When Apex Legends launched at the beginning of last year, it was immediately a huge hit. Although that excitement has died down a little bit since then, Respawn Entertainment's take on the battle royale genre is undoubtedly successful. As such, it should come as no surprise to hear that the game may be getting a next generation port.
Recently Respawn Entertainment, the developer of Apex Legends, posted a job listing which seems to hint at a next generation port for the game. While this job listing is pretty convincing, it should be stated that there has been no official announcement and therefore nothing technically confirmed.
The job listing in question asks specifically for "Senior Rendering Engineers to push next-gen platforms and PCs to their limits on Apex Legends." The wording here clearly indicates that something is going to happen to Apex Legends once the next gen consoles launch, and a port seems the most likely.
Apex Legends on PS5 and Xbox Series X
Apex Legends should theoretically already work in its current state on both the PS5 and the Xbox Series X, given that both consoles are supposed to be backwards compatible at least one generation. Still, there are bound to be a lot of current gen games porting over to the next generation that prefer to rebuild certain aspects of the game to fit the new capabilities, so Apex Legends could be one of the first to do this. Hopefully an official announcement comes soon, but it will more than likely wait until closer to this holiday season.
Digging deeper into this job description reveals that it is heavily focused on the visuals and graphics of the game. Given the position title alone, Senior Rendering Engineer, and the emphasis on someone who is a "Shader Enthusiast," it seems likely that at least one of the changes that will come will be graphical. With every new generation of consoles, graphical capabilities leap tremendously, so it makes sense that this would be a major focus of development studios such as Respawn Entertainment. Beyond this, it is more than likely that the two versions of the game will allow cross-play between them so changes that affect gameplay are improbable.
Next gen consoles are almost here, and developers all around the world are already gearing up to make new titles and port old ones to the new systems. The gaming industry has been off to a great start in 2020, and it will end the year strong with these new consoles.
Apex Legends is available now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
Source: IGN