As I said in the other thread, this move could represent a significant shift in the balance of power WRT game development, a balance which already favors Sony fairly heavily.
Yu was far more to MS than the chick who improved the lighting in Halo. She developed tools and techniques which were then disseminated throughout MS, and often, she would then go around to the various departments using her tech to explain the math to them. Not because everyone that works at MS is incompetent, but rather because she really is head and shoulders above most of the people in the industry. She's the proverbial Pro from Dover.
Now she's at the home of the ICE Team. Sure, she'll be helping to improve Uncharted and whatever else ND are working on, but she'll also be helping to improve the
tools used by ND, SSM, GG, MM, the rest of WWS,
and third parties to make
all of their games. You've heard the expression, "A carpenter is only as good as his tools." Not only is Yu a masterwork carpenter, she's also a masterwork toolmaker.
Her presence at ND will not just make UC4 better, it will make BF5 on PS4 better as well, because DICE will have better tools for making it.
Oh, and in addition to lighting and other physics simulations, she specializes in GPGPU work, which Sony intend to make heavy use of this generation.
Kudos, Sony. I think this will turn out to be quite the coup.
Given her comments, why do you say that? She was asked why she was so pleased about moving to PS4, and she said she preferred coding to the metal rather than dealing with OS-level APIs and GPU drivers. This would seem to imply coding directly to the metal isn't really an option on XBone.
Well...
you might be right about that.
What am I looking at?