New Xbox & PlayStation 4: What to Expect

Director of ISV relationships at AMD, Neal Robison, said Microsoft's unannounced console will allow developers to make every pedestrian in an open world game such as Grand Theft Auto or Saints Row have a totally individual mentality so they react to the player in different ways. Crowds will then act as a group of individuals rather than predictable mobs.

While this sounds great on paper, the sheer power offered by the next-gen presents its own set of problems. "There's one thing getting the raw power to do these things," Tully says. "Another thing is taking advantage of that in a coherent way, to produce a game. That's the challenge we'll be looking to when we start working on those consoles. It's going to be really interesting to work with."

To overcome these challenges, Crytrek will use its own, in-house game engine CryEngine 3, which it claims is ready for next generation game development now.

This, coupled with the benefit of having experience using advanced PCs today, means the studio should be able to manage the inevitable transition - rather than be stung by it.

"Because [CryEngine] is aimed at both the consoles and the high-end PCs, it means we can add in new features on the high end PCs as we go along," Hall says, "and then when the console becomes available, we'll be able to actually pick a level and set it up there and things should work - although it's never 100 per cent that simple."

Microsoft is rumoured to be preparing a reveal of its next Xbox at E3 2012. Eurogamer has recently had this claim backed up by a number of game industry sources.

Eurogamer has also heard a 2014 release of the next Xbox was planned by Microsoft, but this has now been brought forward to 2013 as a result of Nintendo's confirmed 2012 launch of the Wii U.

Additionally, sources have indicated to us that larger publishers and developers already have target specs of both the next Xbox and PlayStation to help them with their development.

Both Microsoft and Sony have refused to directly comment on their next generation plans, instead pointing to the continued success of the Xbox 360 and PS3. Last year Microsoft said motion-sensing add-on Kinect would add five years onto the life of the 360, whereas Sony has described the PS3's life cycle as "ten years plus".

But is now the right time for the next-generation? Do developers want the next Xbox or PlayStation?

"I'd like to see it at a time when consumers are going to be ready to adopt it and jump in whole-heartedly," Rein said. "I'm not in a huge hurry for it. I'd rather wait until they can bring out hardware that can do Samaritan affordably than bring out something super high-priced and the market adopts it slowly as they wait for a price drop. Either way I'm confident we'll have great a great game engine for it thanks to the efforts we've already got underway like Samaritan."

It's tantalising to imagine games with visuals on a par with the Samaritan demo, or indeed Avatar, but for Rein the PS3 and Xbox 360 still have much to offer.

"In terms of something aimed at running Samaritan, I don't think it would be practical to come out with a new console at that spec right now," Rein continues, "I think we're a few years away from that kind of hardware being available at a price consumers would embrace.

"Plus I think we're still getting great value out of the consoles we have today and we can continue to hone our skills with those for a few more years. If you look at Gears of War 3 you'll see that we're continuously getting better and better at making games for the consoles we have now and you simply have to look at the monthly Unreal Development Kit releases to see we're constantly delivering better and better tools and technology for this generation as well."

For Marvin Donald, game director at Darksiders II developer Vigil, however, developers do want to move onto next-generation development. "[That desire] just happened," he says. "Now we've got comfortable. We run into situations where we'd love to use bigger textures. We'd love to have more memory, and we'd love stuff to run faster. We're ready to grow. We're definitely ready to move on.

"But that's just starting to happen for us as a studio, where we want more horsepower to play with. So yeah, next generation, bring it on. We're very excited about that."

US retailer giant GameStop last week said it does not expect new consoles from Sony or Microsoft until 2014.

"2013? I think that's about right, actually," Donald offers. "That sounds about right, because another year-and-a-half and from the consumer point of view it's going to start to feel stale.

"It's like, OK guys, I'm no longer impressed by the graphics. My friend's PC, games like Rage, some of the stuff they're doing, oh my God. Seriously, clearly my Xbox can't do that."