We Can Still Do More With Xbox 360, Says Bleszinski
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I don't think that's very realistic, and I don't even want to go through another console buying debacle or upgrading my PC (which I have to do regardless for Skyrim).
Tricking the hardware into performing better sounds like a nicer way of saying they're pulling all punches to get things looking better than the last game without causing the 360 to explode. Battlefield 3 looked terrible from that comparison piece without the texture add-on because the discs couldn't fit everything, and the 360 was troubled from the start regarding memory. Considering that many people still are using the stupidly low memory, older HDDs and Microsoft refused from the get-go to offer upgrades for a reasonable price, I don't think that the BF3 model would be welcomed by too many people after several games start eating up precious memory for graphics alone, with DLC adding more to the pile.
Naturally, the amount of work the console can do like more complicated AI and larger worlds come into play and are just as important as the visuals when it comes to stretching the consoles lifespan.
Of course, there is the risk that a new console generation will act as the foot in the door game price increase. Prettier graphics used to justify another $10 for a new game is not something that I would ever look forward towards, especially since this generation already seemed to skimp on the single player content enough as it was for a $60 game.
Tricking the hardware into performing better sounds like a nicer way of saying they're pulling all punches to get things looking better than the last game without causing the 360 to explode. Battlefield 3 looked terrible from that comparison piece without the texture add-on because the discs couldn't fit everything, and the 360 was troubled from the start regarding memory. Considering that many people still are using the stupidly low memory, older HDDs and Microsoft refused from the get-go to offer upgrades for a reasonable price, I don't think that the BF3 model would be welcomed by too many people after several games start eating up precious memory for graphics alone, with DLC adding more to the pile.
Naturally, the amount of work the console can do like more complicated AI and larger worlds come into play and are just as important as the visuals when it comes to stretching the consoles lifespan.
Of course, there is the risk that a new console generation will act as the foot in the door game price increase. Prettier graphics used to justify another $10 for a new game is not something that I would ever look forward towards, especially since this generation already seemed to skimp on the single player content enough as it was for a $60 game.
no they don't. textures suffer and ram is scrimmaged from AI, physics, level sizes and pretty much anywhere they can cut corners. all this and they still only manage decent presentation at what I would consider abysmal frame-rates (30 or less).Fawxy said:
consoles need to get with the times so developers can expand the game-play limitations without either having a decidedly cartoon-ey art style (a good way to go, but not all the time), or polygon counts and texture quality that amount to jagged feces.
EDIT: and perhaps the developers would benefit more from having a little more room to breath instead of being forced to create what Bleszinski basically admitted is hacky coding. Is it not the first thing they teach programmers to avoid creating spaghetti code? It all just seems like bad practice and wishful thinking that will result in multi-platform titles being harder to port.
Most consoles don't seem to be used to their full capacity. If a PS3 can run MW2, keep up a connection to the internet, chat to friends, download updates/programs and run a hack at the same time, it's probably idling. This is from someone who shuts down updaters and such on their computer in order to run games, but still, shut down all the useless programs and a game might just work.
I just can't see how a company could master the code to fully utilise a system in a few short years, especially in a world where garbage collection and code optimisation is seen as useless since we have so much to play with. It was important to make sure you ended your queues when you didn't need them in the olden days since if you left a loop running it would probably kill your 5 kilobit of memory rather quickly. My computer has 2GB of RAM, so why would you bother making sure a loop is closed? By the time I notice the program will be using 1GB and just about killing my computer, but who cares, it'll take me a while, right?
To discontinue hardware after six years is only needed because coders aren't that great and/or lazy and/or rushed and/or underpaid.
I just can't see how a company could master the code to fully utilise a system in a few short years, especially in a world where garbage collection and code optimisation is seen as useless since we have so much to play with. It was important to make sure you ended your queues when you didn't need them in the olden days since if you left a loop running it would probably kill your 5 kilobit of memory rather quickly. My computer has 2GB of RAM, so why would you bother making sure a loop is closed? By the time I notice the program will be using 1GB and just about killing my computer, but who cares, it'll take me a while, right?
To discontinue hardware after six years is only needed because coders aren't that great and/or lazy and/or rushed and/or underpaid.
I'm going to be a ***** and just because he has said this, get a console to run BF3, with a 64 player limit and full map sizes with all vehicles and such, PC graphics level and basically every other feature the PC version has, and have it stay above 60 FPS. You can't do it, I am sorry. There is an extent to how far you can go with tech, and why you would limit yourself so badly is beyond me.
Eh, at least with a hardware update for consoles more will be able to be done finally with all games.
Huh... 6 years, long in the tooth? Not massively. We may be looking at new machines coming out in the next year or two, but we should expect the current ones to last just a little longer. Some of the best stuff for most consoles came out when they were 5+ years old. The generations were a bit compressed around the millennium, but otherwise this seems fairly standard. And you do get at least a little overlap, with some excellent run-out titles on previous generations appearing about the same time that devs actually start to get their shit together and release anything more than slightly iffy launch titles on the new gen.
The NES, SNES, Gameboy, Genesis, PSX, PS2, Atari VCS & ST, C64 & Amiga definitely so. (Was never too much in to the XBox so can't say for definite, but people seemed to hang on to their old ones for quite a while after the 360 was launched - and it may hold for the SMS/GG, but they got a bit sidelined in favour of Saturn/DC dev (both of which hung on in an underground kinda way) so I'm not too sure)
Let's bring the sceners in and see what they can do with the 360 and PS3... in PC terms they probably count as quite "limited hardware" nowadays, so they'd be in their element
The NES, SNES, Gameboy, Genesis, PSX, PS2, Atari VCS & ST, C64 & Amiga definitely so. (Was never too much in to the XBox so can't say for definite, but people seemed to hang on to their old ones for quite a while after the 360 was launched - and it may hold for the SMS/GG, but they got a bit sidelined in favour of Saturn/DC dev (both of which hung on in an underground kinda way) so I'm not too sure)
Let's bring the sceners in and see what they can do with the 360 and PS3... in PC terms they probably count as quite "limited hardware" nowadays, so they'd be in their element
People said you'd never be able to get more than 200 sprites running at full speed on a 16 bit, 8Mhz machine without custom graphics chips... but it was done.Joccaren said:
Perhaps there could be some kind of plug-in enhancement module made for them, a la the memory pack for the N64, or the SuperFX and 32X chips, but it's probably not necessary. The extent to which current gen console graphics have already been improved is remarkable, it's practically photo-real in some cases. With the discovery of a few more tricks it could become indistinguishable from video to all but trained observers.
Remember that these are fixed-spec platforms, not endlessly reconfigurable PCs. The type, speed/timing, capacity/capability and other detailed spec of each component is already well known. And they don't have to run more than a scrap of an operating system, vs the bloat of Windows XP/Vista/7, Linux or OSX. With a bit of work it's possible to make some very tight loops and amazingly optimised routines that would either not work very well on a PC or cause it to throw exceptions... there just has to be the motivation there to do it, which doesn't exist when you're still operating well within the hardware's intrinsic limits.
Cripes, did you ever see GT2, RR4 or Vagrant Story on the PSX? Games that made most of their contemporaries look like a Game & Watch? Seeing those fit into and run smoothly with only 2mb RAM and a 33Mhz CPU made my technical lobes have a joy-fit. Transfer that same level of hardware abuse to a X360 and epicness will result.
I think this current generation has still got another 2-3 years in it, although I wouldn't be at all surprised to see both Sony and Microsoft announce a new console at next year's E3.
Really? I'd welcome another generation of consoles right about now. Graphics are not the only determining factor for games you know. When I play Battlefield 3 on my 360 it looks almost as good as the PC version, but the multiplayer maps are half the size and the player cap goes down from 64 to 24. Because the 360 is out of date. Bring out a new gen of consoles and we will, momentarily, catch up with PC gaming again.Sober Thal said:
I know you are probably fed up of being quoted, but one thing others who quoted you have not mentioned. I did not see the man from Epic mention graphics in any part of the article above.sravankb said:
I think that says it all. There is a reason that for instance with BF3, PC's support 64 on-line players when consoles only support 24. This is not a graphics thing. People need to get past the idea that the only thing that PC's can do better than consoles is graphics. There are whole new mechanics that can be used due to the PC extra processing power, that developers could be building ready for the next generation of consoles. This is what had happened in previous generations when consoles got long in the tooth, next gen ready mechanics started to be tried with PC titles, that publishers could roll out for profit on next gen consoles.
The current reluctance to do this means that when the next gen of console does come out, it will take a long time for game markers to use the extra power they will have to make better game mechanics because they have not got the head start with doing it on the PC, they had done in previous generations.
I think someone summed it up perfectly with 'flogging a dead horse'....
Yes, but while there's no replacement for the PS3 / X360 on the market, said tech demo hasn't appeared, and the VAST majority of the market are using these systems (or the Wii-U, which IIRC was only at about their level or *slightly* ahead), and game makers want to distinguish / progress their games by giving them a higher level of graphical polish, there can still be benefit in it. It's not like you have to re-learn every existing trick from scratch each time - you can use all of those, and come up with a couple more to make it go better.bahumat42 said:
There's nothing wrong with using programming "tricks". It's not like there's a big book of what's right and wrong - so long as it works bug free, isn't a huge hassle to decipher, and brings benefit to your program, why not use it? Any game that does on this platform won't be the first in history to have done so, and I doubt it'd be the last.
Getting perspective-corrected textures like in Vagrant Story is technically a "trick" or a "hack", which would have taken an investment of time and testing to implement, but no-one complained about THAT...
Yeah, because they are used in mobile phones they must be rubbish. You really need to check out Nvidia's new Tegra 3 quad core proccessors or know that there are servers being built using these chips. Or as we have already seen that the next version of windows will run on them.Waaghpowa said:
So a plug in enhancement module? A hardware update? It is required, but then I'm scared people would start complaining about them being too much like PCs as now you have to worry about whether your Xbox can run a game or not depending on if it has that plugin.tahrey said:
I would not put console graphics anywhere near Photo-realistic sorry. No graphics I have seen thus far have I had any trouble telling whether it was rendered or whether it was photographed, not even in the BF3 RL v Graphics trailer thing - and that is the closest it has come.
While there are undoubtedly more loopholes that can be exploited, I doubt they can be exploited to the extent that they would need to be to satisfy me. If they can complete my challenge, I will accept their word. I doubt money will be put into optimising systems for that sort of stuff however when smaller and less system straining games sell well anyway. Call me elitist but I like my games to be as good as possible in all aspects - something the PC provides yet consoles fail to.
As for the PSX stuff, I can see that running well on a system like that. Its not too out there, and without a full blown OS to slow it down, it would be possible. I'm not saying there wasn't heavy exploitation of the system, but there is still a limit to what exploits can do.
I personally don't see them being able to get a lot more out of the Xbox or PS, in part because of the hardware itself, and in part because I doubt anyone will pay them to do such a thing when new hardware is likely just around the corner, that users will buy and devs won't have to exploit to get a reasonable level of quality out of them.
If hardware could be exploited to that extent, we might as well stop developing new parts and exploit it so your home PC can be as powerful as a Supercomputer. I just don't see it happening.