Modern Warfare 3 Dev: Xbox 360 And PS3 Don't Have Much Horsepower Left

Sony and Microsoft both think that their consoles have plenty of untapped potential. However, Sledgehammer Games co-founder Michael Condrey said in a new interview that it's becoming harder and harder to push the Xbox 360 and PS3's limits.

"We are definitely in the later phases of the development cycle now," studio co-founder Michael Condrey told IndustryGamers. "Teams have had a lot of time on this generation to capitalise on the hardware strengths. For good teams, the raw horsepower has been pushed towards its peak performance, and great teams are looking for hundredths, and more often thousandths of a second of CPU and GPU optimisations to push the consoles harder."

Condrey adds that graphics will continue to improve. However, the changes will be more subtle.

"Graphic improvements continue to push the visuals to new bars every year and next year should be no different," he went on to say. "I don't expect the leap forward to be as large as the early console years, but the cycle isn't over yet either."

He's not a complete pessimist, though. After all, Sledgehammer Games is co-developing Modern Warfare 3, one of the most highly anticipated console games out there and part of one of the largest console franchises around. He believes that the most skilled teams will still find ways to get more juice out of the current generation of consoles.

"New innovative approaches will move the best in class titles forward again next year. By how much, will depend on how well the developers respond to tackling the most challenging optimizations."

Pete Haas

Staff Writer at CinemaBlend.