Epic Games head shares his thoughts on what he thinks the next generation of consoles should consider in order to make their and consumers’ time worthwhile.
There has been plenty of rumour and speculation surrounding the next generation of video game consoles from the three major platform developers with Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo all lining up to launch their next big thing.
However, one has to wonder what the next generation will bring in terms of hardware and software and how big a leap it will be from current generations. 3D gaming is one thing that is sure to feature, as is motion gaming with Microsoft’s Kinect and Sony’s
PlayStation Move giving some hints towards what consumers might expect.
At the same time Nintendo’s Wii U controller should give everyone an idea or a basis of what is they could expect.
Tim Sweeney, the technical lead at Epic Games, explained how they managed to add to the Gears of War series with each title being an improvement, on the technical side, over its predecessor.
He said, “We have been able to ship three Gears of War games on the same generation of hardware, each one with dramatic improvements over the last and two to three-year development cycle.” He continued, “So it’s been a very good thing for a game business
today. With each new title, there is a bigger and bigger Xbox 360 installed base of users, so the games can sell more.”
Sweeney also was open about how it became harder to bring something new and fresh with the same piece of kit, “It gets harder to generate the same excitement from the same hardware. That is when new hardware is justified.”
That saturation point seems to be where both Microsoft and Sony are with their respective consoles at this point in time with developer, Naughty Dog already claiming that the PlayStation 3 is nearing its limit.
Sweeney seems to be on the same page with the developers of the Uncharted series, yet he explained that the next generation of consoles would have its own problem, albeit at the start, “But then you reset the installed base to zero and it’s a lot harder
to sell a lot games again.”
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