people are saying the bump from current gen to next gen isnt that big. after playing with the hardware are these launch tittles showing the true potential of the hardware or is there still a lot of room for improvement, like early/launch games on PS360 and games such as halo 4 and TLoU?

there are changes to released specifications? good to know

To produce games, the time saved working with more coherant systems saves you money and time, but handling the creation of assets to match the increase costs more - we wont know truly if game development costs more or less for at least a year or two, as everyone is still in the stage of porting over their processes, developing or porting engines, and getting to grips with the new software, its only when a game is started, developed and pushed to retail, when we are familiar with the whole process with the hardware, that we can straight up say if the cost is higher or lower.

Also, you already know my wife.

The graphics versus gameplay discussion has much less to do with actual hardware and much more to do with saturation of existing game genres and storyline, when a unique game is created its less about graphics and more about gameplay, when a new game in a series, or a game from a popular genre is developed, especially for new hardware, the most notable advancement potential buyers see is not the gameplay, they will not get to grips with that till they play the demo or the final game, its the graphics, so many publishers and developers focus on graphics because ultimately thats what draws in the money.

I feel for Nintendo this is why their games are often seen as being more about the gameplay than the fun - they have established franchises that litterally sell themselves, so they do not have to worry about reaching the wallet of potential purchasers like third party and non-nintendo first party developers do.

You will note that some of the most playable games on consoles today, are games that are unique, or have successful franchises, because in both instances there has been less pressure to push a visually appealing product, resulting in more focus on the gameplay mechanics - sadly this trend isnt ever going to change, people just focus on it much more when a new console generation comes around - it has however been the case since the first consoles and always will be.

really? There are plenty of games :L I wouldn't worry about losing your cover or whatever.

next q then. Is the amount of money needed for an avarega AAA going to rise more than from 6th to 7th gen?

I developed software for PlayStation 3, PC and Xbox 360, I am comfortable and happy working with both.

Each system has its strengths and it is entirely up to the developer to best use those strenths, if youre looking for a "x console is better than y" youre not going to get it.

You will however get this, both consoles are substantially better than the ones they replace.

That is virtually a given, Software evolves over time, and longer the software is developed the better it is, this isnt just true for games, its true for all software on all hardware - i guess you could consider it digital evolution.

What we see in the current launch titles, we would be turning our noses up at, in 3 years time.

is the latency in GDDR5 an issue?

If you were building a PC with it, it would be, in a console, no, retrieving the information or storing the information you need properly, with managed resources, or at the very least handling data in pooled jobs, latency isnt really an issue for making games, conversely, while the approach is different, with the right framework, working with ddr3 isnt a big issue either.

You need to remember, the people that spend their days on forums discussing this stuff either know what they know from sporadic articles on the internet, recycling, rewording or just repasting something theyve seen a dev, or some other forum user talk about, linking to outdated or irrelevant information, or simply making things up off the top of their head, you dont see many developers getting involved because they are too busy making games, or collectively facepalming.

Pretty much what she says. Only with a lot more facepalming - developers dont spend 24 hours a day in front of a workstation, though some choose to avoid computers all together when not working, others however, those poor souls.

Frequency must hear the slap of a facepalm at least 3 times a night from me.

What she probably wont tell you is that she is a games developer too, though for another company, so we are natural rivals.

mm no answer to my question :/, is ok no probs.

I considered it a joke "but can it run crysis" question so i skipped it.

They can certainly try, though locking to 60frames isnt an exact science, even if the software itself is capable of handling consistent 60frames, it isnt just the game running in memory and on the hardware, so its also at the mercy of background operations, on both systems you cannot lock and get a consistent framerate that does not see any impact from other processes, such as displaying prompts messages or alerts from outside of the game environment.

But for the most part it would be possible if handled properly, a quick and dirty port is trash next to a ground up engine rewrite, after all.

And lets face it, Crysis 1s engine is getting pretty old.