I'm just gonna watch E3 2003 trailers and try to relive those times when jumps in graphics did exist and forget next generation consoles for now, they have been underwhelming so far.
Oh, i hear you.
But it's probably not the jump in gfx that you miss. I've analyzed myself for a long time and was looking for the answer why games were 'better' back then:
1. When you played games in 2003, the game looked better than to older one. But even more important: It carried a vision with it. The vision was 'Cool, but the next game will look even better!', and it was true. Insert whatever you want - better gfx, better physics, better storytelling...
2. There was more variety, and they still came up with whole new genres. There was movement. Now everything has settled. Everybody follows the same recipe about how the perfect genre game works. So we get the same game again and again.
3. Games did not try to tackle things they can not handle. Telling stories about relationships, being political correct, building up complex in game personalities, being real life like, etc... All this does not make much sense in a game where you still run around and kill everything that moves, or do some other core loop of simple mechanics. Modern solution: Hide the gameplay and show trailers about an artistic vision that goes beyond what games are. Results are often ridiculous.
4. As you already know, increasing production costs was the only way to keep moving, resulting in risk reduction, common direction, finally sycophancy to self assure it's all right.
There is no way back. VR was not the wonder we hoped for, woman might keep preferring their mobiles to play games, increasing costs but no growth, but disappointment will keep growing and next gen might only hold the downfall back for some time.
But it will go upwards after that. (I've always a bit of optimism in reserve
)
That's surely no popular opinion, but i guess many have similar thoughts.