Ubisoft "extremely limited" by PS3, 360
Hopes to improve AI with next generation.
Splinter Cell and Assassin's Creed maker Ubisoft is "extremely limited" by the current generation of consoles.
"Our challenge with the PlayStation 3 and Xbox [360] is that we're extremely limited in what we can do," Yves Jacquier, Ubisoft's executive director of production services at Ubisoft Montreal, told Eurogamer sister site Gamesindustry.biz.
"It's a challenge for the engineers to provide nice graphics and nice AI and nice sound with a very small amount of memory and computation time."
AI, Jacquier said, "has always been the real battleground", and it's here that Ubisoft hopes to see significant improvement when it makes the jump to the inevitable next Xbox and PlayStation.
"The challenge is that, if you see an AI coming, you've failed. And that's a problem we have to overcome as we create the impression of flawless, seamless worlds.
"In general the industry expects that graphics will not be a strong feature any more... Obviously, graphics are better for marketing purposes because you can show things. AI you can't show.
"We think that the next generation of consoles won't have these limits any more. Games might have more realistic graphics and more on-screen, but what's the value of making something more realistic and better animated if you have poor AI?"
The next Xbox is rumoured to be set for an E3 2012 reveal with a 2013 launch.