ICE Team Dev: PS4 Is No Longer Top of the Line Hardware But That Does Not Relate To Games Quality

Cort Stratton on why outdated hardware does not mean lower quality games.

Cort Stratton is a programmer at Naughty Dog and is also a member of Sony’s ICE team. Helooks after PS4’s GPU driver / graphics API and as such he knows the ins and outs of the hardware. Stratton has shared his thoughts about claims that suggest that the PlayStation 4 is ‘already out of date’. Stratton acknowledges that the hardware is ‘no longer top-of-the-line’ but that is always how console cycles have turned out to be.

First of all, Stratton was all praise for console programmers. Pushing out of date hardware is no easy task but still we are able to see games like The Last of Us that rivals AAA PC games in terms of visuals. “Squeezing 5-10 years of performance improvements out of a fixed hardware platform is what console programmers do best!,” Stratton tweeted.

He also acknowledges that although the PS4 is no longer top-of-the-line hardware, it does not factor into quality of the games. “The HW is no longer top-of-the-line, sure. That’s how consoles have always worked & has very little to do with game quality.”

“For example: the PS3 is ~2005-era hardware, roughly. Compare TLOU (2013) to AAA PC games from 2005,” he further added.

Do you agree with Stratton’s thoughts? Let us know in the comments section below.

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