14 DAY TRIAL // Naughty Dog, the developer behind the extremely impressive Uncharted series, has confessed that current generation consoles, like the PlayStation 3, can't support a big jump in visual quality, like the one from Uncharted 1 to Uncharted 2, largely because developers have already exploited much of their hardware power.
When talking about the capabilities of the PlayStation 3, many fans have always looked to the Uncharted series, specifically Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, for the benchmark, largely because it was such a huge leap forward from the already impressive Uncharted 1: Drake's Fortune.
As you can imagine, with Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception getting ready to be released, many fans were wondering if that big jump is going to be replicated. Naughty Dog doesn't really believe this, however, as its game director, Justin Richmond, talked about this aspect with Spong.
"I don't think you'll ever see that same jump again, at least on a PlayStation 3. There was just so much power left over in the PS3 when we made Uncharted 1 that we figured out how to use and really took it to town when developing Uncharted 2," said Richmond.
The studio did implement quite a few changes with the third game, however, with the director insisting that "Uncharted 3 isn't just an incremental update. We did change lots and lots of things - but graphically speaking, it's not going to have the same gap [as between Uncharted 1 and 2]. It was never going to happen."
Richmond believes that such a big jump in graphics quality and fidelity can only happen once per console generation, so, until the PlayStation 4 or Xbox 720 appear, game quality will probably remain the same.
"The way we made it, how much of the PS3's power we were using... that huge gap that you saw between Uncharted 1 and 2 is the kind of thing that really only happens once per generation. We pushed it really hard. Uncharted 2 to 3 is still a jump, but it's a narrower jump. And going forward, it depends on what we do."
Neither Sony nor Microsoft are talking about replacements for their current PS3 and Xbox 360, with both corporations saying that they still see a long life ahead of them.