Prettier. Shinier. But, better?

We are now exactly one month away from the new generation of sports games making their ways into our living rooms, and honestly if it weren't for getting reimbursed for my console purchase -- I'd have a hard time justifying a purchase at this point.

I'm far from poor mind you, it's more of value and return on investment proposition. We are still early in the next-gen hype train, but what within the information we've seen and heard justifies a $400 up front cost of entry minimum?

There's not a lot we've seen that would even remotely indicate we should be ready to shell closer to $1000 than we'd like to think for either an Xbox One or PlayStation 4.

That doesn't mean the next-generation is already a dud, it's more of a recognition of a historical fact -- games simply aren't huge leaps ahead at console launches for the most part, or at least they pale in comparison to what comes a couple of years later.

Not since the day we went from the PlayStation to PlayStation 2 have we had a great launch day value proposition to upgrade instantly. In fact, your return on investment will likely be even less than the PS2 to PS3 upgrade (or Xbox to Xbox 360).

The simple fact is: consoles were already pretty powerful, and companies looking to take full advantage of the additional power and detail will probably take a couple of years to really explore what the additional detail can do for their games.

For us, this presents an interesting conundrum on what to do with our reviews of the games which are coming. Realistic standards of expectations have to be established so we can judge games both fairly and accurately. To me, I've put considerable amounts of time into trying to make sure our review scale works the past couple of years -- so this leap is especially important to set a good baseline for the next-generation of sports games.

A basic, and realistic checklist, of what to expect on next-gen initially is something like:

• Better graphics, some improvements to the presentation.
• Better audio all around.
• Some gameplay tweaks with better AI and player interactions mainly, but largely a game which feels similar to what you've been playing.
• Likely no major new modes, at best a straight port from the prior generation -- at worst a step backwards. We want to see feature parity though.

This isn't a knock at developers -- it's a realistic standard for which we plan to judge launch day games in our reviews here at Operation Sports. This is something we've had editorial meetings about to try to figure out in order to find a good base line to judge next-gen games by.

In short: we're not expecting miraculous improvements just yet. That comes later.

For now, enjoy the glimpse into what the future holds -- the shinier, prettier, and yes, better future of sports video games.

What are your expectations of next-gen sports video games?