this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2026
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You are not exactly wrong. Cyberpunk came out in 2020 and now in 2026 its still one of the best looking games (especially with a bit of mods) plus truthfully there are VERY few games that push the envelope graphically these days. Like literally the only upcoming releases I can think of are GTA 6 and Witcher 4 which are probably gonna be pretty hardware hungry when you wanna play them high settings. The funny thing is Witcher 3 came out in 2015 ! And I think that is a solid level for high level graphics. Like as you said the returns for better and better graphics are getting ever smaller.
Cyberpunk is the clearest inflection point in the diminishing returns cycle. It still looks great, runs better today than it did when it came out, and there’s nothing that’s come out since that looks like anything but a very minor incremental improvement. If you have a machine that can play Cyberpunk, you can play pretty much anything worth playing today, and Cyberpunk has been out for over 5 years now.
AAA gaming is cooked, not because hardware is getting too expensive, but because expensive hardware is becoming irrelevant. If developers can make good games for low-end PCs, and gamers are happy to buy those games, then there’s no problem here. The minimum hardware technology required for gaming may have become commodified.
I always differentiate this in my head as "earliest proven example" and general industry trend and also into actual 0-improvements and diminishing returns and when I think about it it goes back so much more.
For general industry trends 2019 is the point of actual 0 improvements. Things lke CONTROL, Metro Exodus and the RE2Make look entirely indistinguishable from things released today. But then so does MGS V or even Ground Zeroes all the way back from a decade ago.
The point of diminishing returns sets in by 2007 first with Crysis though. Sure it was so much of a ressource hog nobody could run it at full fidelity but it's laughable now and every bell and whistle added after doesn't really do anything. Everything from 2019 could look like Crysis and that would be no difference at all. Then by 2010 the industry has basically caught up, Bad Company 2 doesn't even look meaningfully different from 6 and Red Dead Redemption 2 manages to differentiate itself from 1 mostly by using the better part of a decade to get horse balls.