A lot of smaller and even bigger companies are using Epic's technology. But the engine has its strongpoints and weakpoints, it not suitable to shoehorn in just about any type of game. And the most competent developing companies will want to use their own game engines as you are then in full controll of the technology which allows for more flexibility.

The one size fits all approach, is not superior (best suited for Epic games like UT3 and Gears). It's economically interesting to companies, but technically and freedom-wise it's not.

That "Full potential" is insignificant next to what the next generation consoles features and specifications. It would be like making a game for the Wii and the 360 at the same time. Possibly worse, considering the advances in programable shaders and their potential for future game development. You will understand when the direct3d 11 specification is released.

The nextbox for instance will have probably the equivelent of between 2-6 times the performance of the Rv770 which is in itself 3x greater than the RSX. It depends on their silicon budget and when they release the console. Think between 1600 - 4000 shaders or equivelent based upon current RV770 shaders or maybe a new model. Who knows? I would be personally surprised if the next console has less than 2 Teraflops of M+Add shader power.

Nomatter if other versions will run at a higher framerate, render in a higher resolution, perform more pixel shader ops, etc, etc. The core game can be easily made to work on the PS3 and can be made to look awesome, just like God of War 2 is still a very pretty and impressive game compared to many 'next-gen' games out there.

You will have to remember, the PS3 is currently very high spec, but half a decade from now it's a much cheaper and far more mass market console. Software companies and Sony are still supporting the PS2 after all those years.

Its very unlikely 360 is nearing some graphical limit. While there was moaning about GoW2 graphics vs GoW I think that was more down to high expectations. From what I've seen GoW2 will look nicer and will add more enemies and effects. I think initially too many people thought there was going to be a really big leap.

The PC is the only platform where you regularly see huge leaps as games are released that require higher specs and deliver more graphically - and of course PC's can (money permitting!) be upgraded to meet those requirements.

On consoles its all about learning how to use the available, unchanging specs to the max, and that can occur right to the end of a consoles life (look at God of War 2 and similar games late in PS2's life for example). It's like the old 'add 1 to the biggest number argument' - you can always add a little with another pass through the same engine code to tweak it further.


The 360 I'm sure can be pushed further than it has graphically, and so can the PS3 too.

When you get games on consoles that stand out early on - such as GoW on 360 or Uncharted or R&C on PS3 - I think sometimes people just expect too much from developers to take something that was already great and push it to insane levels.

GoW2 will look and play better I'm sure, and so will Uncharted 2 - but neither is likely to look 4 or 5 times better than the original (say going from Half Life 1 to Half Life 2).

You'd need more than better knowledge of the console and a better tuned engine to do something like that - you'd need higher specs and that doesn't happen on a console.

Also - gameplay people - gameplay! Graphics are nice (and I admit I love them when they look good) but if GoW and Uncharted weren't also a lot of fun to play (and I believe both are) then all the graphics in the world don't matter IMHO.

Dude, its not just about the fact that theres more power, if they start using the floating point power of the GPUs; their architecture and design are so different from the processors of today, even the Cell that it would probably be too difficult to even conceive of porting code from one to the other. Furthermore the ram limitations would be horrendous to overcome, similar to the reasons why porting to the Wii is difficult.

Besides if the PS3 doesn't sell to a large enough audience then half a decade from now they won't even bother porting code to it anyway. Its not the PS2, that much is clear already. If Sony first parties aren't supporting it then, then who will?

x360 is already almost 3 years on the market.
Ps3 only around 2.

IF on E3`08 won`t be shown x360 games, wich look better then ps3, then YES, it`s OVER for x360.

The concept of the Wii makes your statements meaningless.

try again plz.

(Lol, almost the same can be said of the Wii...)

Ok, ok, on topic, probably the 360 will reach the acceptable limit in the current year, and most of the games will start to get lock in the same level, maybe just a couple will stand up like GoW...

Various games developers are stating and predicting that the 360/PS3 will be used as a basis for future games for many years to come until a new mass market next gen console hits the market. They don't anticipate much PC exclusive development, the focuss is on the consoles and will remain there for the foreseeable future.

So game engines will advance towards ways best suited to the 360 and PS3 architecture, using the PS3 as a defacto basis for a game engine design with the ability to scale down/up towards 360 or PC would IMO be the best approach, as the PS3 gains also result into multi-core gains elsewhere. Actually at this point I think this is the best way to get more out of the 360, like UT3 development on the PS3 will probably help Gears of War 2 technically more so than if UT3 would have been first developed for the 360.

So it may well be if games design for the GPUs will be so radically different, such a platform would face a similar problem as the PS3 has faced. I think a PS4 will be Cell based, the PS3 should thus pave the way for an easy transition towards its successor.

The Wii was already technically low spec years before it launched. (IMO it's a great console though!) From a development perspective it's a lot like an enhanced GameCube, so relatively easy to understand and to tap its potential.

The gap is a bit too big for it to participate in the 360 vs PS3 multi-platform debate. The controls and game preferences are generally very different on the Wii compared to the other consoles anyhow, so likely if a game like Gears of War or Mass Effect would at some time go fully multi-platform, a Wii version would probably be based on an entirely different game engine.