Next-gen Dark Sector footage speculates on the power of PS3 and Xbox 2

Canadian developer Digital Extremes has released a trailer for its science fiction shooter title Dark Sector, and claimed last Friday that the startlingly detailed footage is not CG nor pre-rendered in any way and actually represents the fruits of its labours on a next-generation console. Or rather, the fruits of its labours on what we expect to see in next-generation consoles - Dark Sector was not developed using PS3 or Xbox 2 development kits, but instead uses components based on the potential specs for both consoles.

The trailer is intended as a technical demo to help court potential publishers and the like, and as such it's rather sketchy at this point as to whether the footage actually represents a game of any description, or if it's just concept art in motion. Either way, it's definitely running in real-time, we're told.

It's certainly very attractive, too, with beautiful soft-lighting effects and shadowing, and highly detailed character and enemy models strolling (well, prancing) down a corridor in a space ship of some description as light floods in from a nearby star.

The trailer concludes with the words "New Engine. New Game. New World." The "New Engine" part is a reference to the fact that Dark Sector marks a departure from Unreal-based tech for the Canadian firm - the game runs on its own "Sector Engine".

Digital Extremes has previously had a hand in delivering most of Epic Games' Unreal series of titles to market, and recently announced its own Xbox/PC project Pariah, which will debut at E3 this year and is due out in PAL territories via Hip Interactive Europe.

The trailer is available in various formats from the official Dark Sector website.