Many developers are always aware of the upcoming hardware specifications as these will affect the possibilities of the future gaming. The next-gen consoles are planned to support 8K graphics and ray tracing which will affect the standards for the game development. Sony announced that their future release will have a custom made, eight-core AMD CPU and GPU which will definitely improve the process speed and possibilities it gives to the game engines.

The latter is a technology that greatly improves the visual fidelity in games, as it mimics the way light moves and bounces from object to object, particularly reflective surfaces, and refraction through water, other liquids and glass. Given the proper optimizations, games could exhibit more realistic lighting and shadows as a result.

Sam Loveridge, GamesRadar

The upcoming unofficial name of PS5 (as many have already called it) will be backwards compatible with PS4 games, which makes it easier for developers so far. The only huge difference will be the loading time, as the recent experiments have proved a significant change (from 8.10 seconds to load to ONLY 0.8 seconds!).

But what’s in there for the future?

Someone suggested some time ago, that the next-gen consoles may be the last to see as an actual hardware that people would buy in order to play games. The streaming becomes more and more popular after a release of such services as PlayStation Now or Nvidia’s GeForce Now and their subscriptions. The user can play games by accessing a large library of games from the servers from around the globe to play instantly on their own device without any additional costs of buying a new hardware. This saves the time and money of the user and makes gaming even more affordable.

PS5 will also support an advanced streaming and cloud technologies and combine them together. The console is said that the process of accessing the games will be more seamless than ever before.

So what can we expect from the next-gen consoles and the development of the games? Here is a list of the next-gen titles that will be worth checking for the upcoming standards for graphics and visuals:

• The Elder Scrolls 6
• Starfield
• Cyberpunk 2077
• Beyond Good & Evil 2
• Halo Infinite
• Dying Light 2
• The Division 2

It’s said that the next-gen consoles will be released around holiday 2020, so there is still some time to figure out the new boundaries for creating the next-gen games.

---

Loveridge S., (2019), [online] ‘PS5 release date, specs, games, backward compatibility and more’, Available at: https://www.gamesradar.com/sony-ps5-release-date-news-specs-features/ [Accessed: 12 Aug 2019]

Hurley L., (2018), [online] ‘5 games that are definitely coming to PS5 and Xbox Scarlett, and 4 that might’, Available at: https://www.gamesradar.com/5-games-that-are-definitely-coming-to-ps5-and-xbox-scarlett-and-4-that-might/ [Accessed: 12 Aug 2019]