Rare: the new Xbox "is always now"

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 20 July, 2011

"We're down the path" to the holodeck.

Rumours abound that Microsoft may be preparing to unveil the next Xbox at E3 2012, but according to Kinect Sports developer Rare, the next-gen is already here.

Speaking at the Develop conference in Brighton this evening, Rare chief Scott Henson dismissed next-gen questions, pointing towards Microsoft's ability to improve gaming experiences through software.

"One of my favourite things is, Scott, tell me when next-gen is. Tell me when that's going to happen. This has been the last ten years of my life. When's next-gen? When's next-gen? When's the new Xbox Live? When's the new Xbox?" he said.

"The power of software, the power of services, and the power of platforms is that it's always now. We continue to build on them, continue to innovate, continue to push, and we continue to build magic."

In a Eurogamer investigation into the new Xbox and the PlayStation 4, published this morning, Crysis 2 developer Crytek UK and Gears of War 3 maker Epic Games said current DirectX 11-fuelled visuals provide a good indication of what will be possible on the next round of home consoles.

Avatar-quality graphics are a realistic possibility, we were told.

Going one step beyond that, Henson said motion-sensing add-on Kinect puts gamers one step closer to simulating the Star Trek-style holodeck in their living rooms.

"I'm not going to give you the exact date you're going to have a holodeck in your room, but think about that for just a second," he said.

"Think about the movies we all grew up on and the things that inspired us in lots of different ways to create the kind of entertainment to do. We're down that path. We're absolutely down that path right now."

But before you set your phasers to stun and ask Scottie to beam you up, know this: Henson reckons it'll be a long while before the holodeck becomes a reality.

"You see advancements in televisions," he said. "When we stood up and we said it's the HD era in 2005 and HD is now – I remember because I wrote the speech and I was at GDC in 2005 and we gave away TVs, it was awesome. And here we are in 2011 and HD TVs are pretty pervasive, but they're still in only about half the homes around the world. It's not everywhere yet.

"When will the holodeck happen? It's going to be a journey. I don't think there's going to be a date."

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (49) Latest comment 10 months ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • DDevil #1 10 months ago

    I expect a new Xbox reveal shortly then :-)

  • darkmorgado #2 10 months ago

    Please explain how a motion-tracking camera bears any relation whatsoever to realtime, interactive holographic environments?

  • aidan1994 #3 10 months ago

    software is useless new hardware is essential

  • cheeky_BILLY #4 10 months ago

    DVD drives are sooooo 2007

  • Yuroko #5 10 months ago

    @darkmorgando
    You obviously never saw the Star Trek where Picard showed everyone the bottom of his shoe in the holodeck. BAM, number 1.

  • Lord_BeeJee #6 10 months ago

    We're next next gen and nobody told me!
    /breaks out party kit

  • des #7 10 months ago

    "Avatar-quality graphics are a realistic possibility, we were told. "

    Drugs are bad.

  • NotSoSlim #8 10 months ago

    Rare = lol

  • Mughes #9 10 months ago

    God, no wonder Rare are a shadow of a shadow of their former selves with this fucktard at the helm.

  • jellyBelly #10 10 months ago

    Urgh

  • BabyWuigi #11 10 months ago

    You do know what Avatar quality graphics will mean? More expensive games, less creativity in everything apart from the graphics (creativity is something Microsoft has already killed), shorter games and more studios going bankrupt. I would rather wait until the can create an engine which makes AAA games easy to develop before the next generation rears its ugly head.

  • coolbritannia #12 10 months ago

    What a load of meaningless bollocks. Must work on my management team.

  • Ares42 #13 10 months ago

    How consoles with only 512 mb of RAM can in any way be considered next-gen baffles me :p

  • Goodfella #14 10 months ago

    Seriously, Rare? *Chortle*, I remember when they actually had some credibility.

  • super_monty #15 10 months ago

    We we stop with the next-gen articles now, it's getting really pointless

  • Carlo #16 10 months ago

    Rare: Wholly owned by Microsoft, in every sense of the word

  • captainCandy #17 10 months ago

    Bollocks. My phone has more memory than XBox 360.
    Edited by captainCandy at 20/07/11 @ 20:52

  • Ford #18 10 months ago

    what the hell


    fire this guy now

  • SBfistfun #19 10 months ago

    Utter bollocks. Software updates are nice but I don't recall them adding anything significant. Redesigned dashboard and useless facebook integration.

    Big deal

  • 32768Colours #20 10 months ago

    Does anyone else think that this article is just stuff that was omitted from the "What to Expect" article? It's basically the same topic. Why wasn't this guy's opinions included in that article with everyone else's?

    EG seem to have a habit of stretching one interview into half a dozen stories. As such, I expect to hear what David Jaffe has to say about the next gen shortly.

  • wyp100 #21 10 months ago

    @32768Colours

    The interview with Scott Henson was conducted this evening at the Develop conference, as the article states.

    The next-gen investigation feature was published this morning, based on research conducted over the last month.

  • coolbritannia #22 10 months ago

    ^yes, this reeks of cheap page hit tactics.

  • Geowolf #23 10 months ago

    Hmmm, virtual cloud console? Processing power on demand. UK infrastructure probably couldn't cope but hey.

  • 32768Colours #24 10 months ago

    @wyp100

    Ah yes I see, fair enough, I stand corrected :)

    Still, I'm sure you know what I mean about EG dragging 6 stories out of one.

    More on topic, I'd say that by this Henson chap's rationale, we need never replace the 360. They can just keep updating the 360 firmware instead!

  • paulf #25 10 months ago

    what he means is we continue to copy nintendo, and are working on this really great tablet type controller as we speak

  • CaptainKid #26 10 months ago

    Wow.
    Apparently Rare has been completely assimilated by Microsoft.

    That was one of the worst Microsoft bullcrap speech I ever heard.

  • Nithron #27 10 months ago

    We are exactly as far away from a holodeck as we are from either force fields that can simulate resistance from solid objects, or a mind-machine interface that can make you think that's what's happening.

    Without either of those, you will always be waving your arms around like an idiot in your living room.

    Both of those technologies are exceedingly, mind bogglingly far away.

  • ballshock #28 10 months ago

    maybe Microsoft will make a console that can match the PS3's hardware

  • madeinbeats #29 10 months ago

    I think there is a huge difference between the pre-rendered film CGI industry and interactive motion graphics.

    Wait, did someone actually push this guy for a date on holo decks?

  • patootik #30 10 months ago

    I wont be happy till I have a Gamebox 1.0. High fives for anyone who knows what I'm talking about.

  • Trafford #31 10 months ago

    Give me the Holo-deck!

    He's got a point, why should a generation= a consoles lifespan?

  • Trafford #32 10 months ago

    Give me the Holo-deck!

    He's got a point, why should a generation= a consoles lifespan?

  • GiarcYekrub #33 10 months ago

    STFU and make blast corps 2

  • Ryze #34 10 months ago

    Yeah, but will you put more than 4GB RAM and at least an 8X Blu-Ray drive in your next console? Please?

    Also, finger gesture tracking and hand controllers for Kinect, please.

    Cheers.

  • darkmorgado #35 10 months ago

    He's got a point, why should a generation= a consoles lifespan?

    Erm, because consoles are closed systems with static hardware configurations? You can't magically send a firmware update down the pipeline and make hardware more powerful.

  • Spekingur #36 10 months ago

    Holodecks need motion tracking though. Granted, it would be a lot more advanced than Kinect is today.

  • korisnik #37 10 months ago

    the power of software,
    the power of services, and
    the power of platforms is that it's always now.
    We continue to build on them,
    continue to innovate,
    continue to push, and we
    continue to build magic.
    who is this tool?

  • beatwolf #38 10 months ago

    what a useless bunch of words that man just spat out

  • jonnyX #39 10 months ago

    "To render Avatar, Weta used a 10,000 sq ft server farm making use of 4,000 Hewlett-Packard servers with 35,000 processor cores running Ubuntu Linux and the Grid Engine cluster manager. The render farm occupies the 193rd to 197th spots in the TOP500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers. A new texturing and paint software system called Mari, was developed by The Foundry in cooperation with Weta. Creating the Na'vi characters and the virtual world of Pandora required over a petabyte of digital storage, and each minute of the final footage for Avatar occupies 17.28 gigabytes of storage."

    Avatar-quality graphics...yea right.

  • orangpelupa #40 10 months ago

    @darkmo
    maybe he think that kinect can be used to track your movement in 3D space to be "sync'ed" with "virtual objects" conjured in "holodeck".

    like when using Kinect + HMD on PC. But instead HMD, it use "holodeck" for "visual feedback".

    sorry very bad english.

  • djed #41 10 months ago

    The next-gen is now? How linguistically confused is one allowed to become before one is locked up?

  • Mr_Brown #42 10 months ago

    "we are down the path to the holodeck..."

    Making avatar pants and Shovelware motion crap.

  • reeferchief #43 10 months ago

    That is one grammar fuck of a title.:/

  • geeza2020 #44 10 months ago

    "But before you set your phasers to stun and ask Scottie to beam you up, know this: Henson reckons it'll be a long while before the holodeck becomes a reality."

    No fucking shit, Sherlock. What an awful idiot this man is.

  • jrb #45 10 months ago

    @BabyWuigi - compare todays games to games of 10.. 20 years ago? Has the fact we're now making 3d immersive worlds, with HD graphics and audio meant we're seeing more costly games, or less games? are there less game studios today than there were back then?
    I'd say in each case the answer is now. Maybe you preferred paying £70 for street fighter 2 on the SNES in 1992, but personally, i don't think many people today would pay £110 (adjusted for inflation) for a game you could 'complete' in 10minutes.
    Ultimately, the games industry today is a different beast today than it was back in the 90s. The free market, that we're all a part of by virtue of purchasing games and hardware, has driven us to this point, not the mind-bending will of evil geniuses at the head of large publishers.

  • agparrot #46 10 months ago

    I'm pretty sure when they say 'Avatar quality graphics' they are talking about the NXE Dashboard Avatars, and allowing everyone just to *think* they are talking about the big blue-person film.

  • spongebob #47 10 months ago

    So exactly how is Avatar now some kind of benchmark for CGI? I thought it looked great but not exceptional. And it's definitely possible to do many scenes from the movie in realtime now on ultra high end PC.

  • Pacmaninov #48 10 months ago

    Marketing guff ad nauseam

  • Subdominator #49 10 months ago

    I'm not surprised that a company that only makes Xbox Live Avatar gear thinks they're already there when they hear people talk about Avatar-like graphics on the next gen consoles.