GI: As someone who's been working closely with next-gen development, what do you think the biggest difference consumers are going to see in next-gen games is?
MR: There's no question that the graphics are going to be a huge upgrade. You know, people are such snobs, with this "oh, it's not about graphics" thing. That's such nonsense. It's totally about graphics, What's the difference between the first Metal Gear Solid and the latest Metal Gear Solid? Right, it's "wow, the graphics!" There's no question, that's going to be the first thing that people see - they're going to see that the visuals are just spectacular.
Other than that... I think that games have come a long way, and they'll have more processing power in the next generation so I think they'll certainly be able to do more cool things going on at one time, so a little more interactivity. Sound as well, on these systems they're obviously going to be pushing super high-quality sound, and I think that'll be pretty significant.
The main thing, though, is that I think your games will just look a hell of a lot better. I think that Microsoft has done a phenomenal job with Xbox Live, and I'm sure that they're going to come up with even cooler things that it can do - I mean, they've already done some great stuff. You now have the ability to just turn on your Xbox and send a voice message to somebody, say "hey, you want to play this game?" or whatever, which I think is brilliant. I'm sure they're going to come up with even cooler things to do, having more processing power.
I think that the main thing is going to be the graphics, but also important is the ability to have more live things going on on the machine at one time. That's definitely going to be crucial as well. A game like Half-Life 2 that had maybe 20 guys walking around a level, maybe now you'll see 30 or 40. You have more processing power, so you can make more of your AIs smart as opposed to just throwing more dumb guys in.
If a developer is spending the majority of their time and budget developing an in-house engine (or a difficult to use bought-in engine) then surely they have less time and money to devote to creating game content and assets? Make a tool simple and intuitive and you are more likely to get people experimenting with ideas and being creative.
