joeorc said:
yup..that does not mean they would not be supported, it just mean's the hardware is "static" it's made to be able to no matter when the developer starts to develop a game the hardware is the same, though with the way thing's are going that may change also. I see the game console's more and more getting PC like development cycle's with new hardware upgrades over time but the consumer would not be the one doing the upgrade, except for a few minor upgrade ability that is built in for the consumer to do on his own. example: the PSP started out when first released 32 MB of ram, its now 64 MB of ram the xbox360 now come's with 256MB of on board flash ram for storage thing's these machines did not start with when the first systems were released. but that the systems get as upgrade's as they went along. |
However, the game developer would (or rather should) be limited to the original specs no matter how many hardware upgrades the console manufacturers makes to the original design, otherwise they'll be screwing the early adopters. With PCs, the user can make many different upgrades to the point where the developer is not as limited when it comes to pushing graphics.
OT: In my opinion the differences in each generation in terms of graphics has been becomming less and less. The difference between the SNES/Mega Drive era was huge (due to 3D) to PS1/N64. The difference between that gen and PS2/X-box/Cube was still big (compare MGS1 to MGS2) but less than previous, and this gen whilst an improvement, difference hasn't been as large as previous gens (compare MGS2/3 to MGS4, especially if you upscale MGS2/3). Really the main difference in this gen to previous is HD res but I can still quite happily go back and play KoToR, or Half-Life 2 without thinking "Urrggh! visual puke!". Many are still happy to play on Wii standard graphics. So I think you need to think at what the difference between this gen and the next gen will be.
The leap has really already been made with Crysis, but the gen gap is smaller and less defined then previous gens. Less and less people are going to care when it comes to visuals because we're comming up to a point where for most its already good enough. The tech on the PC is already way ahead of consoles. When it comes to next-gen I think visuals aren't going to be as important as other aspects such as physics and immersion.
