Christian computer game

LOS ANGELES -- In the coming months, videogame developers and publishers must come to grips with a new generation of consoles that are expected to be 10 times more powerful than their predecessors.

For consumers, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Revolution or XBox 2 will translate into improvements in almost all areas of gaming. But the leap in performance presented by these next-gen platforms will require more than just additional eye candy from game developers.

"I think [the games industry is] underestimating what the transition is going to take. I don't think it is going to be just a matter of more of this or more of that," said EA Canada's Habib Zargarpour, speaking at a SIGGRAPH special session on game visuals. "We are going to have to rethink the way we are working."

Certainly part of the rethink will be production teams: greater game detail and complexity will require more animators and subsequently, bigger budgets.

"What we saw with the [introduction of] the PlayStation 2 is that the power increased by 10-fold from the PlayStation One, and that triggered the doubling of our staff on a single game and doubling the time it took to make the game," said Christian Lavoie senior artist at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.

But with prices for games running at around $50, it is unlikely consumers will be willing to absorb the increased production costs. So, the industry must find ways of streamlining its production while at the same time meeting the expectations of the new consoles.

One option suggested by Tobi Saulnier, VP for product development at Vicarious Visions, is to recycle the assets developed for earlier titles or from films of the same name. The other step being contemplated is trying to future-proof these assets by "overbuilding" everything in a resolution exceeding those demanded in the industry. While this will add to initial production costs it would give game developers more flexibility: high-rez versions could be used for emerging game platforms and--at a lower res--would be applied to Game Boy titles and eventually phone-based games.

However, when faced with the prospect of a major leap in graphic capabilities, tweaking games is far less of a concern than simply having a title available for the new platforms.

If the introduction of the last generation of consoles is any indication, years of work, investments measured in millions of dollars and even entire companies can be lost if a game's launch is delayed or preempted by a competitor.