DF article: Sources say Samaritan running on next Xbox dev kit

[Shinobi-san]

greenmedic88 said:

Shinobi-san said:

IMO skyrim was held back by consoles. Yes, put all the graphics settings to its highest on a high end pc and you get much better visuals than the console version. However, compare skyrim to other high end pc games, and it falls short. I was underwhelmed by Skyrims highest settings on pc to say the least. If you compare skyrim to a game like the witcher 2, which also to a certain extent had consoles in mind, but by no means was it the primary focus. The witcher 2 has amazing visuals, and i would say that because the PC was the "lead platform" the developers wernt limited by consoles.

The thing is, its not only about graphical fidelity but other aspects of game development as well. For example a game like Crysis 2, which imo went for a certain game design that is much more suited for consoles....i would go even further than that and say that the setting of the game was also developed with consoles as a primary focus. Battlefield 3 is another example where game design was affected.

This is why certain people say pc graphics are held back by consoles, personally i would say game design as a whole is held back or affected in some way by consoles being the lead platform as well as the lowest common denominator.

Bethesda has never been known as the leader in visuals for any of their games, even when they were a PC developer first, console port developer second. So to suggest that if they focused on PC first that their games would be selling high end VGA cards in mass quantities is really an exaggeration and giving Bethesda more credit than they're due.

Crysis 2 is about the ONLY game that comes to mind considering that CryEngine 3 was specifically developed with consoles in mind. 

Battlefield 3, no. The difference between the PC and console versions made it pretty clear that if you wanted the definitive version, you would be playing it on PC and you would likely be upgrading your VGA card set up as well.

And the lowest common denominator on PC will always be "minimum specs" which often play and look worse than console ports. 

Thats not what i said about Bethesda. All I was saying that if the PC was the lead platform for Skyrim, we probably would have seen better visuals on the high end scale. At this point in time, the pc versions have increased res, a few added effects, some more AA, higher levels of AF. Nothing groun breaking as we see in the witcher 2. If you cant see how this is a result of consoles then I dont know...

Crysis 2 on the other users advanced graphics techniques, and looks amazing on PC as well as console. But like i said the entire game was designed for console. Again, limited by consoles.

Battlefield 3...are you serious??? This is one of the best examples I can think of where game design was negatively impacted.