Beyond: Two Souls helped by ideas from PS4 development

Some elements of Quantic Dream's upcoming PlayStation 3 title, Beyond: Two Souls, were shaped by ideas that came from tinkering with the PlayStation 4, said studio co-CEO Guillaume de Fondaumiere in an interview with the New York Daily News.

Beyond is set for release this October on PS3; it will likely be the last major first-party exclusive to launch before the arrival of the PS4 this holiday season. According to de Fondaumiere, Quantic Dream began experimenting with PS4 development hardware "a few years ago," after production on Beyond had begun, and the studio ended up using techniques such as high-definition rendering in the game.

"It's the reason it looks the way it looks," said de Fondaumiere of Beyond. "High-definition rendering was something we thought was not possible to that [level] on the PlayStation 3. We found ways to easily do that on the PlayStation 4. We thought, 'Wow, my God, if we could do it on the PS3.'"

De Fondaumiere continued, "Some of the graphical features and elements of Beyond are clearly inspired by our new engine on the PlayStation 4."

The live demo of Beyond that we saw at E3 suffered from visual problems like pop-in and a poor frame rate, but de Fondaumiere indicated that the demo wasn't running properly for some reason. Check out our preview for our thoughts on the demo. We'll have more on the cinematic action title from Gamescom later this month.