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Development costs for AAA games will be more “intensive” for the PlayStation 5, according to Jim Ryan, CEO and president of Sony Interactive Entertainment (via GameSpot).
We saw the Unreal Engine 5 tech demo titled “Lumen in the Land of Nanite,” and we saw how powerful all those little triangles could be for developers’ ambitions. Lumen is one of these new technologies which realises “a fully dynamic global illumination solution that immediately reacts to scene and light changes.” That’s not forgetting what Nanite can do, which is deliver “virtualised micropolygon geometry, which frees artists to create as much geometric detail as the eye can see.” Then, the engine is able to “scale” these “movie quality” assets to run smoothly on any device.
If your head is spinning, then you’re not alone. The possibilities of this tech are astounding, and it sounds like the cost of developing for the PlayStation 5 might be a little nauseating, too. “I think, to the extent that the technology enables the graphics side of it to become more interesting and life-like, [the games] will become slightly more human intensive and capital intensive to produce,” said Jim Ryan to GamesIndustry.biz.
According to the CEO, we will see an “increase in development budgets,” but it’s not going to be “massive.” Sony is aiming for a faster shift between PlayStation generations than before, and this is so the company has “a fertile install base for people who make games to be able to monetise against.” As a result, Ryan expects that the expense development will be compensated with the PlayStation 5’s early adopters. “If we can keep pace with a likely increase in development costs, then the industry can continue to prosper,” he concluded.
The PlayStation 5 hits the shelves in holiday 2020.
