Gaminbolt

We recently got an opportunity to talk with Jameson Durrall, Lead Level Designer at Volition Games. We talked a lot about the upcoming Red Faction Armageddon and what gamers can expect when it goes in to retail.

Its a well known fact that the technology in PC gaming is increasing as time goes and the current generation of consoles are way behind, hence kind of restricting as to what game developers can do on them. This is one of the topics that we discussed with Durrall.

Durral thinks that they face limitations when working with current generation consoles:

“It’s always appealing to developers to get faster processers and more memory.  We deal with limitations on a daily basis and are always saying “if we only had the framerate or memory to…”"

But rest assured if they had modern tech at hand they could do more.

“This has been a pretty solid console cycle and we’ve been able to do some pretty amazing things with the tools and hardware available. We have a talented group of programmers that created a fully destructible world and I can only imagine what we could do with more resources at our disposal.”

http://gamingbolt.com/volition-we-deal-with-limitations-on-a-daily-basis-with-ps3-xbox-360

i guse power isn't everything (PS3)is it?

looks like they'll find those same limitations on Wii2HD!

maybe?

They'll find those limitations until limitless performance is achieved...

thats an none unnone cause as it sits that will never happen or will it?

the none unnone is just some BS i was thinking but i guse the only way for limitless performance to be remotely possible is to be able to tap into some unified device that always upgrades?

 like cloud maybe?

Well yeah, something like the cloud. Anyway developers have plenty of things to spend performance on they usually have a huge list of things to put into new games on new consoles when the next gen starts.

yea likely more then we'd expect. the content this gen is pritty high its self?

Crytek has asked for 8g memory in next gen consoles, and im sure memory isn't the only limitaion but im also sure it goes along ways into it.

im not a tech (i wish i was) guy so im not sure wht else would need to be added other then processing power

Yeah the artwork won't change substantially but things like lighting etc will be substantially improved and that will make the images look and feel a lot more natural especially in motion. Usually the first games in a generation are improved simply because they implement a lot of new technology and it takes a while for the artistry to catch up.

I don't see 8GB for next gen TBH, 4GB max...

I think its viable.

The Xbox went from 64MB to 512MB in just 4 years (8-fold increase). We're at year 5.5 and climbing for that system. For the PS2/3, it went from 32MB to 512MB in about 6.5 years (16-fold increase).

We have to take in the following considerations:

• We don't know when next-gen starts for Microsoft/Sony (or Nintendo for that matter, other than the year)
• We are unsure if MS/Sony will continue as loss-leaders for their products (IMO, unlikely)
• If there will be any significant changes to RAM prices before their devices make it to market

Given the time frames, and assuming a late 2013 launch for MS/Sony devices, we're looking at about a 7 year gap between hardware, which is unheard of for consoles. The only comparison we can make would be for handheld devices, such as the DS-3DS gap of 6.5 years (Nov 2004 to Mar 2011). In this case, we saw RAM expand from 4MB to 128MB, or a 32 fold increase in RAM. Of course, the price did increase, which is something to take into consideration.

Therefore, given the comparables, we *should* be looking at a 16 to 24 fold increase in RAM, even including cost-cutting measures as Sony and MS likely attempt to remove their loss-leading ways. That would put RAM between 8GB and 12GB in a 6.5 to 7 year development cycle between their earlier systems.

The only thing this gen needs to be next-gen is more RAM and an up to date GPU and there you have it, will it be called -X360 2.0 ?....  Can you imagen the current PS3 with 6gb of ram memory and with an affordable yet efficient Nvidia GTX 460 GPU with its own 1gb of dedicated memory or eqivalent for $399 ..   who would need more?

Honestly, next gen home consoles better utilize the SLI or crossfire setups for performance boosts. Now that these graphics cards have amazing scaling, there is no reason why I can't daisy chain 3 Xboxes and have tri crossfire setup running everything at 60 fps and 1080p...or have 3 monitor setups in the same game on consoles. So far only Forza 3 allows for this, but you need 3 consoles and 3 games...