The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X will be launching this holiday season, if everything goes according to plan. Much has been said about what the next generation of gaming can offer, from improved graphics to faster loading times and higher resolutions. But will next gen consoles be capable of all this and more?

GamingBolt spoke to Francisco Aisa about the same. Aisa has worked as a gameplay programmer at Rockstar Games for such titles as Grand Theft Auto 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2. He also worked on The Last of Us Part 2 at Naughty Dog, before shifting to The Initiative as a senior gameplay engineer. When asked about whether the trend of photo-realistic graphics will continue and if next-gen can deliver on that promise, Aisa replied, “Yes, absolutely.

“If you look at The Last of Us Part 2, you just look at their facial expressions, they are so good, some of them blow my mind. And remember, I saw them every day, they still blow my mind. That sort of quality is going to get even higher. A lot of it is part of the amount of data we are going to be able to deal with. So I do think we will see a trend not just of bigger worlds, but more believable ones with more believable characters as well.”

Aisa’s sentiment echoes one that many have sought since video game graphics made less monumental leaps forwards as generations went by. That is the desire for worlds that are more fleshed out with improved AI for characters and more depth especially since the processing power can accommodate this. Time will tell if upcoming next-gen games will do all this – after all, game development is a marathon more than a sprint, especially as developers become more acquainted with the hardware.

One of the major announcements out of Microsoft’s E3 2018 press conference was the addition of five new studios to their internal roster, no doubt in a move to help alleviate the common concern that their Xbox Platform has lacked a focus on first party titles when compared to the competition, and the few they did have felt like they were being factory farmed in more and more rote ways. Windows Central caught up with Xbox Corporate VP Mike Ybarra at the show to chat more about, among other things, what fate awaits these studios.

Thankfully, according to Ybarra the entire point of these formations and acquisitions was to have their creative ideas come into the Microsoft ecosystem, instead of trying to bend them into what they want. The Xbox team wants to globalize and diversify their approach to games, and sees studios like Ninja Theory, Compulsion Games, Undead Labs, Playground Games and their newly formed Santa Monica studio, The Initiative, as helping bring that to their platforms. 

“Creative freedom was one of the most important pillars in the conversations we had with these developers. We’re not dictating what they do and when they do it. We want creative ideas from them. We picked those studios because they’ve shown they can create those ideas and those experiences that customers want,” he stated.

While many gamers have been excited to see Microsoft’s apparent commitment to improving their first party production, Ybarra says they only didn’t do it earlier because Phil Spencer wanted to focus on perceived hardware and services problems. I have to imagine that the huge steps they’ve made on those fronts with Xbox One X and Games Pass have allowed them to move onto these other problems.