The Order: 1886 dev says PS5 is ‘one of the most revolutionary consoles ever’

The chief technology officer of Ready at Dawn has labelled PlayStation 5 “one of the most revolutionary, inspired home consoles ever designed”.

Andrea Pessino, who’s also a co-founder at the studio, took to Twitter to praise Sony’s console after it came in for criticism following the publication of the PS5 hardware specifications on Wednesday.

The PS5’s specs are slightly below Xbox Series X’s in terms of both CPU and GPU, but a powerful SSD combined with a variable frequencies approach is said to offer “significant gains” beyond the black-and-white numbers.

Pessino tweeted: “Dollar bet: within a year from its launch gamers will fully appreciate that the PlayStation 5 is one of the most revolutionary, inspired home consoles ever designed, and will feel silly for having spent energy arguing about “teraflops” and other similarly misunderstood specs.”

Ready at Dawn has in recent years focused on VR titles for Oculus Rift, but it cut its teeth developing for PlayStation platforms. Its most recent PlayStation exclusive was 2015’s The Order: 1886.

After some users questioned the motivation behind Pessino’s PS5 message, he followed up by saying he has no interest in participating in “silly console wars” and doesn’t align himself with any particular platform.

“I love ALL gaming platforms, all brands. Console, handheld, mobile, PC and of course VR! I love and play all and I am not tweeting on anyone’s payroll,” he said.

“I am enthusiastic about the upcoming console gen – I believe they will allow conception and execution of exponentially more impressive games, and NOT just because they have exponentially better hardware.

“We are getting architectural decisions targeted *specifically* at the development issues that have historically set hard limits on designers’ vision. Which brings me to my “teraflops” comment…

“A console is more than a sum of specs – of course incremental hardware improvements are important, but abstractions, APIs, integration, and most of all *architecture* are even more so. That’s where the biggest innovations are to come in this age of diminishing returns.

“Which is why focusing on metrics is missing the big picture. I am excited about the PS5 because I think many smart decisions were made that will enable devs to design in new ways, *especially* for expansive games. I was not making a comparison, just sharing my optimism.”

This week’s PS5 reveal video was also criticised for its highly technical nature. The ‘Road to PS5’ video was originally planned for the now-postponed Game Developers Conference and was clearly designed to appeal to the event’s audience of skilled development professionals.

However, the video’s promotion – it was pushed on PlayStation’s general Twitter account – combined with huge demand for new information on PS5 led to it being watched by over seven million people, many of whom almost certainly were not the primary intended audience.

PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X are both scheduled to launch during the 2020 holiday season.