System RAM in PS3 and XBox 360 is like half a GB

[Deneidez]

Fishie said:

MikeB said:

Cost considerations, especially the PS3's fast XDR memory is expensive.

If a game engine is well modified to suit consoles both consoles have a huge amount of memory to work with, especially with streaming methods and a default harddrive.

System bandwidth, processing power and storage space is far more relevant to consoles for optimised game engines. The 360 was only to have 256 MB of RAM originally, but luckily this was upped as graphics take a lot of memory. Executeable code is relatively tiny, for example Gears of War could have been a near identical game (gameplay, effects, etc) but with less quality textures. But high quality textures also take more time to load, hence the pop-ins in games like Gears of War and Mass Effect on the 360.

Urm no, texture popin was a problem with the early Unreal3 engine and the current engine has that taken care of it has nothing to do with the textures themselves.

Theres popin mainly because of limits of mass storage(Harddisk/DVD/Blu-ray) bandwidth. So actually MikeB is right about that thing. Game engines can get 'less detailed world' much faster from mass storage and then start loading the 'more detailed world'. You can see that clearly with textures at least in bioshock and mass effect. (First small resolution textures and after that more detailed textures.). Because of harddisk and installations there will be much less popin on PS3. And on PC theres even less, because whole game is usually on harddisk. So like it or not in the future there will surely be more installations or even similar full installations as on PC on consoles.

Another way to handle loading would be much longer loading screens.