EA’s Labels boss Frank Gibeau has told CVG that he can’t even imagine what the PS4 could possibly offer over the PS3, and that he would like to see current-generation consoles last a while longer.
“It’s hard for me to conceive what you would do on a PlayStation 4,” Gibeau said. “The displays are already 1080p, you’re already connected to the internet… You could make it faster, you could have more [polygons] and you could up the graphics a little bit…but at what cost?”
Except, of course, only a handful of PS3 games run at native 1080p, and current generation consoles are never going to support full HD across the board. Gibeau also points out that games like Battlefield 3 prove that there is still some juice to be squeezed from current generation hardware. Obviously Gibeau didn’t get the memo about the game running at 30 frames per second and 720p on console.
Without a doubt, there is room for more powerful hardware in the console gaming space. However, Gibeau may have a point in that it’s simply not worth transitioning an entire to console generation just to increase pixels and polygons – at least not from a business perspective.
“The way the business used to run where you had these big console transitions just isn’t happening any more. They’re much longer, the online capabilities are making the way customers interact within the audience very different from when we went from PSOne to PS2. I think that [the age of] big, abrupt change in consoles where we all pile in on top of each other and everything changes overnight is just gone,” said Gibeua.
“One of the things that we like is that the technology is consistent, and we believe that there are still things that you can do on these systems… we haven’t quite squeezed the last ounce of hardware horsepower out of these things, as you can see with Battlefield 3. Frostbite 2 technology coming in can do some really interesting things that nobody is able to do, and you see some great stuff coming from our competitors too,” said Gibeau.
Of course, you could flip it around and use the Frostbite 2 engine as a perfect example of why console hardware is beginning to show its age, in comparison to gaming PCs which will be able to run the game in full HD+ at well over 30 frames per second.
Having said all that, Gibeau is excited about the announcement of the WiiU, saying that he thinks it will “really rev up their business for the HD side.”
EA “can’t conceive” what the PS4 could offer << Comments and views
Loading ...
