I just watched the GTA4 trailer on my PS3 in HD about 20 times in a row.

I was thinking. What is diffrent, What is better?

Well the graphics are better. I mean their not Gears of War... But better than PS2/GameCube/x-box graphics.

THe biggest thing I noticed. Were the cars. Some of the cars ride the car infront of their bumper. Others, have a nice safe distance. Speaking of cars. There are like 20-30 of them in some of the scenes. While there are the 20-30 cars in the scene, there are people walking the streets... Hanging out, sitting on steps.

And then I was thinking. If this is what in-game will be like. What happens when you throw a grenade into the center of the street, and blow up like 4 cars... what do the other 26cars and 20-30 people do? Each one will respond with their own 'personality' And get out of there in a... safe... panicked... or even PSYCHO way. While the people are doing the same thing. And each car/person has a totally diffrent view on what they need to do to get out. (boxed in between psycho and grenade explosion... what does the panicked driver do?)

Or what does that crowd of 5 people do when panicked driver comes at them? Scripted dive out of the way? Or do they run for cover behind the bus the grenade blew up.

That is what I feel next gen is about.

if you think that's what next-gen is about... have fun with all 3 or so of your next gen games for the next five years.

Assassin's Creed August 2007
Lair July 17, 2007
Grand Theft Auto IV October 16, 2007
Mercenaries 2: World in Flames Q4 2007
Heavenly Sword TBA 2007
Killzone PS3 TBA 2007
WarDevil TBA 2007


That's 7, over the next 8 months.
EDIT: This is only the PS3 side of next gen stuff. 360 has exclusives as well.
EDIT2: Also, the AI stuff I am speaking of is not advanced AI. It's just alot of AI running at once. Simple pathing AI, and personality AI has been around about 30-40 years. It's just taken super computers untill recently.

Oh, I thought you were talking about games specifically where every person is reacting differently based on your actions, not just games with lots of people/things on screen at one time.

add battalion wars 2 to that list then.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battalion_Wars_2

 Lair, has special AI scripts to have each person actually fighting useing a simple AI. No game in the past has put thousands of people on screen... actually doing stuff on a per person basis. (not even GTA4 is doing that)
Heavenly Sword - It's putting THOUSANDS of units on screen at the same time, each doing their own thing trying to get to you, and kill you. Once agian all of them are running AI
Killzone PS3 - I'm sure the helgast will be smart enough to run for cover no matter where you come from, no matter where they are. (not scripted)
Assassins Creed - Dozens of people on screen, each doing their own thing, you bump into them, some get mad, some run, some attack you. Same theory as GTA4... just no cars
WarDevil - Similar to Assassins creed.

Battalion Wars 2 - If the AI is anything like the first, I would put the AI on par with N64/PS1 games.

AI (for the most part) doesn't require that much processing power because practically all AI is scripted; to produce smarter AI you usually just write more scripts in order to cover all of the scenerios.

With that in mind, technically speaking you could have done a lot of this stuff earlier and I see very little reason why it wouldn't have been possible on the XBox. The graphics would have probably taken quite a large hit though.

Yes, I agree, most of this could have been scripted. But then agian, when you start getting into so many advanced scripts going at once... it's insane. Let me give an example.

Car1 - Grenade blows up
Bus1 - Grenade blows up, and lands on it's side
Car2 - Passive driver, gets windsheild cracked from explosive blast. Gets out of car.
Car2 driver - checks script options for passive person. Run safest way across the road to the sidewalk, and then hide in nearest ally.
Car3 - Psycho driver, gets hit by flying pedistrain. Mashes on the gas, swerves into sidewalk and drives down sidewalk.
sidewalk people getting run over by psycho driver in car3 - Depending on personality, they stand there (grandma) run behind the brick stairs leading to their door or go hide in the closer phone booth, but no real saftey?(passive) Agressive drug dealers would pull their gun out and start shooting at him.
Drug dealers down the road hear their buddy shooting, come running to protect their buddy.

EDIT: I dont feel like going on, but this isnt even half the AI objects.

All AI is basically scripted. It depends on how many scripts and how much they can do, and how many objects are being effected by the AI. I doubt the AI on GTA4 would work on a x-box.

I don't think you understand how scripting works though ...Currently everything that happens in the game is scripted.

Most AI scripting is still based off of a state machine which means (essentially) that you create a set of states for an object/person to be in (each of these states would then have appropriate actions scripted for them), you then create a set of rules which determine the transition from one state to another. As an example:

State 1: Attack

• chase after opponent
• shoot at opponent

State 2: Flee

• Run away from opponent
• dodge shots from opponent

Transition 1: State 1 to State 2

• Health is less than 25%

Now, that is a pretty basic pseudo script (the type of thing you'd see in a MMORPG from 1999) but it demonstrates the concept. A complicated state machine will end up having states within states, and they will attempt to have non-deterministic state transitions.

I understand a script.

I also understand that is a simple AI.

the most complex part of the equation is.

"Do I run for 3 seconds to hide behind burning bus, do I run for 5 seconds to get in phone booth, or do I run for 10 seconds and hide behind stairs? Threats are here, here, here and there. Need to avoid."

FarCry (the one that came out 3 years ago) Uses AI. Then agian, alot of new computers bought today, cant run it. 

Kwaad, stop talking about AI : you obviously don't understand what it is about and the amount of work it is.  These AI are very simplistic and won't need any power at all, they just need lots of memory to hold the states. Your "complex part of the equation" is actually pretty simple.

What is hard is the theory behind these algorithms, which are things I learnt about in school 15 years ago, and that were known at least 20 years before I learned them. So please, stop with your stupid AI worship ! No AI you will come up with need lots of power, and could be made to work without problem on a SNES.

The hardest and more powerful AI are those that learn and adapt from their learning. And that would be a AI global to the game to be useful. I bet the AI in Wii Sports, which adapt difficulty to the player's strength, is more advanced than all the things you talk about. And the difficulty in learning AI, is making them "think" right. An AI that can play Go is very difficult to do (still no AI can do that), and no game can come near this level of sophistication, especially in a videogame.

As for your question, the answer is very simple actually. A 'next gen game' is a buzzword, nothing more. It doesn't mean anything at all. It's just marketing nonsense to lure gullible people. 'Next gen" doesn't mean anything either. It should be obvious with consoles.

You have to rally some group of thoughts for 'next gen consoles' to have a meaning, such as taking Wikipedia's meaning. Then, 'next gen games' would be games released for these consoles. Of course, they are current gen by the time the games are released, so it goes back to 'next gen games' being nonsense, so just a buzzword.