Naughty Dog’s Kurt Margenau is still working as co-director on The Last of Us Part 2 for PS4 but he’s looking ahead to the possibilities offered by the PS5’s SSD.
Posting on Twitter, Margenau focused on the console’s fast, custom 825 GB SSD and the leaps “in terms of game design that can be made”, particularly for first parties.
Still tripping about this #PS5 SSD spec. Like, people don’t even know how big of a leap in terms of game design can be made, especially for 1st party that doesn’t have to design to lowest common denominator. By far the biggest leap in my career. Can’t wait.March 19, 2020
Looking ahead
This comes after Sony’s lead system architect, Mark Cerny, gave a rather technical presentation in which he laid out the PS5’s specifications, highlighting the faster loading times that will be possible with the SSD, compared to the PS4.
Margenau isn’t the only one that’s 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, Gearbox’s 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”.
Dollar bet: within a year from its launch gamers will fully appreciate that the PlayStation 5 is one of the most revolutionary, inspired home consoles ever designed, and will feel silly for having spent energy arguing about "teraflops" and other similarly misunderstood specs. 😘March 19, 2020
Andrea Pessino also said he didn’t 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. That’s 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 Cerny’s presentation it has been pointed out by our own Bill Thomas that on paper the PS5 hardware is looking less powerful than Microsoft’s own next-gen console, the Xbox Series X, and faces an uphill battle.
Of course we don’t 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 pudding—we’ll 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.
