Former Respawn founder Drew McCoy announced (alongside fellow ex Respawn programmer Jon Shiring) the foundation of Gravity Well, a new triple-A games development studio designed to be mainly set up for remote work.
In an interview published on GamesIndustry, the former Respawn founder discussed his excitement for next-generation hardware, specifically Xbox Series X's and PlayStation 5's vastly increased CPU power and input/output speed, which could lead to brand new gameplay opportunities.
We have built nothing but AAA games and we don't want to stop. And the transition to next-gen, Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 is really exciting. It dovetails with our desire to find new spaces that people haven't explored.
While this new generation feels like an iteration of what we've already seen, I think that things like the amount of CPU power and I/O speed actually opens up opportunities that we haven't had before. Even when the Xbox One and PS4 were in development, what we were screaming at platforms to do was give us faster I/O, please. I am excited to see where we can get to with it.
Elsewhere in the interview, McCoy pointed out that the triple-A space has been severely lacking innovation and that's something Gravity Well will try to fix with their games.
The AAA space has been increasingly taken over by massive franchises that are without an ability to express new ideas very easily. There is a lot of production value, a lot of money on the line, and a lot of bodies to make sure that they can do what has been done before a little bit better.
We feel that the AAA space is losing the hunt a bit in terms of finding new things. When you look back, big explosive growth in a genre or in the industry itself doesn't usually come from an iteration on a thing that already existed; it comes from a new thing that hasn't been seen before... It probably means we will fail finding big massive hits sometimes, and that's okay because you're not always going to land perfectly. But if you never take a shot, then you're never going to get those big rocket boosters up.
The Respawn founder also mentioned the studio's goal to stay agile, keeping the headcount to around 80, as Titanfall was made with 70 developers and Titanfall 2 with 85. We'll surely be keeping an eye on what they can cook up on next-gen hardware.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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