Here’s Epic Games’ trailer from the Game Developers Conference that demonstrates their stunning new engine. Everything you see here is running in real-time, folks- this ain’t a cutscene.
Pretty, eh? All we need now is an announcement about the next generation of consoles- can we expect to see something announced soon? People have been all abuzz about Microsoft placing job postings for hardware architects online, and let’s not forget that the Xbox 360 is coming up on its 6th birthday this year, so it shouldn’t be surprising that the company is probably getting hard at work on the next console. While Playstation’s noble goal to support their systems for ten years certainly paid off for PS2 owners, gamers love shiny new things. But does this look that much better to folks?
Epic isn’t the only company to promote a new engine at GDC, either- Crysis developer Crytek also recently showed off their CryEngine 3. It’s not a slick a trailer as Epic’s, but it certainly must be enticing to developers.
3 comments
That’s crazy-cool. Certainly as far back as 2006 the PS3 was being targeted for a 10-year lifespan, but then again the original design brief was “make it like Hiro’s computer in Snow Crash”, which was pretty much not going to happen then. Maybe, just maybe, this sort of stuff will be a kicker that will speed up the timeline. The games themselves may still be reasonably formulaic, but they’ll look plenty pretty.
I know it’s become more and more likely that it really is real time and not a cutscene, but it is the exact same thing they’ve said since the Playstation 2, and it’s been complete bullshit each time.
I have little doubt that next-gen consoles will have the horses to push these engines. However, I wonder if developers will pony up the staffing necessary to code all that eye-candy AND create a gaming experience that lasts longer than a feature film. Seems to me, graphics get better…game gets shorter.
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