seen so far, both consoles are like a beefed up Xbox1 in high-def. Not a massive generational leap from last gen.
Last-gen DC/PS2/GCN/Xbox was a massive leap in graphics from the PS1/N64 gen, by two orders of magnitude (100x) when you concider the polygon counts and framerates. This current gen is only, at most, 1 order of magnitude better in graphics overall, in total, when you consider the improvements to graphics plus high definition. If you take away HD resolution and only look at graphical complexity, 360/PS3 is definitally not even 10 times better than the last-gen Xbox.
One really must seperate HD resolution from graphics complexity. Example, you could play Quake 1 at 4000x2000 super HD, but does that mean it has better graphics than Gears of War 2 or Uncharted ? No of course not. Likewise, lets say there was a future game that has realtime gameplay graphics exactly as good as a Pixar CG movie, but is only rendered at native 480p resolution. Obviously the current 720p HD games on 360/PS3 would look inferior. That's what I mean by keeping HD resolution and actual graphics seperate.
So I hope that next-gen Xbox 720 and PlayStation4 can offer a real leap in actual graphics even if their rendered at the same 720p and 1080p resolutions that are possible today.
The CEO of CryTek seems to think that the next generation consoles will be out in 2011 or 2012, and offer CG-like graphics. He said that CryEngine 3 will arrive in 2012.
I can't wait!
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/20156/532/
Obviously there are other things to concider. Small unimportant things such as gameplay. Hardware costs. Game development costs. etc. but who cares! This thread is all about being a graphics whore :PCryEngine 3 will, Yerli explained, by available in 2012. Until then, gamers should get used to maximum effective gaming resolutions of 1920 x 1080 and 60 frames per second. After which we should expect to see real-time graphics on a par with the kind of CG you get in the latest Pixar animated movies.
The real surprise though was that Yerli went on to say that the arrival of CryEngine 3 and a renaissance of graphics programming will coincide with the release of both the Xbox 720 and PlayStation 4. To be precise he said they will "arrive in 2011 or 2012."