There’s still a bit of time left before the highly anticipated next generation consoles – Xbox One and PlayStation – are released to place their official mark on the world. However, there’s already a host of related thoughts and speculations from the giants of the industry about the consoles, and it seems like Square Enix is the recent one to join the party.
Square Enix worldwide technology director Julien Merceron, recently in an interview with GameIndustry International, discussed the time it will take for the new consoles to get used to the next generation titles and the kind of graphical output they will offer.
"I still believe it's going to be a long journey before we can sit together and you can show me a game that has nailed it. It's our duty to make progress on this front in this generation," Merceron stated.
He went on to explain that while PS4 and Xbox One’s graphics will help add to a game's overall realism, it's expected that the next generation leap may be somewhat lacking at first: "If improved graphics aren't combined with better animation, all these games are going to dive into the uncanny valley. So it's possible around the launch timeframe that we won't actually see huge improvements in graphics because the developers still have to sort out how they will approach animation. That generally takes more time than upgrading your rendering engine," he added.
On the topic of the importance of AI and animation, and how it will be important for developers for creating characters that can truly engage with players, Merceron stated that he believes that the human eye is capable of seeing a lot of subtleties in a title.
“Static characters will look good very soon, animated non-interactive characters a bit later, and fully interactive characters could take time, especially for some types of games. That's the thing with the uncanny valley - you have to think not only about emotions and facial movements, but at some point we need to have deeper AI. We need to be able to interact with the characters and then there's a new dimension of complexity," he added.
Both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One are currently set for a holiday 2013 release. An exact release date, however, is yet to be revealed officially.