Bleszinski: 'Code magic' can still squeeze power out of 360

@db2
That was the first videogame console my family owned in the mid-80s. Though the loadtime for the initial "EPIC Games" logo on GEARS3 took until former President Bush's second term to finish. What a gyp.

@foxhound
It was kind of a rush job. They mostly just reused the Pickaxe Pete engine.

@db2

I remember when Pickaxe Pete blew my mind, so much stuff happening on the screen!

@Wakers
hahahahahahahahahaha i like totalbiscuit too ;)

FMV != coding

So no. Not at all. He's talking about optimization.

Misread FOV for FMV, comment still applies. An analogy is packing a bag, it seems full, but if you unpack it and repack it you often find ways to squeeze more things in there.

@Slomoshun Yeah, we'll believe you over actual game designer Cliffy. He doesn't know shit.

@Slomoshun How is this highly doubtful?

Look at the PS2, and the new legs it sprouted towards the end of its life. Pushing models like in Shadow of the Colossus, or just otherwise blowing us away with Okami, God of War / GoW II, Metal Gear Solid 3, and Final Fantasy XII. Or the Xbox, with solid ports / reworkings of Half-Life 2, DOOM 3, FarCry, and stunners like Riddick and Chaos Theory. All without the use of coprocessors or RAM expansions.

3D consoles have proven to have a major boost at the end of life like this. 2D consoles too, albeit with hampering slowdown (NES) and the use of coprocessors or RAM expansions (SNES, Saturn).

@Oddgirl

Yes, console games do get a significant boost in visuals as the generation ages, but, in the time taken to completely master that hardware specification, technology has leapfrogged multiple times and a developer could achieve significantly better results just moving to the more capable hardware. Shadow of the Colossus, for example, is a fantastic game but it was overly ambitious for the PS2's hardware; with pre-cursors to motion blur and HDR lighting at work in a game with a massive sense of scale, the framerate was extremely choppy and the low resolution muddied otherwise high quality artwork. Had it been delayed a year and deployed on the PS3 when it launch, those would be non-issues. Why take the time and energy to create the approximation of an effect when you could just implement said effect in full?

@jackal because the market is bigger for the established console, and a good looking game on an older system that outshines its peers will sell far better than a slightly better looking game released on a system that few people have that will age poorly as it wasn't optimized for the new platform...

I see what you're saying about wanting to realize your artistic vision, or maximize your graphical fidelity, but from a business standpoint it doesn't always make sense.

@Oddgirl
Gears of War 4 will have a SuperFX chip inside the disc.

Please, that's just preposterous!

It will ship with a USB Dongle, with Super FX-2.

Kinect is the 32X/SuperFX/Memory Expansion.

Except it manages to add nothing.

Really? This is why I LOVE consoles. After five years, we're still squeezing more out of them.

With the PC, the only way to squeeze new life out of five year old hardware is to keep the tower and internals, and scrap everything inside. That's just not fun for me anymore.

keep the tower and scrap the internals*

@Dionkey With games costing around 400-600 SEK I'm not sure how a lowly student like me could afford new hardware aswell. Not saying it's a bad Idea, except that for me it would be a bad idea :/

@Dionkey

Stupid idea, would entirely defeat the point of consoles, which is having one set of hardware. Game makers know the exact amount of RAM/GPU power/CPU power in every single xbox, because it hasn't changed, and they program accordingly. This is down to such a precise science that when the Vahalla series of 360's combined the EDRAM with the CPU/GPU, they had to program in a delay measured in nanoseconds since the electrons no longer had to travel down that tiny path.

Your idea would completely ruin this, it'd be no different than a PC other than the branding and input/output connections.

Don't blame Sony/MS for milking this console cycle for longer than normal, blame the world economy and its leaders.

@R Planteer
Exactly. This is why playing games on consoles makes so much sense (for me anyhow). Nobody's getting a different experience, you don't have to consider upgrading anything or getting new graphics drivers or whatever - you're playing what the developers designed and if it sucks or the frame rate's terrible or whatever, that is a fault in the game and by its developers, not the console. And it'll be highlighted in reviews because the reviewers all have a system identical to yours.

I see people saying that you can now play games on a cheap PC, which is great and all (and probably partly because consoles are where they are, meaning cross-platform games have to be designed to be capable of running on old hardware), but how many of those PC gamers are genuinely using a PC they bought five years ago and haven't upgraded since? Not 'well, it's possible - some computers then would still be fine' - okay great, I'm sure that's theoretically true (if you were careful to select a computer that was good at running games - my computer is four years old and won't run anything more graphically demanding than a text adventure), but are you actually still using one? Some people probably are but I bet it's not a very high proportion.

@Guybrush

Gears 3 and Uncharted 3 both look amazing to me when I am playing. The 360 and PS3 are still on par six years later.

@Guybrush So there's one PS3 game that actually makes full use of that mess of hardware and now the 360 is a piece if crap?

@InfernoShade I agree as well. MW3 Looks Sick on the 360. Forza as well. There are tracks on Forza that have updated everything, down to campers off to the side of some tracks.

That wouldn't be possible if there was no room.

@InfernoShade If I'm not mistaken Cliffy has stated that Gears of War 2 hit the peak of Xbox 360 hardware or in better terms hit the limit to the xbox's hardware in gears of war 2.

@miles82
Really? Sorry, I just may have forgotten that he said that. But now he's saying you can push it even more. So it seems a bit confusing. I would guess there's still some things that can be done to make it work harder.

@miles82
He did say they were using all resources available on the console, but also said that that didn't mean they were using them perfectly. It's like redlining a engine with crusty intakes and a leak in the fuel line: fix up leaks and inefficiencies and you'll go even faster.

@TraceurRyuk Part III

I agree 10000000 PERCENT with what you just said. It's art direction at this point maybe even more so then power.

@TraceurRyuk Part III
Madworld would be better in HD.
With the low resolution, the B&W looks like crap.

@ch3burashka
I'm quite sure Rockstar has a few of those on thier staff.
/me remembers the eye of sauron debacle

@Bedazzled
So what? They still look great, and this is how consoles always are.

It's like every generation of console breeds a new generation of PC elitist, who has just now lived long enough to be financially independent and can afford upgrading his computer's internals, and thinks that graphics are most important thing and feels the need to justify his spending by berating the lowly console gamers.

Whatever. While you're buying a new graphics card, I'll be buying a new game. Guess who'll have more fun with that money spent?

@aristokrat

You're seriously pulling the old "PC gamers need new, expensive GFX cards every X days/weeks/months" routine? Are you like 12 or something?

A 9400M, something Nvidia don't even make anymore can out perform your XBox, a GTX265 is sufficient to run practically any game in 720P on a PC. Neither of which are new cards and cost substantially less than a console game.

Bonus points: Games are cheaper on the PC. So I get better looking, cheaper games.

U Jelly? Ohh yes you are.