According to AMD's Neal Robison Microsoft's next-generation Xbox console will be able to create graphics on par with James Cameron's Avatar.
Robison, AMD's director of ISV relationship is one of the first industry insiders to speak about the yet-to-be announced console - and has suggested that it will include AMD-manufactured graphics technology in order to push graphic quality to level of Hollywood special effect blockbuster’s like Avatar.
This is quite believable as the head of Crytek who makes Crysis said that he felt that console should already have Avatar-like graphics and that consoles were way behind where they should be considering PC capabilites that are already on offer at the moment.
Robison made the comments to the US arm of the Official Xbox Magazine. While Robison didn’t go into great detail on specifications or technical aspects of the new chip set – but he did say that the graphics would be on par with Avatar and physics would see a major overhaul in the next generation too.
Interestingly AMD now owns ATI which is the current graphics power-house for the Xbox 360 – so can these comments be taken that ATI and AMD will be doing the next graphics chip for the Xbox 720 ? Almost certainly.
It’s not that much of a leap: the Xbox 360 uses a Xenos graphics processor developed by ATI, which is now owned by AMD. The original Xbox, by contrast, used a NV2A chip from rival graphics specialist Nvidia.
Robison’s comments don’t only suggest that Microsoft is sticking with its decision to move to AMD-manufactured graphics, however: they also hint that the hardware of the Xbox 3 is finalised, suggesting a launch could be closer than previously thought.
