Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores Game Director on how PS4 isn't holding them back on PS5 any more

Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores Game Director Mathijs de Jonge has spoken about the technical prowess of the PS5, and the benefits of not having to optimize for the PS4, in a recent PlayStation Blog post interview.

Burning Shores, a PS5-exclusive, appears to have allowed the team at Guerrilla Games to make the most out of the hardware available, something which Mathijs de Jonge states allowed them to create a "stunning post-post-apocalyptic version of Los Angeles."

"On Horizon Forbidden West, everything we added or increased was something we’d need to have a plan around how to optimize for PS4 as well," writes de Jonge when asked how the team at Guerrilla Games had made use of the PS5's power during development. "On Burning Shores, since we can just focus on PS5, we’ve been able to charge forward, and we’re really excited about what we’ve been able to pull off in creating this stunning post-post-apocalyptic version of Los Angeles."

He continues: "Another notable one is a particular battle scene that requires a LOT of memory and processing power! To achieve this grand vision both technically and creatively, we definitely were thankful for the many advantages that the PS5 hardware brings."

Later on in the blog post, de Jonge writes at length about the overall improvements in quality in Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores, thanks entirely to several technical advancements available in the latest Sony console. "On PS5, the Horizon Forbidden West base game runs at a higher resolution and at a higher framerate than on PS4, and assets are more detailed which makes the overall quality much better. There is also a special lighting setup for Aloy that we normally only display during cinematics, but is active on the PS5 at all times."

"On PS5, we can draw at higher detail much further into the distance, displaying the stunning vistas our players encounter all across the map. We also support 40Hz Mode and Variable Refresh Rate on capable TVs for even more fluid gameplay."

Let's be totally transparent here, the blog post is a total fluff piece. But, with PS5 supply now largely recovered from the shortages of yesteryear, you can imagine the majority of first party devs will be looking to the PS5 as their sole console platform, or at least a dual PS5 and Xbox Series X release.

What do you think of all this? Let us know below! For more PS5-related articles, check out our pieces on The 9 PS Plus games that are leaving the game catalogue forever in March, as well as Sony thinks Starfield being Xbox exclusive justifies why it's worried about Call of Duty.