Hay guys, I got a rant and have been wondering if anyone's thought the same? Anyway I figure this post should go in Tech as its not really about the games, per se.

I've come to the conclusion that there's a definite decline in the quality of game development these days. I first noticed this when I tried playing Oblivion on my comp. Now, I know what my computer is capable of. It plays Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 (both are games with beautiful graphics) without any slowdown whatsoever.

Yet for some reason, Oblivion slows to a barely noticeable crawl unless played at Very Low graphics setting. I had a similar experience with F.E.A.R. Unlike Oblivion, I can get the graphics up at least somewhat tolerable. Hey, I liked Goldeneye on N64 as much as the next guy, but I think its ridiculous that modern games should look just like it in terms of graphics.

As I said, I know what my comp is capable of, and I can only conclude that it isn't the hardware that is the problem, it is the software that is inefficient. If iD and Valve can make games that run beautifully on my system specs, why can't Monolith or Bethesda? Maybe they're too concerned with rushing out games as soon as they're theoretically "playable" to even bother with tweaking the program to get it to make more efficient use of the hardware?

Anyone else noticed this?