Naughty Dogs Kurt Margenau is still working as co-director on The Last of Us Part 2 for PS4 but hes looking ahead to the possibilities offered by the PS5s SSD.Posting on Twitter, Margenau focused on the consoles fast, custom 825 GB SSD and the leaps in terms of game design that can be made, particularly for first parties.This comes after Sonys lead system architect, Mark Cerny, gave a rather technical presentation in which he laid out the PS5s specifications, highlighting the faster loading times that will be possible with the SSD, compared to the PS4.
Margenau isnt the only one thats been tweeting about the console, either.
Fellow The Last of Us 2 team members Anthony Newman and Michael Barclay also tweeted their excitement about the SSD.Outside of the first-parties, Gearboxs Randy Pitchford said he was very excited about that I/O, while the Founder and CTO of The Order 1886 developer, Ready at Dawn, offered significant praise, calling the PS5 one of the most revolutionary, inspired home consoles ever designed.Andrea Pessino also said he didnt want to encourage or participate in silly console wars and that he loves all gaming platforms generally.
He felt it important to point out that A console is more than a sum of specs and that incremental hardware improvements are important, but abstractions, APIs, integration, and most of all *architecture* are even more so.
Thats where the biggest innovations are to come in this age of diminishing returns.For this reason, he says focusing on metrics is missing the big picture.
I am excited about the PS5 because I think many smart decisions were made that will enable devs to design in new ways, *especially* for expansive games.
I was not making a comparison, just sharing my optimism.Despite praise, following Cernys presentation it has been pointed out by our own Bill Thomas that on paper the PS5 hardware is looking less powerful than Microsofts own next-gen console, the Xbox Series X, and faces an uphill battle.Of course we dont know absolutely everything yet, especially in terms of cost and the games that will be on offer, and, really, the proof is likely to be in the puddingwell truly get to appreciate what the next generation of consoles can do when we get the chance to see and play the games for ourselves.
The Xbox Series X and PS5 are scheduled to release in the Holiday period at the end of 2020 which is closer than ever.