According to Guay, ”We’re still very much in the R&D period, that’s what I call it, because the hardware is still new. It’s obvious to us that it’s going to take a little while before we can get to the full power of those machines and harness everything. But, even now we realise that both of them have comparable power, and for us that’s good, but everyday it changes almost. We’re pushing it and we’re going to continue doing that until (Watch Dogs) ship date.”
He went on to say that Microsoft’s cloud service will make a difference between the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions of the game.
“Physics calculations, similarly, aren’t dependent on strict timing. The way a tree reacts to weather, it’s physics, right?,” Guay explained, ”It’s bending materials. Well, what if I could run that on the cloud? It doesn’t need to be fully synced. There are occasions where there will be an advantage, but it’s clear in the short term there’s plenty of power within the machines. That’s where our engineers are working.
“For example, we’re able to simulate the water in full 3D, if you go on a boat the waves that form will affect other boats. We’re also able to spend more time giving brains to the other people on the streets so that they can basically be smarter, and there can be more of them. It’s what I call dynamism; basically, the way the city reacts to you, we are able to push further on the Xbox One.”
One wonders if the PC version of Watch Dogs will be able to have a dynamic city comparable to the Xbox One version, cloud or no.
