'Face-melting' graphics needed for next-gen, says Gears of War dev

Epic Games design director Cliff Bleszinski has sounded off concerning his hopes for future-generation consoles. Speaking with GameSpot at PAX East 2012 last week, the developer said he wants a leap in visual fidelity to be a big part of next-gen systems.

Bleszinski and his as-yet-unmelted face.

"Face-melting graphics," he said. "I really want our next-generation consoles to pass what I call the 'Mom Test.' So that if you were to show this console and games to your mom, she would be like, 'Wow, that clearly looks better than your last console.' And it's an essential step that needs to be taken by both Sony and Microsoft."

Bleszinski also noted that he hopes future-generation consoles require users to be constantly connected to the Internet.

"Always-connected consoles that basically require an Internet connection. So that I can just wake up in the morning and say, 'Oh a new demo has been downloaded on my hard drive, so I can check it out.' As well as considering streaming gaming from the cloud, which would be very nice."

Finally, Bleszinski noted his admiration for motion controls and reiterated a rumor that a future-generation Xbox could sport a built-in Kinect.

"The other things I want to see are gesture-based controls," he said. "I think Kinect is quite cool, and I'm a big fan of using Kinect to control movies with Netflix. Maybe it will be built in [to a future generation Xbox], maybe it won't. We'll have to see what actually comes out of that."

For more on future-generation consoles from Microsoft and Sony, check out GameSpot's rumor roundup feature.