MikeB on 05 January 2009
@ Squilliam
Yeah we could have had Killzone 2 level performance from the PS3 about a year and a half ago I bet.
No you can't, often if you try to be innovative this poses major challenges. The PS3 isn't that hard to develop for at all, of course with more advanced tech there are more things you could do, like a Coleco Vision is much more easily to max out than a supercomputer games console. For example if a console can't handle HDR, you simply don't have to worry about this, if you only have 16 colors to work with, you only draw your graphics in 16 colors and so on.
The real problem is legacy game engines, they were designed to work in certain ways which aren't very well geared towards the future. Building new modern game engine from scratch takes time, like some currently used game engines have been under development for over a decade.
Some modern GPUs and CPUs are now taking a similar roadmap as technology found in the Cell processor. The PS3 is IMO an excellent stepping stone for games developers, they will have fewer problems in the future when those solutions hit the market.
