Killzone 2 Producer Says PS3 Has "A Lot More Under The Hood"

Killzone 2

It's easy to see that most developers are taking big strides in regards to PlayStation 3 development, and whereas we mostly heard complaints when the system first released (which is to be expected), we're now hearing more praise and compliments. All this really means is that devs and designers are starting to understand what's "under the hood," as one Killzone 2 producer clearly stated.

The concept of "hidden power" in PlayStation consoles a hotly debated one in gaming circles; one side believes there's truth to the term, as it's clear PS2 games (and PS3 games) did and will get significantly better-looking over time. Of course, if you compare the launch titles of the PS2 to the likes of God of War and Final Fantasy XII, it's tough to say there wasn't any "hidden power" in that system. And what about the PS3? Same concept? According to a ThreeSpeech interview with Killzone 2 producer Steven Ter Heide, the answer is a big yes. First, here's what he had to say about some of the hardware specifics:

"I think a lot of the tricks we’re doing are down to the hardware – all the post-processing effects. There are a huge number of SPUs in there so we can just offload a lot of things. All the physics is handled by the SPUs, all the post-processing… we can really push the SPUs so we have a lot of processing power to make the image look the way it looks. You want to have particle effects, you want physics going on – all that takes a lot of processing. Also in terms of storage capacity – to bring this kind of detail to life it takes a lot of data. We’ve mentioned this before but you really need Blu-ray to pull off this kind of thing, because of the sheer amount of data we’re chewing through to create these levels. The one you just played through is 2.5GB worth of data."

He goes on to say the PS3 is "futureproof" and that "there's more power under the hood that people want to explore," and when they try to unlock that power, good things will happen. We've already seen some early examples of what the PS3 can do, and given the supposed 10-year lifespan of the system, we expect to see a lot more. Nothing wrong with advancement...nothing at all.

9/15/2008 Ben Dutka

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