Cognition Dissemination: Next-Gen Software Won’t Look “Next-Gen” for Years

Anticipation for the next-generation of video game consoles seriously intensified in the last week. Most software previews thus far have been of cross-generation games, but Epic Games provided the biggest look at what the upcoming consoles will truly be capable of through the reveal of Unreal Engine 5. The demo, titled “Lumen in the Land of Nanite,” runs on PlayStation 5 hardware, and shows how far developers will be able to push photorealism with a next-generation engine.

I won’t mince words here: It’s a hell of a sight to behold. The team that created the demo made it convincingly resemble a real game, starring a protagonist travelling through mountains in the middle of a desert to her destination in an abandoned structure — all of which looks frighteningly real. There’s a reason why time is dedicated to explaining how they achieved visuals this good.

My concern is how this could set early expectations for what gamers want from next-gen consoles too high too early, more so than these types of demos did in previous generations. The difference here is how this one actually looks like a full game that can be played, with the demo itself being playable with an actual DualSense controller.

One quick and easy reason not to expect these kinds of graphics immediately going into next-gen is how this very engine won’t be available until months after the consoles have launched. The next-gen version of Fortnite will be the first title to utilize it, a title also from Epic Games. But it won’t be provided to other developers until later in 2021. The first big titles from other studios on UE5 will be games shifted over from Unreal Engine 4, which Epic is reportedly making it easy to do. It will take even longer for AAA games built from the ground up for upcoming consoles (and powerful PCs) to take advantage of the engine.

That is, assuming several developers actually shift from UE4. It’s true that most developers shifted from Unreal Engine 3 to UE4 in this console generation, but houses like NetherRealm and Rocksteady still relied on a modified version of UE3 for games like Injustice 2, Mortal Kombat 11, and Batman: Arkham Knight. (Both NetherRealm and Rocksteady are Warner Bros. Games development houses, possibly no coincidence.) This notably means it should be possible to achieve next-gen results from current gen engines with modifications, given how good those games look and how few people realized they still used UE3 until they were told. UE4 was easier to use than UE3, so developers could stick to the former depending on how easy it is to shift those projects to UE5 and if it’s easier to use overall. I’m aware there are a lot of “ifs” here.

It’s easy to think these graphics will never be achievable, let’s not be hasty. Plenty of games reached the first UE4 demo shown before current-gen consoles launched, and have surpassed it. It’s still impressive, but also remarkably dated with blurry ground textures galore. But it will still take years before full games are running with graphics on par with the UE5 demo with the ever-climbing costs and resource requirements for project development.

A vocal set of the gaming audience was disappointed with the first Inside Xbox showcase for Xbox Series X earlier this month, which led to Xbox Games Marketing general manager Aaron Greenberg saying they set “some wrong expectations.” But the show provided a more accurate look at what the first batch of next-gen console games will resemble: They’ll largely be cross-generation titles. Few developers and publishers are crazy enough to risk making a game from the ground up for next-gen consoles at an early stage, and others won’t have the middleware tools to do so. Initial Microsoft-published titles won’t avoid this either, whose software will also be cross-gen for at least the XSX’s first year.

An exception here could be Sony-published titles for PlayStation 5, with rumors saying their first-party titles will be next-gen-exclusive. This means also-rumored titles like sequels to Horizon Zero Dawn and Marvel’s Spider-Man could be sights to behold, and perhaps come close to the UE5 demo in terms of visuals in parts. Don’t expect them to entirely match it, since those games and more will have wide open worlds. We’ll see them at Sony’s long-awaited PS5 presentation, rumored to be happening in early June.

Some gaming types will understand why their expectations shouldn’t be too high for next-gen consoles at this early stage once they see them in action, but there’s no convincing others who’ve huffed too much hype. They’ll have to be let down the hard way.

The hope is that the upcoming generation of middleware like UE5 will help make games look good while also keeping development costs and workloads down, though that’s always the hope. But asset creation and concept realization will always take time. The phrase “patience is a virtue” was always right, and that even applies to ostensibly frivolous hobbies. Let’s just hope development houses don’t bankrupt themselves by pushing boundaries too far in a quick fashion.