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88 Comments
- Nezzari, on 10/12/2007, -6/+57They have pushed the Xbox 360 to it's CURRENT limits. As time goes by, the technology and tools will only get better. Now, don't get me wrong, I think Gears of War looks absolutely amazing. I just find it hard to believe that Epic has programmed a perfect engine which cannot be improved.
It's still very early to claim something like this. I have high expectations of 3rd and 4th gen 360 titles. - guitarpro411, on 10/12/2007, -2/+42As Les Doodis mentioned in the article forum:
What do you expect them to say? "No, we didn't try to use the 360's full potential." - Paroparo, on 10/12/2007, -5/+25Not all too surprising. Of course they want it to make it sound like the platform they're developing is the only one that can handle their games and make people buy more of it. Much like the "Resistance is 22gb! Blu-ray is a must for next-gen games!!!" horsecrap.
- Opteron, on 10/12/2007, -1/+21In Major Nelsons last podcast it was either Cliffy or Mark that said the exact same thing, they've pushed the 360 it its CURRENT limits. Expect more as years go on.
- spitfire6006006, on 10/12/2007, -6/+23have you seen the game?
- hamstereater, on 10/12/2007, -3/+19Uh yeah, it's third person to show off pretty character models, it's not like it was done for tactical gameplay or anything silly like that.
Why are people so afraid of change? :( - LordSkywalker, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17BREAKING REPORT (1914):
Science has been pushed to the limits. - zediker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14@jblade:
They do that so when you are hiding behind cover (which is very important in this game), you are not staring at a wall. - rindin, on 10/12/2007, -4/+16You've gotta give these guys props.
They convinced Microsoft to upgrade the 360 from 256MB ram to 512.
(And apparently it cost them $1 billion!??.) - rindin, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12Why am I getting dugg down for this comment?
I've assisted in the development of 3D environments for the 2.0 engine (UT2004) which was pretty good, but this new engine is nuts....
If you had a team of 30 ppl with some good skills in maya and some other ***** you could make a game like Gears over a year no prob.... I'm just sayin' a lot of props are deserved to the engine devs.. - omgerstistony, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Why so much fighting over the system specs ? They both look to be great spec wise, but in the end dosen't it just come down to the games and how fun they are ?
- akravator, on 10/12/2007, -6/+15Yeah, these Epic guys are just ***** coders.
Btw, can ya show me the link to your next-gen game? - HappyScrappy, on 10/12/2007, -7/+16The textures in Half Life were 64x64 at most (limitation on 3dfx cards led to that).
Textures for games now are 256x256 or bigger now. That's 16x bigger.
And the triangle list is bigger, due to the higher poly count.
The story isn't 150 times longer, but the game can easily be 150 times larger. - KentonSPR, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11That reasoning isn't correct.
HL2 was built on the Source engine. HL2: Lost Coast was also built on the source engine. Is Lost Coast going to run at the same speed as HL2 on identical hardware...no. Loast Coast is more demanding that HL2, but it was built on the source engine was it not? - drxym, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11Every console gets better with time. It's not just that people get to understand more about it, but also the tools, libraries and the SDK get better too. Every software house makes heavy use of 3rd party engines for games, physics, menus, graphics etc. So once these improve then so do the games that rely on them.
The XBox 360 has a fairly conventional processor, but has 3 cores. Once you spawn off music, physics etc. onto separate cores, things get faster than single threaded. I expect the many of the first generation of libs & games played it safe and used a single core and didn't do much with the others. As developers get better they'll start to farm off significant chunks onto other cores and the result is they can do far more in the same amount of time.
The PS3 and Wii will go through the same process.
The PS3 also has less general computing power than a 360 but it has 6 SPEs for in-game use. An SPE is basically a DSP and capable of brutal floating point performance. The single general purpose PPE is meant to act like a conductor and has to keep feeding the six SPEs with things to do. The whole concept will weird-out programmers at first and they might rely too much on the general purpose PPE. But once they get heads around it the PS3 will scream. The danger is that many titles, especially ports may not bother and there will be occasions where the PS3 game looks worse than the 360. Again, better 3rd party libs might help here.
The problem for the Wii is that is has nowhere near the performance of either the 360 or the PS3. It has a single 750Mhz PPC core which is closer in performance to the XBox or Gamecube than the other next-gen consoles. Memory is much lower too. The disparity is so great that I think it far more likely that titles will be ported up from the current generation of consoles than down from the 360 / PS3. Paradoxically that might mean the Wii is easier to work with than the other two consoles since it's a known quantity. However the challenge is to maintain the momentum when titles dry up for the current generation of consoles and the Wii finds itself on its own and facing two far more powerful rivals. - rindin, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11Actually, Gears of War is getting a ton of press, but the ppl who really 'hooked it up' were the ppl that designed the new engine:
http://www.unrealtechnology.com/html/technology/ue30.shtml
It's an absolutely amazing engine and Gears is lucky to be this first game released on it! - JorgeGT, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7http://cad-comic.com/comic.php?d=20061027 [today's Ctrl+Alt+Del comic]
- cal3b, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8I expect the only people who care about this whole 360 vs PS3 ***** are those who can't afford to get both, those who can't handle the fact that something might be better (or as good as) something they have recently purchased & those that are just morons with nothing better to do. Keep that spin going, I'm sure it's all based on fact and totally non bias.
- HappyScrappy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7It's just marketing-speak anyway. They made a good looking game. That's it and that's all.
This other stuff is just hyperbole (specially crafted to not preclude later, super-hyperbole). - taforever, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8If you read around a bit, you will find that many times for consoles (PS2, Xbox etc...) Companies always say this is as good as it gets. I believe the 2nd Splinter Cell for Xbox was advertised this way and it wasnt even close to limit (see: Black, Splinter Cell 3). So yes Epic did push Microsoft to put in 512, but I honestly do not believe the system is maxed after a year. ANd yes i have no problem believing this could run on the PS3, and look just as good. Same deal with MGS4, Kojima said it would run on the 360.
- dj_sea2005, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Try telling that to the fanboys
- JaytB, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I hope they will push both
- gwolf, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I think that means PS3 requires more programmers. That translates into higher development costs.
- mediaphile, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6@Darksoul:
It's called a period. It's your friend.
If you want to be taken seriously, you might want to learn some of the other special features of our English language, like grammar and composition.
Not that it would help whatever point you were trying to make with that gibberish. - Dabellah, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8Epic isn't filled with crappy coders, their graphics engines are always the next gen stuff. They always have something that is a step above in terms of grapihcs, and if this is achieved through bloating the file sizes for larger textures, then so be it. They achieve a new level of detail and in return they consume more space. Sounds reasonable to me.
- MackPrime, on 10/12/2007, -9/+13Resistance is 22gb of padding, i come to think. If it looks no better than Gears, what's on that blu-ray ? IS Resistance 150 times the length of Half Life ?
- mediaphile, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6This is terrible copy: "So does that mean PlayStation 3 couldn't handle the game? When asked, Preston skillfully dodged the question, but implied the answer was "no.""
Do they mean to say the PlayStation is capable of handling Gears of War? Double negatives are bad for a reason. Preston probably dodged the question because he didn't know how to answer that terribly worded question. - darklord5907, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6The last comment in the article; " With the boundaries of the playing field defined, won't developers focus less time searching for the lines and more time experimenting with what's inbounds? "
Makes sense to me, I'm almost hoping they don't try to push the graphical capabilities and system specs and just work for better game-play. - CaptainPlant, on 10/12/2007, -6/+9I checked the chip specs of both 360 and PS3 on wikipedia and was surprised to find the 360 slightly ahead in a number of areas.
- BleedingHollow, on 10/12/2007, -6/+9The title of this article is misleading because they failed to mention that it has been pushed to the max at it's current state. Developer's are always pushing limits every generation of games and each time they look better.
I'm pretty sure GoW 2 and 3 will look even better.
btw screw blu-ray its cheaper to just ship 2-3 dvd's if need be.
"Resistance is 22gb of padding, i come to think. If it looks no better than Gears, what's on that blu-ray ? IS Resistance 150 times the length of Half Life ?"
no your probably just getting extra language packs on the same disk. - HappyScrappy, on 10/12/2007, -8/+10Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Depends on how it's used in each case.
- mredamon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2the thing few people seem to remember is that regardless of who takes the larger market share, none of the big 3 systems are going anywhere. they are all here to stay and that GREAT for us gamers. I'm sure one may have the advantage on the other two in raw computing power but that is irrelavant. higher pixel/polygon count does not always mean a better game. it seems with some of these games that the more realistic it gets, the less i am able to believe it. for instance - oblivion - what AMAZING visuals and what a great game but the facial graphics were creepy... a constant reminder of : THIS IS JUST A VIDEO GAME. i found it easier to immerse myself in a more consistent world like zelda. In the end, the computing power is a tool to get the job done but it does guarantee a good game, which face it, in the end even fanboys have to admit is what it is all about.
- mediaphile, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4There are a number of things that aren't predicated on a game engine. Among these are size of maps and number of models.
Think of it this way: the original Half-Life was programmed on the original Quake engine. Does Half-Life run the same as Quake? - HappyScrappy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I do understand the memory system, thanks.
Look, in the vernacular of PCs, 360 (and 180) use "cycle-stealing" video. The video refresh bandwidth comes out of your main memory bandwidth. Additionally, any GPU accesses come out of your main memory bandwidth available to the CPU.
This is also the case for one of the two 256MB chunks on the PS3, but not the other.
This is what I stated, and this is true.
As to the 360, due to the way that this shared memory aggregates accesses all into one lump, MS' available bandwidth figures are aggregated into one lump. Sony has many more high-bandwidth busses, MS has one (primary) higher-bandwidth bus. The SPUs on the PS3 can't even access main memory effectively, for any kind of speed you have to load their dataset into their own local memory. This means each SPU has it's own ultra-high-bandwidth bus when executing that doesn't affect the CPU or GPU accesses at all!
In the end, they're different designs. It is not possible to say one big bus and one big memory pool is axiomatically better than many somewhat slower busses and many memory pools. The first is better because it's easier to optimize for, the second is better because if you do optimize for it, it goes faster.
Pick your poison. Pick your position. You can make arguments for either, but you can't say one design philosophy is automatically better than the other. - Septimus, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3^ Yeah course it is ^
I know I can't stop using it. My cousin working out in Japan can't move for ***** mini-discs and players either. - moovitz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Like all consoles, the full potential won't be reached until at least the second or third year of production. That has been the going trend for most of the previous systems. For example, shadow of colossus for the ps2, perfect dark for the n64, donkey kong for the snes .etc .etc.
But keep in mind, beautifully looking games, by no means, make a good game. - yuravian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@rdtx2005:
What you said makes sense, but you neglected that it was the game developer, not the console developer, that said it. So of course the developer would say that they tried to use 100% of the 360's power. It would be bad press for them to say they didn't. If MS, on the other hand, said that they did use all the power, it might be bad for sales. As it is, I wouldn't be surprised to see the 360 QA guys come out and attempt to rebut this announcement. - EGOvoruhk, on 10/12/2007, -9/+10According to one of the recent digg articles on Resistance, it used to be 30gb, but PAL movies were removed and saved 8gb. I would assume that there is another 8gb or so of NTSC movies. So gameplay doesn't seem to be missing due to size limitations, just lame movies that shouldn't even be there
Seriously, do games not look good enough to just use the engine instead of pre-rendered stuff? - HappyScrappy, on 10/12/2007, -9/+10256+256 does equal 512.
Are you bad at math?
Anyway, I could easily argue the PS3 is much more efficient, because the unified RAM on the 360 (and original Xbox) means that any memory accesses the GPU makes (or the RAMDAC) consume bandwidth that the processor then cannot use. On the PS3, these separated RAM spaces mean the bandwidth doesn't have to be shared. Thus, the PS3 is more efficient.
This argument is no more or less true than the one for the 360. There are tradeoffs to both systems. - jm9206755, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Just because those formats were not particularly successful in consumer retail doesn't mean they were unsuccessful overall. Most of those formats were very popular and widely used in multimedia industries.
- MOGua, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1they are NOT made on the same equipment. Stop saying they cost the same because they require about the same amount of raw material.
You are saying something along the lines of "Toyota assembly plants can pump out BMWs."
My point is that since DVD plants can readily produce HD DVDs with minimal upgrade, HD DVDs have an advantage. On the other hand, if you wanted to start making made-from-corn-BRs, you have to start a new plant from scratch (and that takes a lot of investment) - haelios, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2A few reasons why it's not as straightforward as you say:
- AI thread dispension
- Caching systems (size/latency/writeback methods)
- ATI specific shaders.
- Networking code
I'm not saying that it isn't possible (it is, the PS3 isn't sufficiently different or underpowered compared to the 360 for a game like GOW to be ported) just that it isn't a simple recompile with the Octopiler. - distrbnce, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Another one of Sony's formats also enjoyed a modest success. the Compact Disc.
- decay, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Fun? All I want is my eyes to bleed from the pretty.
- distrbnce, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1MOGua, you would be very happy with 256MB of XDR RAM in your machine. Running at 3.2GHz instead of 700MHz.
- SGagnon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Thanks for your in-depth review ;-)
- rdtx2005, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Mini-Disc is still huge.. outside North America.
- SGagnon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If you're going to bash someone for his spelling, at least try to make sure you don't have any spelling mistakes yourself. It's SURE, not SHURE and JESUS, not JEASUS. Also, you're supposed to capitalize the first letter after a period. That third paragraph of yours only has ONE period (at the end)... Wow...
- haelios, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1And those that know computer architecture and see/hear these fanboys talking crap like they know what they are saying... I can't help but try to explain things out to them, but I'm realising that there really isn't much point!
- djboogie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0oh yea, lets not forget how the psp has outgunned the nintendo hand held dominance...........oh sorry, that was a different life
actually everything sony has "invented" has been pretty pants (since the walkman)
historically, have to give credit to philips for most things........unfortunately -
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