Graphical Leap From This Gen to Next Won't Be As Big As Previous Console Transition, According to BioWare

In an interview with OXM UK, BioWare art and animation director Neil Thompson stated that he believes that the graphical leap from this generation to the next generation of consoles will not be as large as the last transition. He said,

“Clearly we still hammer up against the limitations of the hardware on a daily basis and if you push those parameters back, as I’m sure the next-gen will do, we’ll hit them again.

“I think the main thing is that the industry doesn’t get itself into a corner where it becomes economically unviable to make a game. The last technology iteration caught folks by surprise – especially the number of people you needed and the skillset jump that was required to do the work that people expected.

“In the last generation the perception was that it was going to be a ten times improvement over the previous generation. For the next generation there will be a big leap, but it won’t be as obvious.

“People will do things in a cleverer fashion. I think they’ll be better prepared, shall we say – but we can’t see a ten-fold team increase again as the budgets would just be ridiculous. You’d have to sell 20-30 million copies before you broke even.”

Do you agree with Neil Thompson’s opinion about the graphical leap from this gen to next? Comment below…