Next-Gen Will Be 'A Substantial Leap Over The Current Generation' Says Epic

Next generation consoles, or high-end platforms, will offer a gamers a ‘substantial leap over the current generation’ according to Epic founder Tim Sweeney.

You'd hope so, too. Speaking in the latest issue of Edge magazine, Sweeney talks in detail on the work that Epic is currently conducting on its next-gen engine, the Unreal Engine 4.

Sweeney believes that the current crop of high-end PCs are ‘representative' of what players should expect, but when the next generation of consoles actually arrives it will be a ‘substantial leap’ over the experiences we have today.

“We’re more enthusiastic now than ever about the future of high-end platforms,” explained Sweeney.

“What we’re doing on high-end PCs is going to be representative of the future consumer gaming experience and it’s going to be awesome. It’s going to be a substantial leap over the current generation.”

Not only that but Sweeney also spoke about the next-gen toolset that Unreal Engine 4 will deliver to developers, allowing even indie devs to create games easily.

 “[UE4] improves art production, content creation, iteration between programmers and artists… One artist working for six months can build a game with Unreal Engine 4 without actually programming anything and ship it, something on the scale of Angry Birds,” explained Sweeney.

“And when you get to digital distribution and new methods of monetisation that don’t require paying huge amounts of money upfront, you have this huge potential to reinvent the game industry.”