[TillE]

While I don't understand people who scream for ever-fancier graphics year after year, the previous generation of consoles did badly cripple PC game development for one reason: their lack of memory.

As a quick illustration, look at the size of levels in Thief 1/2 vs Thief 3. Or the seamless outdoor world of Morrowind, compared to the loading screens of Oblivion and Skyrim. With just a little bit more RAM (say 1GB instead of 512MB), developers could've done so much more.

Instead, we've had a whole generation of 3D games in cramped and/or lifeless worlds with simplistic gameplay. But hey, they're pretty. It wasn't always thus.