GTA VI is the big release this year (though I personally don’t care about it) and IMO it doesn’t look better than Cyberpunk 2077 from nearly 7 years ago. Okay, the faces look better, but the world? Hell no. I just got Pragmata and it in no way pushes the envelope of what XSX/PS5 can do. Hell, the 360/PS3 era games are still peak, IMO. I don’t need PS6 or Helix.

It doesn't look any better, no. But you have to remember the latest games are going to be completely un-optimized code "enhanced" with lots of AI slop, so you're going to need much better hardware to run it, despite it having about the same level of graphics.

Pragmata is in the ballpark of what a Series X or PS5 can do, with that level of performance. The best benchmark might be 007 First Light, and even then, it smells suspiciously like they cut content that they couldn't get running well. The biggest bottleneck at that level of fidelity and performance is the development cost, which is why so few games can output what these games are doing, and it's a contributing factor for why so few of us feel like we need a PS6.

Hell, the 360/PS3 era games are still peak, IMO.

I recommend you look at GTA5 comparison videos between PS3, PS4 and PS5. There's a massive jump in overall graphical quality coming from PS3 to PS4, less so from PS4 to PS5 unless you look at specific things like shadows and reflections. The reason the jump is smaller from PS4 to PS5 except in those two areas is because we've essentially hit a dead end with rasterization. You can pump up the fidelity but the improvements are so marginal that unless you a direct side-by-side comparison you probably can't tell the difference. So what makes those two exceptions so special? That's raytracing. The reason PS4 shadows and reflections look like ass compared to PS5 is because PS5 can do raytracing. But it kinda sucks at raytracing because raytracing was still in its infancy when Xbox and PS were putting together their hardware for this gen. They pretty much had to do a last-minute pivot into raytracing because Nvidia came out with the 30 series and showed raytracing is actually commercially viable. The current gen is still largely stuck behind rasterization with some raytracing sprinkled in for nicer shadows and reflections.

And that's why I'm excited for the next gen even though I'm not going to buy any of the consoles. I'm excited because the next gen will be designed with raytracing in mind and I think proper dynamic lighting is going to the huge generational graphical leap that we didn't get with the current gen. There's no reason to be excited for the next gen consoles themselves, but there's a reason to be excited about the hardware update.