While many are citing the lack of quality upcoming Xbox 360 titles (there’s practically nothing barring Gears 3 and Halo Reach that is exclusive only to Microsoft’s console) and Microsost’s E3 presser, which chose to focus on casual games and the Kinect at the cost of showing off hardcore games, as the end of the road for the system, legendary designer Peter Molyneux, known best for his Fable series, believes that the Xbox 360’s best is yet to come.
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Molyneux chatted about the core 360 hardware and architecture, and how his team was coming up with more and more ingenious ways to harness the power under the Xbox 360’s hood.
When asked whether familiarity with the architecture had made production more efficient, Molyneux said: “You’d think that would be true, but the problem is that with great knowledge comes great opportunity – and there’s your problem.
“If you know the GPU so intimately well, you’re not going to say: ‘Oh, that’s not any problem any more.’ You’re going to push it harder, and that’s what we do.”
When asked whether familiarity with the architecture had made production more efficient, Molyneux said: “You’d think that would be true, but the problem is that with great knowledge comes great opportunity – and there’s your problem.
“If you know the GPU so intimately well, you’re not going to say: ‘Oh, that’s not any problem any more.’ You’re going to push it harder, and that’s what we do.”
When asked whether familiarity with the architecture had made production more efficient, Molyneux said: “You’d think that would be true, but the problem is that with great knowledge comes great opportunity – and there’s your problem.
“If you know the GPU so intimately well, you’re not going to say: ‘Oh, that’s not any problem any more.’ You’re going to push it harder, and that’s what we do.”
“There’s always this curious thing that happens with consoles – you tend to find that the most spectacular looking games and tech comes after the end of the generation,” he added. “We’re still yet to discover where the 360 can go in graphical resolution. We’re still inventing stuff.”
Molyneux commented on how Lionhead Studios was still trying to test just how far the 360’s graphical fidelity could go.
Molyneux heads Lionhead Studios, which will be releasing Fable III, the third instalment in the acclaimed RPG series, later this year on the Xbox 360 and the PC.