Killzone: Shadow Fall Devs Claim Next-Gen Development Takes Four Times the Resources

Speaking to VG247, Killzone: Shadow Fall’s lead designer Eric Boltjes stated that peoples impressions that the PS4 and Xbox One’s architecture would lead to a more simplified games development process.

“It’s also a lot more demanding, because the production effort needed just to make a next-gen title now is not doubled – it’s quadrupled,” Boltjes stated. “That’s because everything needs to look that much better. It takes a lot more people, and that takes a lot more communication.”

“So it does it make things a lot more easier from a technical standpoint, but from a professional standpoint it makes things a lot harder. The really scary part is, all the tools and all the stuff we developed previously had to go out of the window. We had to re-do everything.”

“We had the engine that we were rebuilding to fit next-gen – you know, the new architecture all that sort of stuff – all the assets had to be re-done, weapons had to be re-done and the animation systems had to be rebuilt. It was a lot like leaving your save data for something new and scary.”

With Guerrilla’s experience having been limited to working on the PS3 for the last number of years, this could in fact lead their experiences with next gen development to be different for those of multi-platform developers.

What are your thoughts on Guerrilla’s claims? Is this increase in necessary resources something you would have expected with the next generation? Let us know what you think in the comments.