How Need for Speed: Rivals will differ on Xbox 360 and Xbox One

Need for Speed: Rivals creative director Craig Sullivan has been talking to Digital Spy about the perks of creating games for next generation platforms. 

"Visuals are going to be way better, they already are," he added, a bit unnecessarily. "You've seen the games out there, they're really good. We're at the forefront of that."

Xbox One and PS4's new networking features are perhaps the more significant innovations. Sullivan's all kinds of excited for Game DVR, for instance. "The video sharing stuff is really cool. It was always something you had to do in software on current-gen, now it's a lot easier on new consoles to do that, and it's less intensive on a development team to support that, so you're going to find, ten times, a hundred times more video of people playing being pumped onto YouTube and sharing with your friends.

Rivals features a new seamless matchmaking system known as All Drive, which spontaneously introduces other players to your game rather than lumbering you with a lobby screen - something Sullivan describes as an "old gen experience". Naturally, this sort of persistent online lends itself to the direction Microsoft and Sony are taking with their next generation machines.

So where does all this leave poor old Xbox 360 diehards? Fear not, ladies and gents, Ghosts Games intends to support the current gen market for a while. 

"And you know, 360s and PS3s are still pretty good machines. I don't think we're going to be in a mad rush to stop making games for those consoles yet."

Super-enhanced pretties and video sharing aside, there won't be too much clear blue water between the Xbox One and Xbox 360 version of the game. "There will be other little bits and pieces that we can't talk about yet, and maybe the amount of players. But ultimately the games will be the same, it's just there will be slight tweaks and modifications for the next-gen versions."