Sony and Microsoft have set tongues wagging over their next generation consoles, PS5 and Xbox Scarlett, but Platinum Games big cheese Atsushi Inaba has admitted that he’s finding it hard to get excited about fresh hardware. Speaking with VGC at E3, Inaba-san suggested that the next PlayStation and Xbox will be more of the same.
PS5 And Xbox Scarlett Doesn’t Impress Platinum Games Studio Head
Inaba lamented the loss of custom architecture for the PS5 and Xbox Scarlett, pointing to the fact they will both use of existing hardware. It’s this off-the-shelf approach that’s somewhat lessened his enthusiasm for next-gen systems.
“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. 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.”
He added: “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.
“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.”
The PS5 is expected to turn up in November 2020, while Microsoft has confirmed that the Xbox Scarlett will arrive in holiday 2020. Sony has revealed that its new system will support a slew of features, including backwards compatibility with PS4 games, SDD, 8K, and ray-tracing, and has talked about cross-gen play for a seamless transition to the PS5.
Source: VGC