BioWare: leap to next-gen won't be as resource-intensive as last time

The leap from developing games for the current generation of consoles to the next generation will not be as resource intensive as the leap from the previous generation, according to BioWare director of art and animation Neil Thompson in an interview with Official Xbox Magazine UK.

In the interview, Thompson says that studios like BioWare will still "hammer up against the limitations of the hardware on a daily basis," but it is unlikely the leap from the previous generation will lead to a ten-fold staff increase as it did with the leap to the current generation of consoles.

"I think the main thing is that the industry doesn't get itself into a corner where it becomes economically unviable to make a game," he told Official Xbox Magazine. "The last technology iteration caught folks by surprise — especially the number of people you needed and the skillset jump that was required to do the work that people expected."

He says that for the next generation of consoles, people will "do things in a cleverer fashion," although he did not specify how.

The full interview with Thompson where he talks about his career and his work on the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises can be read here.