Criterion Games is aiming for the world with Burnout 5, starting with your PlayStation 3. The company is taking its love of speed, explosions, and fire to the next generation in order to create some of the craziest and most beautiful crashes in gaming. After all, as one of the team members put it: "A f***ed-up car is a beautiful thing."
"If you couldn't make a great game on the PlayStation 2, you can't make a good game on the PlayStation 3," says Alex Ward, the director of game design for Burnout 5.
While the previous Burnouts have all built on the technology of their predecessors, Burnout 5 is going back to page one. "For us, this is a total reset from one generation to the other," says Ward. "One of our goals is to be truly 'next generation,' and that means starting from the ground up."
One reason for that mind-set: This is Criterion's first time around with the new system, and the team doesn't want to make incorrect assumptions about its capabilities. Alex Fry, the game's technical director, explains: "The first thing you have to do when you get new hardware is learn it. Beating it into submission doesn't make sense; you have to work with it." By the team's estimate, just one of the machine's seven synergistic processing elements (SPEs) has more power in it than the entire emotion engine of the PS2.
But learning the technology is only part of the reason. "We know the audience is expecting a leap, and we don't want to disappoint our audience," Ward says. "If, the first time you see the cars wreck [in Burnout 5], you don't think, 'That's why I bought the PlayStation 3; the next gen is here,'--if you think, 'Eh, it's a little better,' or 'It did that last time,'--then we haven't gotten there. So that's why the first thing we have to nail is the crashing."
A brutal reset, a smarter story, and a return to what made it great—Mortal Kombat (2011) revived the series.
Underrated comment. I used to hate that game so much that any time my siblings asked me to play it, I just picked Hom and shut myself down mid-match.
15 years went by so fast. I remember playing through the story mode at launch.
Why did Sony push Shuhei Yoshida out of his role leading PlayStation's first-party games? He'd overseen some huge successes. Well, apparently, he didn't listen.
Yeah I can see that for sure. Shuhei Yoshida should have been in charge not Jim Ryan.
It should be free highway for him now.. but Sony are too stupid to see this, especially that moron Hulst
Wtf why all that anger. PlayStation is dominating on every level. Besides I think there is a little more to hiring a CEO than just who is available. Its not like its a athlete your team wants to buy.
S2Killinit
live service failures, chasing trends, closing studios. yes dominating
Sony is Dominating because competition is not existing. Compared to previous gens this is the poorest in terms of software offerings.
Last gen we got Uncharted 4 Lost Legacy and TLOU2 from ND alone.
This is so far a remasters gen, with no competition to lift up the quality
..."PlayStation is dominating on every level"....
...Really???
PlayStation are soon heading into a new generation in the not to distant future. They currently have the worst customer satisfaction they've ever sustained as a company. The company is heading for a huge crash while at the same time they'll need to be planning how they are going to try and win back that favour and the build up to their new releases.
Yes financially they're winning but they're going to have to ride out this complete public corporate disaster. No one has faith in the company or the product anymore. They've damaged their public image so much this generation. Greed can kill anyone.
He would've done the same thing and fire Jim Ryan and Shuhei would be the villain. Why?
Because Elite creates the narrative and distraction for gamers, users and citizens.
More confirmation that Jim Ryan is the culprit for what has happened to Sony. Hulst needs to go too. What sucks is that a lot of the good top heads at Sony are no longer there. I wish that guys that were forced out prematurely by Dumbo Jimbo like Shuhei and Layden came back.
Yep. Yoshida was responsible for bringing one of the best games of this generation to playstation (Stellar Blade). He is an actual gamer and is in touch with what gamers want (creative, fun games, not GaaS and agenda pushing). He also seems like a genuinely nice guy if you watch some interviews. Of course they got rid of him.
Makes you wonder if MS even thought about hiring him after Phil and Sarah were leaving. He certainly couldn't make their situation any worse.
All the gamer/consumer lead heads are gone across PS and Xbox. shuhei gone phil's gone (questionable) but gone. The future of gaming is somewhat uncertain across the board.
Former Naughty Dog artist Gabriel Betancourt explains why the "sweet spot" for game teams is under 200 people and how AAA "factories" kill creativity.
There’s definitely some truth to this. When teams get too large, coordination starts to outweigh creativity—layers of approval, risk aversion, and tight deadlines can turn bold ideas into “safe” ones. Keeping a team under ~200 people sounds ideal for maintaining clear communication and a shared vision. That said, massive AAA projects also come with huge technical demands and expectations, so scaling up isn’t always avoidable. The real challenge is figuring out how to keep that small-team creativity alive inside big studio structures.
More than that, it's logistically untenable. Inevitably, when teams get too large, how do you keep tabs on accountability? I suspect this massive team size is a consequence of the perfectionism streak Naughty Dog has.
I wish we could have so many people working on something and it turns out great because I'm all for collaboration in spirit - the problem is too many people as part of the larger team and smaller units. Suppose for example that you have too many people in the art department; you will very often come up against fiercely competing visions for how things should look. That competitive vision will cause friction between team members, team doesn't work as a unit, the back and forth can further delay parts that the other departments are waiting for, etc etc.
A 200-person team says, to me, that we need to scale back game development. Even if it means we go back to PS2 era costs and scale, why not? Those games are still great fun, the budgets were in check, and you could literally break the 200-man team into like 10 20-man teams working on different projects.
Ohh! You mean Criterion? I forgot you're a Ps3 fanboy, the retard spelling is excused.
How do you like your PS3?.
Awesome,very positive article.Criterion like the PS3 alot.
If you lookin for correct spelling, you should better start to visit some more serious places. BTW the spelling thing is mostly due to the fact that the yanks love their 360 and the rest of the world laughs at it. It's not our fault that english is not our 1st language ;-) Take it easy buddy and I can only repeat myself: If you lookin for correct spelling, grammer and some more ambitious discussions, then this is surely the wrong place haha get your sorry ass outta here xbug Jenzo boy ;-)
talk about the spelling just because it's good PS3 news. Very good news like i have said some studios with the resources and the effort will know what there doing the other ones can crash and burn. They are very impressed of what PS3 is capable of and it's a refreshing change from dev's that aren't even working on the system!