The developers of Hitman: Absolution say that the next generation of consoles, tentatively called the Xbox 720 and the Playstation 4, will be maxed out within an hour by game developers.
Speaking to Sound and Vision magazine (that's a print mag), game director Tore Blystad said that the developers are already fighting to make the most out of the current generation of hardware and have, in many cases, exceeded what they can provide. Thus, when the next generation shows up, they'll be able to make full use of the hardware available from the very get go.
"Every time you get a new piece of hardware, within an hour you max it out as a developer; that's just how it is," he said. "You keep pushing it right to the max, every time a new system comes out you have to make a bucket for who is getting what from the memory and performance. Is the audio getting a lot? The animation? The A.I.? They're fighting for resources and this fight is very healthy because it will make people optimize the different elements of the game.
Granted, most games look the way they do—which is to say, they don't look that great—on the console because of limitations imposed by the aging hardware. Generally speaking, most developers resort to using hardware on the PC to present their games at trade shows like E3 because of how much better they look. With the next generation of console hardware coming up, game makers will no longer have to limit themselves as much, as they'll be working with hardware on par with that of the PC.
The developer admitted that while many studios take a long time to make the most out of a new piece of hardware, the team at IO Interactive is already ready for the next gen.
"Now people have come to the point where they can perfect the usage of the [current] hardware and there's a lot of new techniques in development and renderer features people can take advantage of. It takes a long time to optimize new technology for new hardware as well because there's so many new features that come along along the way. [Our engine] will serve as a very good platform for the next generation, because when we get more power you can throw a lot more flair at things [more easily than you can now].
"Our lives are going to be a little bit easier for a couple of years now," he said.
via Videogamer.
