On Next-Gen Consoles And Technical Innovation

Thanks to GamesRadar for reprinting an Edge feature discussing likely technical innovations which the next generation of videogame consoles may introduce. The piece discusses the impact of massively parallel computing on consoles, noting it's "...been plagued by a lack of good development tools, and with most developers taking three years even to get familiar with PlayStation 2's brace of vector units, this must be a real worry." It goes on to discuss graphical effects, from post-scene processing ("allows subtle ways of changing the look of the game in terms of brightness or colour saturation") to depth of field ("The biggest question remains whether developers will find any useful in-game applications for such technology.")