PlayStation 4 Release Date, Pre-Order, Price & Games - The Order: 1886 Developers Say PS4 Is 'Most Powerful Console On the Planet'
Sony will release its newest video game console, the PlayStation 4, on Nov. 15. How does the system compare to other gaming systems? According to The Order: 1886 developers, "the power speaks for itself."
Ready At Dawn's Garret Foster spoke with GameInformer about the power of the PS4. According to the tech director, the PS4 is more powerful than most PCs. As a result, he was able to create the detailed and intricate universe of The Order: 1886.
"It's more powerful than most computers on the planet, and it is the most powerful console on the planet," Foster said. "With that, they allow us bare-to-the-metal access [hardware free of pre-loaded software]. We can do whatever we want to. Even the head of ATI a couple months ago came out and said graphics are getting held back by a software layer that PC developers just can't take advantage of. What we're able to do is take it to a new level where we can literally take advantage of every cycle and try to make it as best it can be."
Art director Nathan Phail-Liff agreed with Foster, saying that the technological advancements of the new console allow developers to do more with their video games. especially when compared to its predecessor, PlayStation 3.
"From an art standpoint, with every generational shift you can do more of everything," Phail-Liff said. "You can nickel and dime - 'Oh we have this many more polygons and significant more textures.' There's this standard order of magnitude growth on the whole detail of level, but some of the standout things for us, going from the PS3 generation to the PS4, are the shading and internal models. That's a huge thing.
According to Phail-Liff, the PS4 helps developers create more realistic physical objects.
"On PS3 there's a lot more approximations of how objects look and respond to light," he said. "With the PS4 we can implement a much more reality-based, advanced shading model. So metals aren't just shiny, they actually look like the physical samples in the real world. So that's something that, for getting polygon and texture budgets, just makes everything from lighting to physical objects really shine."
The PS4 will be released Nov. 15 for $399.99.