Oh yes. Definately. Crytek have confirmed they will make extra use of the more available power of the PC hardware.

In terms of consoles I have no doubt that the company who are the leading company for Visuals in Videogames for the last 8-10 years ever since the first Far Cry will be the best visuals on Consoles by some way. Alan Wake looks impressive and will probably be the best of 2010 'ONLY' if Crysis 2 doesn't release this year.

It's kind of stupid for a developer to claim they hit the graphical ceiling on a console considering that everyone more or less acknowledges that because the hardware doesn't expand with a console, it's up to the developers' abilities to work with the resources that platform has available to improve upon the current "best" standard.

It's akin to saying "once our game comes out, there will be no future games that surpass us graphically for the next 6-7 years on the platform."

When put in that context, it sounds like a pretty idiotic or incredibly arrogant thing to say.

As far as making the hardware stutter or play back at less than ideal performance levels; we've already seen that plenty of times this generation with code that wasn't properly optimized for the hardware platform it was developed for. That hardly means the developers "maxed out" the platform. They just didn't use resources efficiently enough.

There's something terribly wrong with Cry Engine 3 if it doesn't.

Really, all the game has to do is run at 1920x1080 at 30-60 fps and it's technically running a lot better on PC. That's without even accounting for AA on a system with enough GPU power, or higher detailed textures and draw distances for a system with enough VRAM, or DX10/DX11 effects that simply aren't available on consoles.

I think the only disappointment might be that it's not the system crushing game (that forces players to upgrade in order to play at non-laughable settings) the original was. Which really isn't a bad thing; more people will be able to play it on modest systems, but the PC gaming community is as fascinated by games that reset the bar for hardware requirements as much as they love to bitch and moan about being "forced" to upgrade.

"Oh no, I have an excuse, I mean I'm FORCED to upgrade video cards? Those fiends. Learn how to optimize code."

So the next game to use the CryEngine will hit a higher graphical ceiling?   Erm ok.  Whatever, it looks like it will be pretty good game anyway. 

I reckon the first PS3 exclusive to use the CryEngine 3 will be amazing and will set a new bar. 

Cool I am glad to here that this engine is shaping up nicely, now hopefully developers will use this over the unreal engine for multi platform titles, it means we all win:):)

As for maxing out the PS3, I agree with the people who say that it will never be truly maxed out as dev's always find better ways of coding things, just look at the progression PS3 has made so far with games like Uncharted 1&2, Heavy Rain and GOW III for evidence of this.

Unreal Engine games are hardly the bane of the game development world. The only problem is that it's become so ubiquitous as a development engine yet most developers do little to disguise that they're using the UE engine.

Sure, there have a been quite a few games that really used it poorly, and a bunch of others still that blatantly made their game "look" like a UE game, but on the other hand, there have been some real gems that made great use of the game engine as well. Arkham Asylum comes to mind. Bioshock. Wolverine was more than pretty decent.

But it'll be nice to see some development teams using CE3 to come up with games that if nothing else, have a different look to them than the typical UE game.