Top game-makers talk about their hopes for Xbox 720 and PlayStation 4.
April 2, 2012 by
Colin Campbell
Game developers have been talking about the changes they'd most like to see in next-gen consoles. Speaking to trade-outlet
Gamasutra, top-level creators and execs like Tim Sweeney (Epic), Carl Jones, (Crytek) and Christian Svensson (Capcom) outlined the advances they hope Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo will deliver.
It's a fascinating insight into the unique perspectives of people who make games. Here is their top five wish-list…
RAW PERFORMANCE
Tim Sweeney, Epic.
"The big opportunity is to deliver a dramatic increase in raw computing power. We [used to] measure that in floating point operations per second. Now we talk about teraflops, trillions of floating point operations per second. We want as many teraflops as is economically possible to deliver to consumers, because that allows us to create the best quality experience possible, and that will drive people to buy new machines."
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Tim Sweeney, Epic Games
"Get a really powerful GPU in there. I mean, man, what we're going to see over the next couple of years on PC is just going to blow your mind. It really is an exciting, exciting time. The guys are going to have the freedom to create bespoke rendering systems for whatever they want. You can have one rendering system for hair, one for skin, one for the bead of sweat on your brow, you'll be able to come up with complete solutions for each of those, and they'll be super efficient, running on high-end GPUs."
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Carl Jones, Crytek
"The developer heart in me says 'give me all the power you've got,' when it comes to CPU and GPU and memory and BUS speeds -- just bring it. Because that's what we see as the future of consoles. They really need to take a big step forward. They need to be at the forefront of what technology can do. The core gamers on these platforms, this is what they expect. You need something that looks and plays well, and sounds really good."
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Karl-Magnus Troedsson, DICE
NEW WAYS TO PAY
Carl Jones, Crytek.
"You can be very successful with a game by giving it away for free, and then giving players the content they want. And if they really want it, and are really enjoying it, that's when they'll pay for it. That's appropriate. Why shouldn't we do it like that?
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Carl Jones, Crytek
"To be able to easily buy and download games on future consoles as we do in the iOS App Store would be really valuable to us as developers. And make it easier to get our games out without an over-reliance on manufacturing a whole bunch of pieces of spinning plastic that we'd ship to consumers.
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Tim Sweeney, Epic.
MORE FREEDOM
Christian Svensson, Capcom.
"I'm hoping for a much more fluid means of providing updates to consumers, being able to have a much more rapid turnaround in between when content is submitted and when content goes live to consumers mind. I'd like to see more server-based back-ends that are more under publisher-developer control, rather than being forced through systems that are bit more pre-defined by the first-party."
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Christian Svensson, Capcom.
"It's sometimes expensive, there's an awful lot of bureaucracy, even when you want to do quite small things. We're so used to be able to do changes or fixes or balancing on the fly, that it's something you'd want to have in the next generation of consoles, this same ability to play with your own game."
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David Polfeldt, Ubisoft
OPEN PLATFORM
- Game Informer
Karl-Magnus Troedsson, DICE
"Give me a platform that is easy to develop for with a hardware setup that isn't too unique. The more streamlined it is with the other platforms, the better."
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Karl-Magnus Troedsson, DICE.
"The difference is too big between the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. So you really, really need to make two games, actually. It's extremely cumbersome, and the result is that they look the same. So that would be a huge leap forward, and we could spend more time making the game fun, or making more sexy features, rather than just adapting the tech."
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David Polfeldt, Ubisoft
"Consoles have rules, and they're great rules, and they're rules to make their businesses work. We have nothing against consoles, but so far, we want as much freedom as possible for the players. we think it would be good for us if it was an open platform…The more players we can reach, the better."
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Anne Blondel-Jouin, Nadeo.
SOCIAL INTEGRATION
"A bringing together of all the features and expectations that gamers have built up from all the main platforms out there today. There are great games with Facebook integration that enable you to hook up to social networks and find your friends in there. To be able to do that from next generation games and consoles would be really valuable."
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Tim Sweeney, Epic
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