Ubisoft’s Yves Jacquier has admitted the industry giant is finding itself “extremely limited” by PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 hardware.
Speaking to GI.biz, Jacquier said that various technical limitations such as memory space have meant that programming detailed visuals and competent AI has become increasingly challenging for the firm.
"Our challenge with the PlayStation 3 and Xbox [360] is that we’re extremely limited in what we can do," he said. "It’s a challenge for the engineers to provide nice graphics and nice AI and nice sound with a very small amount of memory and computation time."
Apparently, AI “has always been the real battleground,” and Jacquier hopes the arrival of next-generation platforms will produce significant improvements in this area .
"The challenge is that, if you see an AI coming, you’ve failed. And that’s a problem we have to overcome as we create the impression of flawless, seamless world,” he said.
"In general the industry expects that graphics will not be a strong feature any more… Obviously, graphics are better for marketing purposes because you can show things. AI you can’t show.
"We think that the next generation of consoles won’t have these limits any more. Games might have more realistic graphics and more on-screen, but what’s the value of making something more realistic and better animated if you have poor AI?"
Speculation on a follow-up to PS3 has been doing the round for some time now, though going by recent comments from Sony it’ll be a while before we see a new platform arrive on the market. As for Microsoft, rumors suggest that it’ll announce the successor to the Xbox 360 at E3 next year.