I've always been confused about the "we pushed the console to its limit" statement.. Hasn't almost every game released push the console to its limit? I don't have the techno know how that some of the users here and I'm hoping to get this clarified..

I'm using Gears of War, MGS4, and GTA IV for my example.

Why are none of those three games running 1080p @ 60fps?? Its because the console can't handle it, right? again I'm no techno genius here, but since they can't run at these "ideal" settings then its because the consoles can't handle it. So technically they've been maxed out.

I'm not saying games will not get better... better programming and development tools will help create scenes, graphics and games we haven't thought possible, and just like the games I've mentioned, those games will also max out the console.

Again, I might have this all wrong.. but wouldn't most games released be maxing out the console?

Well technically you are correct in saying that all of these games have maxed out some portion of the system. Although games get better graphically over time because they continue to optimize their gaming engines in a way that allows the system to do more, even though older less optimized code max out the system as well only they are wasting processing potential instead of using it.

Not necessarily--both systems will get better-looking/bigger/more complex games coming out at some point, with the same resolution and framerate. So I don't think so. For example, Gears of War 2 has better graphics, hundreds of times as many characters on screen at once at times, a higher multiplayer count, better physics, etc, and yet it runs at the same framerate or better than the first game.

no game will ever max out a system, anyone using a phase like that is just creating marketing hype. Developers will learn newer, faster, easier methods of doing things as they work on a system more and more.

They should say they are maxing out their own abilities as programmers, but that doesnt really sound so good does it.

I think there is a cost performance ceiling that games run into. The game budget for a first generation game will be consumed by creating the engine to run the game + the game. Later games in the generation will use that engine and spend the budget on other elements of gameplay and optimization.

GeoW 2 and Resistance 2 are good examples of this. GeoW2 was able to increase the multiplayer from 8 players to 10 players and Resistance 2 was able to increase the number of multiplayer from 40 players to 60 players.

Of course games will max out systems.  Every computer/gaming system has bottlenecks in the design.  If a game gets to the point of maxing out one of the bottlenecks, that game cannot do more than it is currently doing.

I can put a drag car engine on a moped, but unfortunately the moped can only accelerate so fast because the size of the tires are restricting the ability of the engine.  The engine isn't maxed out, but the everything else is.

I think what devs usually mean by maxing out the machines is that at that moment the game was done there exepriance and know how was maxed out on the machine. Next time they work on a title they might find new ways of making things work and have a better understanding of the machine as well as there own tech meaning may the next game will max out the machine and so on and so forth. Ofcourse this will only go so far but I think so far this gen this is what is ment by the devs.

You can 'max out' a console in different ways hm. I'm sure they could get a 1080p game at 60 fps, but I'm not sure how good of a game it'd be content wise. I'm happy with what they're doing already at the moment.

I think the key thing is that although a lot of games "max out" a system the developers can always get more out of it. Optimising the engine, getting the optimum trade off between graphics / ai / sound / draw distance / load / etc.

The best looking games for consoles tend to come out late in their life cycle.