Capcom: PS4 and Xbox One Development Takes 8 to 10 Times More Work

A senior developer at Capcom has said that work on next-gen PlayStation 4 and Xbox One is eight to 10 times more demanding than for their current-gen counterparts. Furthermore, the company had to develop a whole new game engine - Panta Rhei - to deal with "increasingly complex architecture".

Speaking to Develop, senior manager of technology management Masaru Ijuin said that his company's existing MT Framework was running into problems. "Looking ahead to the development of games for next-gen consoles, we felt we needed to completely overhaul the development environment to better cope with the increasingly complex hardware. That's pretty much why we started developing this new engine," he said.

"Don't get me wrong. We believe 'MT Framework' is a powerful rendering engine. But it's clear that heightened game quality leads to a rise in the number of man hours. The amount of work involved in making games for next-gen consoles is eight to ten times greater than what is required for the current generation of consoles."

Upcoming RPG Deep Down will be the first game released developed with the new engine.