People saying “it was the same with 4K” are really missing the point. It’s blatant consumerism pure and simple.
Viewing distance and diminishing returns play a factor .While some people cite upscaling, that can be of various and questionable quality depending on how it’s being done. 8K content is also exponentially more expensive to create, store, and stream and while I won’t say it’ll never happen, I don’t know if it’ll happen before the full collapse of society at the rate we’re going.
This could be a motivating factor for AI-generated content to reduce the cost of production, but I already think AI-generated content is slop and in 8K resolution any oddness or imperfection is just gonna be magnified.
In the end, though, you just can’t argue with some people when bigger number = better.
EDIT: I do admit there is some bias in taste here. I’m a 120hz nut and while I admit I can’t really see the difference between 60 and 120, I can feel it, especially in 3D action games like Horizon Zero Dawn or Psychonauts 2 where you pan the camera around to look at the environment and it’s buttery smooth. It makes playing Bloodborne wanna hurl my guts out from nausea (I’m sorry BB, I love you but you know you’re nasty).
For me a lot of it is just weird motivations. I have a laundry list of games that sound interesting to me - really good in fact! And that I absolutely want to play, but sometimes that particular game just isn’t clicking for me, so I put it back on the list and I’ll try it later. Don’t be afraid to shuffle things around and try out different things until something sticks.
Lately I’ve been trying a lot of different genres that I never thought would appeal to me. I hate the actual sport and concept of playing golf but I will totally obsess over Hotshots. Same with racing. Was never a huge racing fan but something about the simplicity and focus of Trackmania really clicks for me. And bullet hells. Thought I’d find them waaay too difficult for my tastes, but it turns out memorizing patterns and getting into a flow state while some of the best 00’s electro you’ve ever heard fills your ears is pretty therapeutic.
Try changing the way you approach gaming.
Another thing I’ve really been enjoying is setting up EmulationStation Desktop (ES-DE) with RetroArch backend and building out a full retro collection. When I don’t want to play games directly, I can still sift through them. Download a completed Sega Genesis/Mega Drive collection, scrape the boxart and manual data, fix titles, patch fan translations. And if I see something interesting while I’m doing this that I’ve never seen before, I’ll pop into the game and poke at it a bit to see if it clicks and maybe THAT will be my thing for a bit. Look up some articles for best hidden gems on the PS1 and see if there’s something new, or get into a system that you’ve never touched before like the TurboGrafx-16. Discovery can be part of the fun, too.
I know we’re all burnt out and frazzled, sometimes forcing yourself to play that one game that you’ve been meaning to play and want to enjoy is just the wrong ticket and only puts too much pressure on yourself, further disincentivizing you.