Digital Extremes speculates on next-gen consoles with Dark Sector footage

Canadian developer Digital Extremes has released a trailer for its science fiction shooter title Dark Sector, and claimed last Friday that the footage is neither CG nor pre-rendered in any way and actually represents the fruits of its labours on a next-generation console.

Or rather, the fruits of its labours on what we expect to see in next-generation consoles - Dark Sector was not developed using PS3 or Xbox 2 development kits, but instead uses components based on the potential specs for both consoles.

[The trailer] is intended as a technical demo to help court potential publishers and the like, and as such it's rather sketchy at this point as to whether the footage actually represents a game of any description, or if it's just concept art in motion. Either way, it's definitely running in real-time, we're told.

It's certainly very attractive, too, with beautiful soft-lighting effects and shadowing, and highly detailed character and enemy models strolling (well, prancing) down a corridor in a space ship of some description as light floods in from a nearby star.

The trailer concludes with the words "New Engine. New Game. New World." The "New Engine" part is a reference to the fact that Dark Sector marks a departure from Unreal-based tech for the Canadian firm - the game runs on its own "Sector Engine".

Digital Extremes has previously had a hand in delivering most of Epic Games' Unreal series of titles to market, and recently announced its own Xbox/PC project Pariah, which will debut at E3 this year and is due out in PAL territories via Hip Interactive Europe.