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22 ■ CGW Ja n u a r y / Fe b ru a r y 2 014 GAMING be found on the PS4. Owners of the PS VITA, Sony's portable gaming platform, can use their portable consoles as controllers on the PS4 or even play the PS4 game through the portable's game screen. Imagine playing Knack from your PS4 while lying comfortably in your bedroom. The concept of "more is better" can certainly explain how developers plan to utilize the hardware to improve the next generation of audio. With Triple-A development comes Triple- A audio, and the new consoles allow more dynamic audio than previously. In Transistor, the team is taking advantage of the PS4's ability to process a lot of real-time DSP effects, which are mathematical manipulated signals. For example, when players stop time and enter "Focus mode," they pitch bend any active dialog down and then pause it. Then they add delay/echo to gameplay sounds using a low pass filter to make in-world events seem far away and muffled. They can also do unique things with the music in the game during these segments. "Although time has stopped, Jurney says, "the music keeps playing, and since the main character is the singer, she hums along with the song in Focus mode. That's done by adjusting the volume separately on each of eight tracks that make up a single song in our game." In Forza 5, the team took advantage of the dedicated audio hardware to do new things that had not been possible before, such as complex environmental audio used to simu- late sound reflecting and reverberating from buildings and tunnels. Additionally, the team created a dynamic soundtrack that could weave in and out of the game without interfering with the crucial information that drivers need from audio – for instance, the sound of the engine redlining or the screech of the tires on the pavement. Every aspect of the soundtrack, even in the main shell, was designed to build excitement for the driver. "To improve the overall experience of the game and provide another level of feedback to the player, we created a dynamic musical score – a big departure from simply playing a piece of music, as we did in previous Forza Motorsport games," Greenawalt points out. "As you make your way through the game menus, for example, the music will gradually pick up in intensity the closer you get to the race itself," Greenawalt says. During gameplay, "some [music] layers might be turned down when the player is struggling. On the other hand, if the player is doing well or on the final stretch of the race, the mix will change to heighten the intensity of the moment." So, with all of the possibilities that the next-gen consoles offer developers, when will we get to see it show up on our screens? "We are only beginning to learn how to leverage the CPU and GPU compute capability of the new console hardware," says Geomerics' Precious, "and we are very optimistic about the quality we will see developed in this console cycle." As with all new console releases, there are a few standout titles that set the bar for what is to come, and more are on their way. Games such as Titanfall, Thief, Project Spark, Des- tiny, Infamous: Second Son, Watch Dogs, Battlefield 4, Assas- sin's Creed 4, and Supergiant's upcoming Transistor all look to push the limits of the next-gen consoles. "I can't wait to play Titanfall – big mechs, wall jumping, and explosions," says Turn 10's Greenawalt. "What else do you need?" Over the next decade, developers will be discovering op- portunities in the cloud, on the GPU, and in the living room. Given the sales numbers that Sony and Microsoft announced at CES in January, the public is certainly there, ready and wait- ing for whatever graphic wonders arise from the skunkworks of whichever developer has the ingenuity and drive to take us there. ■ CGW Carey Chico is a freelance writer as well as an 18-year veteran of the games industry. He can be reached through LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/careychico/. ■ In the PS4 game Knack , the main character comprises thousands of small parts.