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: playstation 3
On Saturday night, the well-known hacker Mathieu Hervais posted on his Twitter that he had found a way to exploit Sony PlayStation 3 firmware 3.56 although he refuses to release the details, as not to anger Sony.
Says Hervais:
I hesitated a lot before tweeting about it, but a bug allows exploiting metldr, the bootloader and 3.56+. I don’t intent to ever unveil it.
So much for “unhackable” ps3s though….
The hacker will not unveil the exploit, but says “this wasn’t about getting attention at all, or fame, this was just done so the right people know this bug is there for the finding.”
Hervais’ decision comes after Sony has taken custom firmware creator Geohot to court, as well as subpoenaed IP addresses of other hackers and even casual visitors of Geohot’s site and YouTube account.
Result for: playstation 3
LG has filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission this week, asking the ITC to block the import of the Sony PlayStation 3.
The company is claiming that the Blu-ray drive in every PS3 console violates multiple LG patents.
Sony, Sony Corporation of America, Sony Electronics, Sony Computer Entertainment and Sony Computer Entertainment America are all cited in the complaint, says Cnet.
The patents in question relate to “the way a Blu-ray player reproduces data from a Blu-ray disc” and how it “reproduces multiple data streams by way of multiple camera angles.”
Finally, LG says Sony is violating a patent relating to the display of subtitles in Blu-ray films.
LG’s choice, over 1500 days after the PS3 launched in the U.S., seems like a direct retaliation for Sony’s complaint filed with the ITC late last year over patent violations in mobile phones.
