THE BUZZ: Epic Games has revealed that it is constantly pushing platform holders to make their next generation consoles as powerful as possible.

“Don’t worry. We are absolutely every day [pushing platform holders],” Epic’s VP Mark Rein told CVG. ”This is why we did Samaritan and why we’re doing a really high-end demo in the room here. We really are pushing these guys, because if they don’t, Apple will go right past them.”

The Samaritan demo was a ”love letter” to hardware manufacturers, showing just what technology could do.

“We really like the big screen, home console experience and we really like iPad gaming. We like all these gaming experiences and we don’t think consumers want them to go away,” Rein explained. ”The only way they’re going to go away is if they don’t stay true to what they are. The console gaming experience is about delivering something that’s way out past the bleeding edge and subsidising it through the software royalty model – just like Apple does with the phones. It’s not that much different.”

“That’s the console gaming model, and if you don’t do that – if you don’t stretch just far enough, you don’t just have enough of a difference to make people want to take the leap with you… it all falls down,” he added. ”Now, I don’t think that’s going to happen – I think the console guys are going to blow us all away. But as you say, we’re on them.”

EGM’s TAKE: Apple is pushing the boundaries of gaming every single year and it’s only a matter of time before consoles fall behind. If Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo don’t push the envelope in the next generation then it could spell disaster for them. The last thing they want is to bring out new consoles that are already a year behind the curve, they have to be right on the edge in order to have the longevity to survive the next five-plus year cycle.

Source: CVG