Next-gen before their time

[Administrator]

Next week sees the release of The Last of Us Remastered - a 1080p60 PS4 conversion of the PlayStation 3 classic, liberated from the technological confines of its original host hardware. We're currently working on two articles - one from an author who didn't play the original, along with another who did, providing the PS3 comparison. But the work got us thinking about the nature of the remastering process, the games we've already seen converted, and other last-gen titles where the ambitions of the developer outstripped the capabilities of the ageing hardware.
In many of the games outlined here, these games need to be put into the context of their times. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 enjoyed long leases of life that easily out-paced their predecessors - but developers and publishers had little idea of just how long these consoles would last.
Assuming a standard five-year cycle, the Xbox 360 would have been replaced in 2011, with the PS3 following a year later (though it is unlikely that Sony would have given its rival another year's head-start). Developers were put into an awkward position - by financial necessity, their games needed to run on existing hardware, but they also needed to be scalable, to produce stunning results on much more advanced console technology just in case Microsoft and Sony dropped their next-gen bombs midway through a game's multi-year development.
Read more…


More...