We have a while to wait yet before any of us can get our hands on the Playsation 4, and currently Sony have made no announcements as to when this console will be released, what features it will have or what the specs will look like. However that said this hasn’t stopped many people from speculating about what Playstation 4 games will be like and what they will be capable of. If market analysis based on previous strategies for Sony are anything to go by, then we can likely look forward to getting the Playstation 4 by late 2012 or late 2013, and Nintendo are already starting to release details about their 8th gen console currently codenamed ‘Project Cafe’. Here’s what we likely have to look forward to.
First of all we can rest assured that the next generation of Playstation games will be graphically superior to the current generation of console games. If you take a look at the leap in graphics made between the Playstation 2 and 3 then you can expect a similar kind of progress again. Bear in mind of course that this graphical leap will be starting from a superior starting point, which will mean that the end result is more photo-realistic but perhaps less noticeable a change.
It’s important to recognise as well that the graphics of a game are not just down to the hardware, but also the software – or in other words the programming capabilities of the games developers. This will mean that the games will likely not right away look quite as revolutionary, as the software developers will be somewhat getting used to the new hardware and its limitations. At the start of any console’s life there are often games released that began development on the previous system, and so the graphical improvement for these won’t be quite as impressive as those initial ‘killer apps’ designed to showcase the potential. The games at the end of the PS4’s lifespan however will likely be far and above what we are used to now. Many developers it’s important to note will likely be working with the newly developed Unreal Engine, so you can expect the next wave of impressive high-end PC games to have graphics similar to those that we will eventually see on the PS4.
It’s not just the graphics that can benefit from this new muscle however. At the same time the increase in memory and processing power will allow for more impressive physics and more going on at once which opens up new possibilities in gameplay. Sandbox games can experience far superior ‘open ended’ gameplay and interactivity – allowing you to do things like shoot the handles off of doors or carve stone with bulloets; puzzle games like Portal can make use of new improved physics for mind bending challenges; while shooters like Serious Sam would be able to throw far more enemies at you than before.
Sony has always targeted the ‘core’ gamers, meaning the slightly older audience for whom ‘gaming’ is a serious hobby. Thus these games are likely to be the more impressive graphically as well as the more challenging and adult when compared to others on the market.
