It has been nearly half a year since the launch of the PS4 and Xbox One but there’s still a bit of a drought in terms of next-gen only titles. At the moment only a few titles have been specifically developed for either console and they have been predominantly first party titles, which were mainly released around their launch.
EA has in fact recently released UFC as a next-gen exclusive and graphically it looks superb, but unfortunately looking at the release schedule for both platforms it is looking a bit barren. Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg recently told IGN “I think you’ll see what the next-gen games look and feel like start to pull away from what the last-gen was capable of.” However due to the huge customer base for both the PS3 and Xbox 360 it is hard for developers to justify a solely next-gen release of a huge franchise title. Ubisoft are one of the few companies that is developing a next-gen only title for a huge seller: Assassin’s Creed, the next title Unity will be released for the PS4 and Xbox One only. So far the trailers shown for Unity show just how much more powerful a game developed specifically for the latest console generation can look and feel.
So my question is this. Does the current approach of developing games that can run on older hardware stifle the quality of new releases? Obviously throwing late adopter by the wayside isn’t something I would condone at this point, but it would be nice to see more developers adopting Ubisoft’s approach of releasing software for both generations of hardware. Luckily a number of huge titles are being released from August onwards so we’ll have more games to play on our next-gen consoles but a number of these titles are being released on the previous generation as well. So other than the graphical enhancements and some improved functionality will they be that much more of a different experience than playing them on your PS3 or Xbox 360?
I hope to see more developers focus solely on the PS4 and Xbox One for certain titles as it’s the only way for next-gen to truly come on in leaps and bounds and offer something that wouldn’t be possible in the previous generation. However I do think that just stopping releases for the PS3 and Xbox 360 is a bad idea as so many gamers still have those consoles wired up in their living rooms. What do you think?
