Cliff Bleszinski, the design director at Epic Games, wants the PlayStation 4 and Xbox 720 to have graphics so impressive that mothers would look at them and go ‘Wow!’
Disclaimer: Just to clear things up at the start, the expression ‘wow’ has nothing to do with the abbreviation of the World of Warcraft and rather just communicates an expression of amazement or awe.
Cliff Bleszinski is the man at Epic Games whose opinion matters when it comes to hardware and software capabilities of the next generation of video game consoles. That is because it is the studio he works for that not only builds the Unreal Engines but also is responsible for the Gears of War series as well.
When asked at PAX East 2012, by GameSpot, on what he wanted from next-generation graphics, Bleszinski responded that he wanted better graphics, though it was the way he said that really made things interesting.
He replied, "Face-melting graphics. I really want our next-generation consoles to pass what I call the ‘Mom Test.'"
So what is the ‘mom test’? Well, he went on to explain exactly what it was when he said, “If you were to show this console and games to your mom, she would be like, ‘Wow, that clearly looks better than your last console.”
“And it’s an essential step that needs to be taken by both Sony and Microsoft.”
However, it was not just the raw graphic power of the next generation of consoles that he was interested in as he pointed out that he was looking forward to the implementation of motion controls as well.
He termed them as ‘gesture based’ controls, but that falls under the umbrella of motion controls so we’ll leave it at that. Bleszinski also stated that he would love the idea of “always connected” consoles to be turned into reality, before throwing a bit of support behind cloud based gaming as well.
While his wish list for the next-gen consoles may seem rather demanding, it is practical and perhaps should be something that the platform developers should be looking into and knowing Bleszinski’s influence, probably already are.
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