According to the man behind Oddworld, this generation of consoles is approaching a technological convergence after just a few months in developers’ hands.
The last console generation was heavy on exclusives, partially because it took serious effort to port a game from the PS3’s unique architecture to the Xbox 360’s more standardized format. The latest gen is pretty similar under the hood, however, and we may already be nearing the point where performance is the same across both Sony and Microsoft’s platforms. Lorne Lanning, co-founder of Oddworld Inhabitants and creator of the Oddworld series, says that in its first few months, the Xbox One has quickly closed the gap with the PS4’s slightly better specs.
“I would say, months ago, there was a wider gap,” Lanning says. “Part of it was the development systems.” Previously there were horror stories from developers claiming that it would take twice as long to get assets onto the Xbox One than the PlayStation 4. As Lanning tells it, Microsoft has been working to pick up the slack, and it’s a visible improvement. “I think they’ve been improving the toolset really fast, improving the development environment and shaving that curve down … I think they’re getting comparable.”
Oddworld Inhabitants is developing an Oddworld title for the PS4 at the moment, and Lanning is thinking about porting it to the Xbox One as well. “I have to say, the PlayStation 4 has been pretty amazing and that’s where we’ve been spending a lot of our time. But I don’t see a huge gap like there used to be.”
If Microsoft really has caught up to Sony from the development side, the only major difference between consoles will be their built-in features – and even those are nearly identical. We’re still early in this console generation, but the playing field looks even for now.
Source: Xbox Achievements
