I imagine things will get unbelievably heated between Sony and Microsoft fanboys as news and tidbits of information emerge for the next generation of consoles. Well, AMD has added fuel to the fanboy fire by stating that gamers have a lot to be excited about because the hardware they’re using in the Xbox 720 will be able to render Avatar quality visuals. I'm sure Nvidia will soon release a statement saying that the PS4 will support District 9 quality aliens and Intel will announce that the Wii U will be able to support light effects like those found in the 1982 version of Tron.
Anyways, according to the Official Xbox Magazine [via Examiner]…
Technology company AMD, who supplied the graphics hardware for the Xbox 360, claims that the next Xbox will be capable of the level of graphical detail seen in James Cameron's movie Avatar. Even on PC, that kind of technology just isn't here yet, but AMD claims the Xbox 720 will launch with it.
I’m a little on the “meh” side because honestly Avatar didn’t exactly “wow” me, unless of course they’re talking about the environments and scenery because in that regards it’s impressive. The tall blue people looked like moving piles of rotted raspberry Jello and that was far from impressive. Now Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, the visuals in that movie were pretty darn impressive to be more than 10 years old and if the 720 can render characters like that, then gamers definitely have a lot to look forward to.
In addition to this, the hardware is supposedly being designed with AI in mind (thank goodness). Supposedly, AI will no longer have the robotic “mob mentality” that is oftentimes found in most games that support civilians or enemies. Instead, AI will supposedly be able to move and react individually. Hopefully this means we’ll have computer controlled opponents who are smart enough to actually pose a threat and react in a strategic and challenging method as opposed to just being virtual fodder for our virtual weapons.
Another big question is how the heck will a game like this be stored on optical media? There were debates about Holographic Optical Media being an option a few years ago and then there’s also the question of Cloud storage, but most consumers don’t even have access to the bandwidth required to support the amount of data to stream and play a game with “Avatar quality” graphics.
Anyways, we’ll only be able to tell what kind of games the next-generation will have in store for us when Microsoft and Sony unveil the specs behind their next consoles. Speculation has arisen [Via T3] that info on the long-rumored PlayStation 4 and Xbox 720 will possibly be revealed at next year’s E3. We’ll just have to wait and see, though.
