Please define next gen game standard...

Lighting seems to make games look good if done right.

Next gen? If the PS3, 360 & Wii is current gen, then PS4, XB-One & Wii U are next gen. PC is by itself. It'll span all gens.

Basically, I consider next gen from a time perspective, not from graphical capabilities.

In my opinion, one next-gen feature is Virtual Reality (support) -> Oculus Rift!

Proper shadows.

better graphics, more destructable environments, better physics, better character animations

everything

TV and facebook integration

so much bloom you cant see anything else.

also brown. next geny'ness is defined by how brown it is, everyone knows this.

Rather than technical requirements, my next-gen will be in the idea behind the game.
True immersion and exploration.
Hopefully VR done right, with interesting game worlds at my disposal, with attention to detail. I prefere a smaller world with more details rather than a huge generic one.

I'd say go for a personal look. If you like realistic style you'll always be compared to games that have huge budgets, so try to have a personal theme running through the whole game.

4k textures seems perfect (please give an option for lower res too or you'll loose people like me, who still sport a 1GB-RAM GPU :D), decent models (no need to waste too many polys here: take advantage of bump/displacement maps and tasselation), nice animations but most of all... ligthing and color palette. I've seen too many good assets looking like plastic toys 'cause lighting and colors were off.

Check the videos for the upcoming Aliens, to say one; fair models and textures, but great lighting and colors; it really looks like the original movie and it's perfect as a survival horror.
Also look at the lighting in the original Dark Souls 2 trailers. The lighting there really complimented the game's atmosphere.

Good luck guys, really! :)

How about games all going for their own unique visual styles instead of hyper realism or pixels. We need more middle ground. Pixels while easy to fit into the budget of an indie company are a real cop out as we near indie game the game pixel edition. Dont get me wrong I love me a good snes style game, but not when there are so many. Realism will die off on its own as it is always just out of reach. This is more of a personal thing then a standard I know.

Microtransactions.

And make sure to release the 4K textures as a paid day one DLC.

Really, just try to make a fun game. Part of the reason indie games have taken off in recent years is they deliver the fun and charm that big budget games lost when they put generic gameplay and graphics over content.

i'm not sure about next gen, but the current gen of steam release seems to be games with style from the 80's, 90s...

Trolling aside, destructible environment , lightning...

We ain't gonna see better graphics than Crysis is offering for some time, good lighting is the next step in making games look good.

Dynamic environment. Knocking stuff over if I bump into them. Trees, grass and anything else reacting to different weather. If I fuck up the place, I want it to look like it, not the place being black for few seconds and then returning to normal.

Clear sound. If something is on the right, it has to sound like it, not a muddy sound that you can't determine where it is coming from.

"Good" A.I. This is somewhat odd subject because every game ever will get accused of having shitty A.I for enemies. Not Skyrim level crap that you sit in the shadows, shoot a guy with a bow and he goes into alert status. A moment later he's just "must've been my imagination" Jesus fuck, you have a arrow on your forehead, do something about it and stop standing in one place like an idiot. In another words, enemies that react properly to noise, attacks, missing buddies. Stealth games are often way too easy when you can just pick everyone off one by one and guards wont notice anything. Too often you can put up a party in the middle of the place and then hiding behind a couch for a while and everybody forgets everything that happened.

Hey. I'm not really an expert and I'm not sure what type of scene you're making but I think a healthy amount of PhysX would be nice. I always love Physx and when done right it can make a scene very realistic.

Next gen of what exactly, consoles? PC's don't have generations.
The closest you can get to seeing what a hypothetical "nex-gen" is for PC, is to check out what is being proposed for the DX12 feature set that is not currently in DX11. That would be the "next gen features".

I think next gen is just like "web 2.0", doesn't really means anything.

Direct neural interface with at least a 1TB/s synchronous throughput and time accelerated game play allowing one to feel like they have played 10 hours for every hour of real time.

Next gen merely means that it uses the hardware capabilities of the next-gen consoles to a point where you have image quality beyond what the current crop of consoles could do in realtime.

Holographic games.

Natural coloration, none of this "everything is brown, gray or slate" nonsense.

Next-gen I expect more physics which seems to be becoming a thing and once the developers get that optimized I'm hoping they can make actual gameplay using the physics, or even better make gameplay to begin with in stead of "ooh look at these pretty things we made, now click and this guy will die. Now look at the thing we made again."

Fish AI

make a pixel art scene, that'll be good.

Better AI, thats all thats really needed. I find it sorta sad that the last game that pushed AI was F.E.A.R years ago...