While Sony and Microsoft are yet to reveal release dates or exact specifications for the PS5 and Xbox Scarlett respectively, PlatinumGames boss Atsushi Inaba believes they’re ‘more of the same’. In a recent interview Inaba stated that the PS5 and Xbox Scarlett mimic existing tech from PCs, just repurposed. Considering that the PS4 and Xbox One share similarities with each other as well as PCs, this should come as no surprise. More so when you consider both the PS5 and Xbox Scarlett will ship with backwards compatibility support.
“It’s OK. And by that I mean, I’m sure that things will move faster, graphics will be better and maybe it will be easier with less wait times… that’s good for the consumer,” he said to Video Games Chronicle. “But it’s more of the same, quite frankly, compared to previous generations. It’s nothing that’s disruptive or super innovative, if you ask me.”
”Game hardware used to be about custom chips that you couldn’t do on PCs. Now you look at it and they’re just grabbing stuff that already exists,” he continued. “The Switch, for example, is a Tegra which already existed and the other consoles are using very similar chips and graphics cards to what you see on PCs, but maybe slightly updated. None of it seems unique to that hardware anymore.”
“It’s hard to get excited about stuff that kind of already exists, but has been repurposed to a certain degree,” he said.
That said, Inaba reserves his excitement for the cloud.
”That’s why for me, things like cloud platforms represent innovation and something very, very different – they’re platforms that excite me and where I feel there is a lot more innovation happening,”he said.
Considering that there are a host of operational issues with making cloud game streaming a reality for a large portion of the gaming populace and that a majority of innovation is taking place on the software side of the business, it will be interesting to see if Platinum ends up supporting Project xCloud, Google Stadia, or PS Now in any fashion.
