Will Next-Gen Consoles be powerful enough for Square Enix?

When Square Enix showed off Agni's Philosophy at E3 last month, a lot of its wow-factor was for its visuals – but the company says even next-gen consoles might struggle to reproduce that visual quality.

Agni's Philosophy is a four-minute long tech demonstration from Square Enix (check it below, it's well worth a watch), with stunning visuals.

So stunning, in fact, that Square's creative director and senior manager Takeshi Nozue says next-generation consoles will have to have a whole lot of RAM in order to keep up.

"Memory size is the biggest challenge," he told Edge magazine.

Nozue has worked on some of Square's biggest releases, dwelling mainly in the Final Fantasy series – he was the CG designer for FFIX and animation designer on FFX-2.

He also worked as the animation supervisor for Final Fantasy X, which pushed the PS2 system to its absolute limit with some breath-taking visuals and sweeping scores.

"The texture quality in the Agni's Philosophy demo is an enormous drain and it's clear that the next-generation consoles will have to carry a fat wedge of RAM if they're to support Square's tech," he says.

Nozue has worked on some of Square's biggest releases, dwelling mainly in the Final Fantasy series – he was the CG designer for FFIX, animation supervisor on FFX, and animation designer on FFX-2.

Concerns in this department are valid, as developers ran into issues with the amount of memory available on the PS3.

Of course, both Sony and Microsoft have their lips firmly sealed in regards to their upcoming hardware; but rumour says that Microsoft at least will focus a good portion of their next-gen console to non-gaming functions such as audio and visual streaming.