As the releases of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X near closer, the impact of the next generation of home consoles on the quality of games has remained a topic of debate. On one hand, graphical fidelity has reached such a level of quality already that the improvement in visuals over both upcoming consoles’ predecessors will most likely have just a fraction of that of the N64’s graphics over the Super Nintendo’s, for example.
On the other hand, the PS5 in particular comes equipped with a solid-state hard drive, which is expected to revolutionize load times in the same manner that graphics were revolutionized upon the advent of the N64 and original PlayStation. However, Ori and the Blind Forest developers Moon Studios founder Thomas Mahler predicts that this improvement in load times will only be fully utilized by first-party titles.
His comment was posted in a thread about a prediction made by William Stillwell, a Microsoft employee, that cross-platform games will make full use of the PS5’s SSD, contrary to Mahler’s prediction.
Stillwell explained that game companies will more often than not attempt to make maximal use of the full capabilities of a game system. This leads to a better game, which in turn means better sales. Since the Xbox Series X cannot load content as quickly as the PS5, Stillwell, giving one hypothetical example, proposes a version of a game that includes elevators on the Xbox where there are none on PS5. These elevators would give the Xbox time to load upcoming areas, whereas on the PS5 those areas would be accessible simply by transitioning from one screen to the next.
Mahler, however, argues that such a workaround would be unnecessarily expensive and time-intensive. Plus, he points out, PC games are a significant consideration as well, so any game looking to be available for all three platforms is more likely to take the path of least resistance and cater to the lowest common denominator of computing power.
In essence Stillwell and Mahler’s arguments are grounded in the same assertion: that companies make decisions in service of the success of their games. But whereas Stillwell argues that that means optimizing titles for each available system, Mahler has countered that this more often than not takes the form of expending only the resources that are necessary. Game development is already expensive and time-consuming, hence the ongoing discourse around “crunch.” That, plus his own development experience lend credibility to his assertion.
That said, first-party titles have always made up the majority of marquee releases for PlayStation consoles, so the capabilities of the SSD will have plenty of time to shine in Sony’s hands.
Source: Thomas Mahler on ResetEra
