Platinum Games’ Atsushi Inaba has provided some interesting comments about PS5 and Xbox Series X, remarking that their announcements have been, at least so far, way less than surprising.
In discussing the next generation of gaming with VGC, the Japanese studio head shared that he doesn’t feel like the industry is making a leap compared to the current-gen, in particular, he doesn’t see happening again like the leap between the Super Nintendo and the PlayStation.
This is not the first time he comes up with remarks over the next-gen, and thus far, he has never been impressed with the technology he’s seen around – not even with Unreal Engine 5‘s just-released tech demo.
“How we went from pixel art to 3D polygons… nobody could have ever imagined that a few years prior. When that stuff started coming out, people were just blown away: they weren’t ready for it, they weren’t anticipating it… it was just so new,” Inaba told the publication.
He reckoned that the announcements we’ve had thus far have been “all good and interesting, and of course I’m happy for us as developers to have better technology to work on,” as more power could be useful particularly when it’ll come to work on service games, but claimed that “it’s a ‘perceivable’ future.'”
“There’s not the extreme surprise or the unexpected quality that I felt from the leap to previous consoles. Now I see the announcements, and I think, ‘oh, that’s cool’ and then the next minute I think, ‘hmmm… what should I watch on Netflix tonight?’,” Platinum’s studio head added.
It’s worth noting that Inaba doesn’t think a console should necessarily be more powerful to surprise and invent something new, and to that purpose, he made a good point with Nintendo Switch.
“Nintendo Switch was very ground-breaking in how it was able to just to take a home console and make it portable,” he mentioned.
“It’s something that you hadn’t seen a lot of people doing before: it took this wall, that perhaps a lot of people didn’t know even existed, and broke it down.”
This is one of the reasons why Platinum Games has been so supportive in regards to the Switch, launching exclusive games such as Astral Chain and developing Bayonetta 3.
That said, after a controversial first next-gen showcase from Xbox Series X, PS5 should deliver a fresh new look on the incoming titles as early as mid-June, and maybe that will manage to impress the Japanese developer.
