Ubisoft, the game developer behind blockbuster franchises like Splinter Cell and Assassin’s Creed has said this week that its creativity is now being limited by the PS3 and Xbox 360’s hardware.
Says Yves Jacquier, Ubisoft’s executive director of production services at Ubisoft Montreal:
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.
Ubi hopes that they will be able to significantly improve on AI with the next-generation Xbox and PS4:
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. 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.
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?
Although unconfirmed, reports have stated that Sony is already preparing to launch the PS4 in early 2012.
Result for: next generation
The next generation iPhones and iPads are rumored to have Apple’s new System on a Chip, which will feature the much more powerful dual core SGX543MP2 graphics chip. It is also said that the chip would enable four times the pixel count of previous iPad. The new iPad 2 Retina display would have a resolution of 2048 x 1536.
The more advanced SoC will also add support for HDMI as well as 1080p Full HD video playback. However, it is not yet certain in which iOS devices you will see these, if any. According to AppleInsider, there will be multi-core ARM Cortex A9 CPUs in the SoC quite like in Nvidia’s Tegra 2 chip.
It certainly does sound like the new iOS devices will have a ton more horsepower than the predecessors.
Result for: next generation
After announcing a CDMA iPhone 4 available on its network in February, word also came from Verizon about an iPad that will use its CDMA network.
Verizon Communications CFO Francis Shammo revealed the upcoming iPad to Bloomberg, which will feature built in CDMA features. Verizon already offers Apple’s iPad in bundles with its MiFi 2200 Mobile Hotspot device, which does not come cheap.
Shammo did not reveal anything else about the iPad. He didn’t indicate whether it will be the same iPad with just CDMA support added (like the iPhone announced Tuesday) or if it will be a new rumored next generation iPad.
The revelation comes as more bad news to AT&T, who up until Tuesday was officially the only provider offering the iPhone. AT&T also sells an iPad that uses its 3G network.
