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THQ’s CEO Brian Farrell has suggested that next-generation consoles won’t provide as much of a graphical leap as previous generations have, saying that the focus of next-generation hardware is to develop “opportunities in different types of business… rather than a humongous change in the foundation of 3D graphics”.
“I think if you look at what’s been happening on the PC, the generational change, if you will, as we’ve moved from DX10 to DX11 hasn’t been, to a certain extent, the same impact that previous ones had,” said Farrell, replying to a question about rising development costs on next-generation hardware.
“Certainly, when you went from 2D to 3D many, many years ago at the beginning of the PlayStation era, that was a major leap and costs went up significantly. As processors got extremely complex to try to get more and more graphics prowess out of the hardware, the PlayStation 2 jumped with also a massive change.
“I think the transition we’re looking at in hardware right now is somewhat different. I think the transition is much more kind of focused around opportunities in different types of business — different types of distribution, different types of business models, a lot more online, a lot more ability to track and relate to the consumer and things like that rather than a humongous change in the foundation of 3D graphics. So I don’t expect costs to jump like they have in the past as we move forward.”
Farrell’s comments follow those of Mark Rein, who told VideoGamer.com last month that Epic was happy to wait for a ‘massive leap’ in next-generation console performance.
“[Next gen] is going to come out whenever it comes out,” he told us, “and again, the whole do it right versus right now thing, I’d much rather get a massive leap in performance and capabilities than get something today.”
Neither Sony or Microsoft have announced their plans for the next-generation.
Microsoft confirmed last night that it was developing a “new Xbox”.
Via Seeking Alpha
