A Way Out dev says the PlayStation 4 'is like a five-year-old PC'

It's not too often that you'll hear game developers talk trash about the platforms they're working on. But Josef Fares, whose Hazelight studio is currently developing the co-op prison escape game A Way Out, had some harsh words about the PlayStation 4 console in an interview with Engadget.   

"You want the honest truth? This machine is not so strong as you think," Fares said. "This is like a five-year-old PC. If consoles were as powerful as PCs are today, you would see all different games. Most of the work developers put out there is to make them work on consoles." 

To be fair to Sony, the PS4 basically is a five-year-old PC: It was announced in early 2013 and released in November of the same year. But the basic design spec, including an eight-core 1.6GHz AMD Jaguar-based CPU, 8GB of RAM, and Radeon GCN-based GPU, would obviously be even older than that. The PS4 Pro brings a little more gun to the fight, but games have to run on the base model of the machine. And if developers are feeling these limitations now, imagine what it will be like two or three years down the road.

Despite Fares' headaches, A Way Out was easily one of the more interesting games we saw during E3: It's narrative-driven, but is exclusively two-player co-op—no single-player option is available—with split-screen play, even if you're connected online. 

Andy Chalk

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.