Shift in Driver: SF only possible on this generation of consoles, says Relfections

Driver: San Francisco creative director Martin Edmondson has told VG247 that the big feature in the series' new edition, known as Shift, would not have been possible on the last cycle of hardware.

Speaking to us in an interview following the first introduction to the new title, he said the new feature would only be possible in this generation of hardware, such as PS3 and Xbox 360 instead of PS2 and the original Xbox.

"Well, it certainly has in the case of this game because aside from the fact the graphics look prettier and the framerate is higher and we can have more cars because the consoles today are more powerful," said Edmondson when asked if the latest hardware had affected  what was coming out of the studio.

"The key thing with this game is that the Shift function itself – the way it works, the way you can instantaneously be across the other side of the city and that it has this whole city built and is instantly accessible – that’s something that would be physically impossible to do in previous generations of hardware.

He goes on to add: "So you can do a driving game that had a quarter of the detail, the same framerate wasn’t the same or a number of cars weren’t the same, the pedestrians on the streets and so on. But you simply couldn’t do a Shift ability on PlayStation 2 or the original Xbox.

"It doesn’t have the memory; it doesn’t have the capacity to stream at the rate we need it, that would be a physical impossibility."

Get our full interview with Martin Edmondson here, and our full hands-on report of the game here.

Driver: San Francisco releases this holiday.