We’ve seen a bit of what next-generation console technology is capable of, mostly with regards to the solid-state drive. Ratchet and Clank allows for seamlessly passing from one world to the next on PS5 while the Xbox Series X helps facilitate the simultaneous dual-reality gameplay seen in The Medium. But are there other innovations that are only possible on next-gen hardware?
GamingBolt posed this question to Francisco Aisa García, who is a senior gameplay engineer at The Initiative. Are there graphical innovations that next-gen consoles could pull off compared to current gen? He said that raytracing could be a major factor and that it will be “ubiquitous everywhere.”
“I think for sure we’re going to see innovations all around. What gets me excited is the things that are built into the hardware to process things faster. All these things you can think of, like raytracing and the benefits we will see… We’ve seen raytracing already, but never seen the full potential, because we’ve never had people dedicated exclusively to building worlds around this technology.
“And in the new generation, it’s going to be ubiquitous everywhere. The teams are going to work on technology to support raytracing, and how to use it, and I’m quite sure we’re going to come out with some things we aren’t expecting.
“Raytracing can also have impact on how you play games, you can see reflections everywhere for example, which can affect how AI reacts because they can respond to those reflections. That’s something you can now incorporate into your design that you wouldn’t have even thought of before.” How long it’ll take to see this in an actual game remains to be seen but it could change up stealth games significantly.
The Xbox Series X and PS5 are currently slated to launch this holiday season. While Microsoft’s console will receive some new details this month, Sony is rumored to be hosting a new State of Play for PS5 in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for more details in the meantime.
