A developer has come out and commented on the next generation of hardware, stating that claims of the PS3 being more powerful than the 360 are unfounded. He says they have their differences, but results are the same.

Denis Dyack, president of Silicon Knights (and currently working on Too Human), has come out and spoken on the power of each of the consoles. While the PS3 is perceived to be the better console, it is actually just as powerful as the 360; no more, no less, from a developers point of view at least.

“The 360 and the PS 3 are equal in power in my eyes. Maybe the PS 3 has more processing power. The 360 has more available memory. It’s pretty much a net, net. The public perception of the PS 3 was that it was much more powerful. To developers, they look even.”

A potential blow to Sony who like to boast about their console being two times more powerful? Well, quite possibly, because it was one thing that Sony had hoped would give them an edge over competitiors. If multiplatform games are exactly the same (no improvement on graphics, gameplay, load speeds and so on) then why would anyone spend $599 (£450) on a PS3, when the 360 does it for considerably less dosh? The one thing Sony do have up their sleeve though is HDMI output, offering better visuals all round. Oh wait…

Dyack says that he believes that HDMI cable interfaces will make a difference in visual quality. That gives an edge to the PS 3. But he noted that authoring games in 720P resolution “looks nice.” He adds, “It is questionable if there is a difference between 1080P and 720P. All of our games are likely to be 720P because of the faster refresh rates. There are all kinds of trade-offs. It takes a lot more RAM to do 1080P. You’ll reserve RAM for the textures. 720P is just less pixels. There is definitely a huge difference from 720P and analog.”

I think that the idea of producing games in 720p will be used for many years to come. At least until developers have spent time with the system (360 included) and found ways to save space on the texture side of things to free up more RAM. At least one developer has already given up producing games in 1080p, due to the problem of frame rates and the like. Also, bearing in mind that 1080p isn’t common in anything but monitors at the moment, what would be the point in wasting man-power on developing something so few would benefit from.

Taking a step away from the on-going battle of “my console’s better than yours”, Dyack also mentions just how expensive the industry is getting.

“It’s starting to approach the cost of small budget movies,” Dyack said. “It will be there by the end of this generation.” […] Dyack says the costs of development are rising every year. “It is more risky for everybody,” he said.

It’s worrying that developing games is beginning to cost such a high amount. For small developers, who may not have publisher backing, they might be put off the idea of developing new games, leaving us with EA drip-feeding the population with the same churned out bullshit that we get year in, year out. Bear that in mind if you buy pirated copies of games.

Interestingly, he also hates E3; every gamers dream, every developers nightmare. He used to enjoy it, but blames the press for being too critical on content that isn’t even finished yet. (Wouldn’t have anything to do with their poor showing of Too Human at E3 would it?)

Dyack was suitably delighted when news came through of E3’s demise

Thanks to steggles for submitting.