Guerrilla: PS3 not "maxed out" by Killzone 3

The PS3's been around for almost five years. By normal standards, it ought to be a dinosaur on a collision course with the asteroid that is Sony's Next Big Thing. But these aren't "normal" circumstances, and the PlayStation 3 - Guerrilla argues - isn't a normal machine.

“At the end of every project, we say, ‘we’ve maxed it out.’ I made that mistake at the end of Killzone 2,” Guerrilla managing director/co-founder Hermen Hulst told IndustryGamers. “We felt that we’d pushed it absolutely to the max. We now know from experience there’s always more mileage in the tech. You can always find new techniques.”

“For example, in Killzone 2, we introduced anti-aliasing to get rid of the jagged edges. We’re using that, but an improved version that is much more efficient, so we actually leave space for more detail, bigger environments and more polygons. Compared to Killzone 2, Killzone 3’s polygon count is three times as high, so we’ve been able to find new space, probably averaging out to 40 percent.”

In other words, it's not about raw power anymore (sorry, Iggy). Instead, creativity wins the day, and the results - at least, at this point - show. The question, however, is whether or not that'll continue to hold true until the PS3's successor tags in - which, based on what our old friend the entire gaming industry told us, may not happen for another few years.