As reported by the Train2Game blog, Ubisoft appear to be very keen to see the next generation of consoles appear sooner rather than later.
Now, in comments that may come as a surprise to Train2Game students, the publisher says it won’t be graphics that push games forward, but the A.I. in them. This one therefore may especially be of interest to the Train2Game Game Developers.
“AI has always been the real battleground. The challenge is that, if you see an AI coming, you’ve failed. And that’s a problem we have to overcome as we create the impression of flawless, seamless worlds.” Ubisoft’s Yves Jacquier told GamesIndustry.biz.
“In general the industry expects that graphics will not be a strong feature any more… Obviously, graphics are better for marketing purposes because you can show things. AI you can’t show.”
“Our challenge with the PlayStation 3 and Xbox [360] is that we’re extremely limited in what we can do. It’s a challenge for the engineers to provide nice graphics and nice AI and nice sound with a very small amount of memory and computation time.”
“We think that the next generation of consoles won’t have these limits any more. Games might have more realistic graphics and more on-screen, but what’s the value of making something more realistic and better animated if you have poor AI?”
And as previously mentioned on the Train2Game blog, Ubisoft have previously stated that a new generation of consoles is needed to bring more creativity into game development.
Train2Game students no doubt have many ideas of what they could do if they could build better games with much improved A.I.
So Train2Game, do you agree with Ubisoft? Is improving AI the next step for the next-generation?
Leave your comments here on the Train2Game blog, or on the Train2Game forum.
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