Batman: Arkham Knight will mark the end of Rocksteady’s thrilling trilogy, and the development team is going out with a bang. Instead of spreading resources across the Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS4, and PS3, the open-world superhero game is focusing on the most recently released pieces of hardware. A larger world, more detailed characters, and a greater number of enemies on screen at once are all benefits of the greater horsepower, but game director Sefton Hill recently explained exactly why the team is skipping out on the older systems to Game Informer.
"It's not a challenge to move to next-gen. The real challenge is making sure you're getting the best out of the machines," he said. "It's easy to get the game running, but it's about, 'what can we do that really pushes those machines?'
"Obviously, you see a lot of games that are cross-gen, and they feel a bit reined in because of that. Because we were able to make that decision quite early, we were able to be more ambitious with the design and make a real, genuine next-gen game."
The next-gen project is expected to launch by the end of the year.