Square Enix on Next-Gen and Why The Uncanny Valley Will "Always" Exist

"Next-gen" has been on the lips of just about everyone, as developers and publishers prepare for the inevitable next round of consoles. At E3, however, Microsoft and Sony were quite reticent to talk about any hardware beyond the current generation. Meanwhile, Epic was proudly displaying its Unreal Engine 4 next-gen technology and the folks at Square Enix unveiled "Agni's Philosophy," a beautiful demo leveraging the publisher's Luminous engine, which shows off just how good Final Fantasy might look on next-gen platforms.

[maddfoxx]

Maybe they should worry about finishing Versus XIII and bringing Type-0 to the west first. Seriously, this is one of SE biggest problems. . . taking on multiple projects without finishing the ones they are currently working on.

[Gorbenshore]

Agni's Philosophy demo was really impressive. I think Square Enix will make a lot of great upcoming games. Should be really exciting with what next gen will bring.

[-Gespenst-]

That guy actually has the economics of the whole current-gen situation down.

He's actually made me reconsider the need for "next-gen". Previously I would have said that I wasn't ready to move on from this gen, but the whole "moving away from proprietary tech" thing, and the resulting "more chances to everybody" makes me think next gen needs to happen now.

I want another generation as good as the PS2. Great games galore.

[ZoyosJD]

He made some really good points in this interview on the topic in this "headline" and otherwise. Very levelheaded responses.

I kinda get the vibe that he's saying everything will come in due time, it's just a matter of when and what form, yet he won't say that outright.

I like some things that they did with the Agni's Philosophy demo, but they really seem to be missing the balance of things in their Japan studio games as of late, I have hope for games like FFVs13, but only time will tell.

Off topic: I hate how the people on N4G are so hypocritical; always complaining about sensational headlines and obvious flamebait, and yet fullfledged interviews like these are practically completely ignored and most of those who do post are sensationalizing where it isn't needed or complaining about off topic problems that they have no right to complain about in the first place.

[lzim]

goes well with Alex Jones' rant about gaming not able to do love.

One part of that is you can't get close enough in most RPGs to see another characters face or feel them in any meaningful way. Once they look like people though, and animators step their game up so you can really pretend they are people, and if AI can allow them to chat/jabber without getting too annoying, the valley will fill in or narrow to a point where we can start to consider game characters are life like-enough.

[Qrphe]

That was an excellent interview. It's nice to see the insight of developers sometimes. I'm the type of person who is totally for a 10-year long current gen but he did raise some great points against it.