News Criterion: Nobody has ever "maxed out a console"

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2009/06/15/criterion-nobody-has-ever-maxed-out-a-conso/1

Burnout developer Criterion Studios has claimed that, contrary to what EA has said, nobody has ever maxed out a console.

 

The 360's GPU is definitely not going to learn any new tricks, devs can learn sneakier ways of clipping draw distance etc but its still 2 generations old now.

 

Yo Patrick! Ever seen the demoscene tv and what is possible with just 4KB.

 

He's right - It's a PR stunt at best - What does EA like?

PR.

Surprises anywhere?

Nope.

 

What a load of rubbish the EA claims are - look at how much devs managed to get from the PS2 before it died. That's a console which is fairly limited, but there were amazing-looking games produced for it for a long long time.

 

While it is possible to max out a system, it requires a perfectly crafted game, which is pretty much impossible. All games have flaws which can be improved to make them run better, because it's simply not possible to create one without them. The only thing that can happen is you get closer and closer to perfection.

 

That's because the PS2 (like another console I could name) was very hard to code for and it took devs a long time unlock its full potential.

 

Its the same for today's generation of consoles. If you look at the games that were released when the 360 and PS3 first came out and compare them to games that are soon to be released (Batman, Ghostbusters, Alan Wake, Mass effect 2 etc) then it obvious that it takes time to get to know a new system and how to correctly optimize it.

But EA claiming that it's already maxed out......Rubbish!!

 

Hmm I think EA Criterion are talking horsecrap. EA DICE's (Patrick Soderlund's studio)most recent game Mirrors Edge looks and plays(graphically and gameplaywise) a hell of a lot better than Burnout Paradise. Burnout paradise while a great fun game looks like it is built on the GTA 3 graphics engine (Renderware).

I'm sure that Epic also said something similar about Gears of War 2 being the prime example of pushing the X360 to its limits. Ubisoft also said that they could not push the X360 more than in Farcry 2.

 

You could easily max out a machine on your first few iterations of an engine but if you are continually improving that engine, reducing memory footprint, tweaking routines etc, then you will get more out of the engine for the same level of usage of a previous iteration of an engine, I doubt anyone's game engine is ever anywhere near 80% efficient let alone 100% even if they think it is.

Thing with a console is that the hardware is what it is, there are no hardware upgrades available to accommodate for sloppy programmers with inefficient code, so developers have to come up with new ways of doing things in the hardware they have, as time goes on new ways of doing things will be developed, this will be the same for 360 or PS3 though I think you will only ever see the best stuff from console exclusives where you can focus one set of hardware limitations rather than a compromise for all.

Criteron did a great job on Burnout, the engine is fast and fairly well detailed, neither platform suffered from the porting issues a lot of EA annual updates seem to have either, Criterion led on PS3 with that title unlike most others devs those giving some credence to claims that it is easier to go PS3 > 360 than 360 > PS3, probably due to more limitations on the PS3 with lower powered GPU when doing multiplatform and not wanting to load up SPUs with stuff that won't be so portable across platforms at a guess.

 

I would imagine it is the same as most things on release of a new platform we will see improvements happening in what the developers can happening rapidly....but the number and impact of those developments will decrease logarithmically with time.
So you never get to a point where the console is maxed out but the number of inovations and their impact lessen.

 

What a load of ********.

Burnout Paradise came out Jan 2008 and looks brilliant, not the best looking game on the market but neither is Mirrors edge.

Mirrors edge uses the Unreal engine 3 however as opposed to an in-houe built engine.

 

Sloppy programmers... nuff said

 

EA make a good game and I'll believe you.

 

One could make a good case about there being dimenishing returns on developing further graphical improvements. At some point, the amount of cost needed to significantly improve the graphics, or other part of the system, will be projected to be just to high to be worth the expected improvement.

In such a case, one could say they've maxed out what they expect to get from a set system.

 

well....no. There are definitely limits to what a given console can do.

Otherwise with enough brains behind it Ione could make an Atari2600 look like a PS3...

 

what a load of rubbish they have maxed out the xbox 360, but they havent maxed out the pc, if xbox 360 say has a 7900gtx and we all have 260 gtx there is obvioslily more power to come form pc grahics i don't understand how 360 graphics can be quite good with 7900gtx when we play with much more powerful gpu's what is going on? max out pc and then we will be able to see what it is caperble of

 

An awesome article that might give some insight to what exactly the argument is about - http://edusworld.org/ew/ficheros/2006/paginasWeb/making_of_sotc.html

 

Props to Criterion, they proved it with the PS2.

Look at Burnout Dominator and Black...

Bloody beautiful.

 

Now now it seems that you are a Criterion employee no? I am simply pointing out that Mirrors Edge is graphically superior to Burnout Paradise. Thus in fact EA DICE have done a better job at maxing out the Xbox 360 with a third party engine like UE3 than EA Criterion means that Criterion should shut the hell up. The EA CEO John Riccitiello should really step in and say something imho as DICE as far more valuable to EA than Criterion. Frankly DICE make better games too...