PS4 architecture offers more flexibility than PC architecture, says Mark Cerny

PlayStation 4′s lead system architect Mark Cerny has been in the headlines several times recently, hasn’t he? After coming out and not only revealing the 700-man team behind Destiny, but also proclaiming the PS4 will bring “the renaissance of gaming,” Cerny has now come out and talked about PS4′s flexible architecture.

Talking to VG247, Cerny compared PS4 to a “super-charged PC architecture,” allowing the console to become far more customizable than any PC. This is so developers have enough flexibility to allow their creative visions to shine through:

At the same time we have to balance that out with a rich feature set that they can use in the later years of the hardware. The hardware has to grow over time. That’s why I refer to it as a super-charged PC architecture – there’s more in it than what you find in a PC.

There are all these customisations, such as what we did to the GPU and other parts of the system to ensure that they would really be these systems that programmers could dig into in year three or four of the console life-cycle.

All these customizations aren’t just for the PS4′s flexibility. They also allow for PS4′s ability to expand with new capabilities as the next cycle of consoles arrive. In addition, since PS4′s base architecture really won’t change that much, it lets developers delve deep into the hardware:

The developers really have a chance to study that architecture because it doesn’t change for many years. They can learn its secrets and get progressively better performance out of it. Consoles also provide a stable platform.

This is really important because some developers need five years to create a game. The fact that during that five year period the target hardware doesn’t change really allows them to bring titles to the world that couldn’t exist otherwise.

As, basically, PS4′s baby daddy, Cerny knows what he’s talking about. Question is, do you agree?

Source: VG247