They will exceed it. R* and ND are the two devs you can GUARANTEE stunning looking games from, Santa Monica is right below them. They literally say "We are Naughty Dog, whatever we make has to be either best in class or the very best period" in their most recent documentry. They are ambitious and take their reputation seriously. Watch the Grounded TLOU documentry, gave me a brand new sense of hype for their next project.
This is good shit.
I want them to feel the pressure.
Imagine Bend debuting an Unreal Engine 5 project and stomping the vets. I was never a fan of Days Gone, but I remember it being an Unreal project. Bend is an Unreal friendly studio. Leveraging Unreal Engine 5 would help them leap frog their peers. No more "little bro" status. (Shit, Sucker Punch should consider this as well).
The PlayStation Studio vets should feel the anxiety of this reality. I hope it keeps them up at night. The bench squad could easily take their starting spot.
Amy practically did that today.
Amy Hennig emerged from obscurity and dunked on all of PlayStation Studio’s gen 9 output. That happened.
Reminds me of the saying: "If you're not getting better, you're getting worse."
Complacency is the biggest threat to PlayStation Studios. I just hope they realize that. I want them to realize this.
It was recently rumored that Apple is talking to Google and OpenAI about using their tech to power the AI features planned for iOS 18. Apple recognized they're behind in the category. Complacency has crept in. Smartly, they're dropping the ego and pivoting. They're going to use the tech of a competitor. They have to. And they'll likely stick with this approach until they're able to build something better.
There's a lesson here for PlayStation Studios. Whoever operates as the CTO to Hulst needs to call the studios on the carpet and make them showcase what their engines can do. If they can't beat Unreal Engine 5, they should be forced to use Unreal Engine 5. In fact, you can't use your own engine UNTIL it can beat Unreal Engine 5.
I'm serious.
Think of the time and energy it takes for each individual studio to iterate and develop their own tools. And we're still forced to wait years between game releases. That TIME is what's bloating up development costs. If their engines are mediocre and they're still figuring out how to find parity with the latest graphics features, that lag is costing real money. At this point, it would make sense to just pay Epic their licensing fee.
I'm gonna say it.
Imagine if God of War: Ragnorak had been developed with Unreal Engine 5. Yes, the art direction, the gameplay -- all of that still belongs to SMS talent and hard work. No question. But the FIDELITY. That aspect could have been better. And it should've been better.
And when I see games like 1943, I
know it would've been better if it had leveraged Nanite and Lumen.
There's no shame in using 3rd party tools. If it makes the game better, that's all that matters.