Thanks to the advent of mid-generation refreshes brought about by the Xbox One X and the PS4 Pro, the prospect of 4K and 60 FPS becoming baseline for next generation’s consoles has become a very real possibility. Some believe that that’s the next logical step, while others say it’s, in no vague terms, an absolute must. Others still, though, believe that that’s something that may not necessarily happen.
Stefano Pinna, founder and CEO of indie development team Forge Studios seems to fall in the second camp. We recently had a chat with Pinna about the indie team’s upcoming title, H.E.L.M.E.T. Force: Rise of the Machines, and ended up asking him about the next generation of consoles (as we so often do), and about whether or not he expects to see them support 4K and 60 FPS. His answer? “Not necessarily”.
“I think each developer is still going to decide where he wants to put the new power available,” Pinna told GamingBolt. “You can steer that in higher resolution and fluidity or you can put insane amount of visual fidelity on screen and render it at lower resolution or a bit less fluid… let’s say that a current-gen game, visually astonishing as a Naughty Dog game can be, would probably run 4K/60 FPS with new amazing tech features added… if you want more visual fidelity than that, we are going to lose either FPS or resolution.”
It’s hard to argue with that logic- if a console is powerful enough to support 4K resolutions and 60 FPS frame rates at the same times, there’s every chance that developers looking to favour either one of those two might choose to redirect the system’s utilities in that direction. And it could absolutely happen.
For instance, a developer making a racing game might very well choose to sacrifice resolution for a much higher frame rate, while a massive open world RPG would much rather have higher resolutions (if it had to choose one between the two). Then again, if 4K/60 FPS is a possibility together, I’d really rather just see that instead.
H.E.L.M.E.T. Force: Rise of the Machines is currently in development for PC and consoles. A release date has currently not been announced.