We Can Still Do More With Xbox 360, Says Bleszinski

[AceAngel]

Why do people care so much about how a game looks?

Of course, I'm not gonna say that graphics should be completely ignored, but I'm quite happy with how most games look today.

Sad thing is, the current tech is still muddy at best, the amount of time guys spend 'fixing' stuff to accommodate a game engine is head-spinning.

If you ever enter the game industry, Unreal Engine is the perfect example of a game engine that was created with such rigid set of tools, that it 'what not to do'. The reason alot of money is being thrown at graphics is for the 'fixing' not to make it look better.

Hell, most guys joke on hey call themselves the sad panda squad when they have to work with UE3.

COD is another example of this, hell, most artist's have a chip with COD, because every single 'standard' naming conventions for the images/textures is given it's own 'new' name. Naming conventions which are already being used for other things.

The only example of a game that was done right (in terms of development) was Brink, where everything from the outsourcing, to engine was synchronized perfectly. The only problem was, lack of testing.

So yeah, not so much graphics as "We still haven't mastered 10 year old tech, which came from Doom 3, and have to spend loads of cash fixing it".

 

[Frostbite3789]

Or hey, novel idea, you could develop for the PC.

 

[vxicepickxv]

hehe, maximizing consul ability's to make quality games, now THERE'S a lost art, best of luck to em though

How about making sure a file could fit in a predefined amount of space, because it's expensive?

That's a lost art too. That art died when HDD manufacturing when to China, and the CD came out for installing game data.

 

[Lunar Templar]

hehe, maximizing consul ability's to make quality games, now THERE'S a lost art, best of luck to em though

How about making sure a file could fit in a predefined amount of space, because it's expensive?

That's a lost art too. That art died when HDD manufacturing when to China, and the CD came out for installing game data.

i kinda lump that in the above post, since that's a required skill imo for making the most of older hardware

 

[FortheLegion]

Why do people care so much about how a game looks?

It's funny that you ask that seeing that the character in your avatar is blind.

I'm not looking forward to having to upgrade to a new console so the longer this generation lasts the better.

 

[Zer_]

I wonder when the PS3 will reach this stage...

Well, considering the fact that they are already offloading a bunch of graphical calculations onto the CELL due to the PS3's bad GPU, they're already there.

 

[Tireseas_v1legacy]

I expect the next generation for MS's XBox system will be more of a hardware upgrade than anything else. Literally, you will take all the memory from the current system (which is conveniently removable *Hint, hint*) and slap it onto your new machine with a more powerful processor and graphics capabilities. Everybody wins: gamers keep their profiles, game saves, gamerscores, etc. while getting a serious hardware upgrade for newer games; MS's XBox R&D finally can justify their removable memory design for something other than getting your box repaired/replaced; and developers get a new set of limitations to play with for the 360.

 

[Waaghpowa]

I don't recall any dev saying this kind of thing for the PS2 or Gamecube. Sounds like they're getting pressured by Microsoft in an attempt to extend the life of the Xbox.

 

[harvz]

god damn, have you actually looked at the latest 360 games?
the fov is usually so low, the texture quality is usually horrible...lighting...my guess is that m$ isn't ready to get their new system out until after the wii 2 (it's still hard enough calling it a wii with a straight face) that they need to prolong the 360.

after BF3, which was average on 360 and looks amazing on pc (considering getting it again, just for pc) i will be doing the bulk of my gaming purchases on pc...wait a second, my steam list consists of 51 games and ive had it for 6 months as opposed to my 360 which i had for 4 years...

 

[Waaghpowa]

I don't recall any dev saying this kind of thing for the PS2 or Gamecube. Sounds like they're getting pressured by Microsoft in an attempt to extend the life of the Xbox.

... Wierd... They've all but announced that they are working on the Xbox loop... which will apparently run Windows 9 and is projected to launch in 2013...

Source: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multimedia/display/20111107232643_Microsoft_Xbox_Loop_to_Feature_ARM_Processor_Windows_9_Core_Report.html

They're using ARM processors? As in the ones they use in cell phones and DS's? Not impressed, if this is true, then it's as I suspected. The next gen console wont be much better, if at all to the current ones. I also suspect it's to fix the cost issue that both Microsoft and Sony faced when selling their console. And 2013 is still a ways off, so my comment stands.

 

[Waaghpowa]

Anyone remember this?
http://n4g.com/news/12934/epic-fought-for-an-xbox-360-with-512mb-memory

HAHAHAHAHA 256 megs? My cell phone has 1 gig of ram, and the Xbox was going to have 256?

 

[Keith Reedy]

I am fine with the consoles lasting for a few more years, getting new hardware costs everyone money. From the company all the way down to the gamer. Then the developers have to re-learn alot of stuff they haven't mastered yet. The graphics are not as impressive as they could be yes but if you think BattleField 3 and Skyrim look bad I'm afraid you have the problem there not the hardware. I would be happy if they dropped down the graphical fidelity of most games to give better ai and more people on the screen.

 

[JochemDude]

Because a 400 bucks gaming PC from 2005 is really going to kick some ass...

Right

 

[SelectivelyEvil13]

I don't think that's very realistic, and I don't even want to go through another console buying debacle or upgrading my PC (which I have to do regardless for Skyrim).

Tricking the hardware into performing better sounds like a nicer way of saying they're pulling all punches to get things looking better than the last game without causing the 360 to explode. Battlefield 3 looked terrible from that comparison piece without the texture add-on because the discs couldn't fit everything, and the 360 was troubled from the start regarding memory. Considering that many people still are using the stupidly low memory, older HDDs and Microsoft refused from the get-go to offer upgrades for a reasonable price, I don't think that the BF3 model would be welcomed by too many people after several games start eating up precious memory for graphics alone, with DLC adding more to the pile.
Naturally, the amount of work the console can do like more complicated AI and larger worlds come into play and are just as important as the visuals when it comes to stretching the consoles lifespan.

Of course, there is the risk that a new console generation will act as the foot in the door game price increase. Prettier graphics used to justify another $10 for a new game is not something that I would ever look forward towards, especially since this generation already seemed to skimp on the single player content enough as it was for a $60 game.

 

[RadiusXd]

I can understand this thought. There was a lot of wasted time and for half it's life it was a money pit for Microsoft. That is why both Microsoft and Sony are trying to maximize their current generation consoles. Though, Nintendo doesn't seem stuck to the same ideas.

That's because the Wii was and has been a money-printing machine for Nintendo. It's the highest-selling console by a LOT in this generation; Microsoft and Sony obviously need to get more out of their current consoles before they're ready to move on.

OT:

Why do people care so much about how a game looks?

Of course, I'm not gonna say that graphics should be completely ignored, but I'm quite happy with how most games look today.

Pretty much this. Graphics look great on the PS3 and Xbox 360, so instead of pushing ahead with bleeding-edge tech the industry should be focusing on making the best possible games with the hardware they've grown accustomed to over the past few years.

no they don't. textures suffer and ram is scrimmaged from AI, physics, level sizes and pretty much anywhere they can cut corners. all this and they still only manage decent presentation at what I would consider abysmal frame-rates (30 or less).

consoles need to get with the times so developers can expand the game-play limitations without either having a decidedly cartoon-ey art style (a good way to go, but not all the time), or polygon counts and texture quality that amount to jagged feces.

EDIT: and perhaps the developers would benefit more from having a little more room to breath instead of being forced to create what Bleszinski basically admitted is hacky coding. Is it not the first thing they teach programmers to avoid creating spaghetti code? It all just seems like bad practice and wishful thinking that will result in multi-platform titles being harder to port.

 

[Cyberjester]

Most consoles don't seem to be used to their full capacity. If a PS3 can run MW2, keep up a connection to the internet, chat to friends, download updates/programs and run a hack at the same time, it's probably idling. This is from someone who shuts down updaters and such on their computer in order to run games, but still, shut down all the useless programs and a game might just work.

I just can't see how a company could master the code to fully utilise a system in a few short years, especially in a world where garbage collection and code optimisation is seen as useless since we have so much to play with. It was important to make sure you ended your queues when you didn't need them in the olden days since if you left a loop running it would probably kill your 5 kilobit of memory rather quickly. My computer has 2GB of RAM, so why would you bother making sure a loop is closed? By the time I notice the program will be using 1GB and just about killing my computer, but who cares, it'll take me a while, right?

To discontinue hardware after six years is only needed because coders aren't that great and/or lazy and/or rushed and/or underpaid.

 

[EternalFacepalm]

By, oh, you know, reducing the FOV from 90 to <55?
Yeah, lots of life left.

 

[Joccaren]

"With creative programming you can squeeze anything out of any given platform"

I'm going to be a ***** and just because he has said this, get a console to run BF3, with a 64 player limit and full map sizes with all vehicles and such, PC graphics level and basically every other feature the PC version has, and have it stay above 60 FPS. You can't do it, I am sorry. There is an extent to how far you can go with tech, and why you would limit yourself so badly is beyond me.
Eh, at least with a hardware update for consoles more will be able to be done finally with all games.

 

[tahrey]

Huh... 6 years, long in the tooth? Not massively. We may be looking at new machines coming out in the next year or two, but we should expect the current ones to last just a little longer. Some of the best stuff for most consoles came out when they were 5+ years old. The generations were a bit compressed around the millennium, but otherwise this seems fairly standard. And you do get at least a little overlap, with some excellent run-out titles on previous generations appearing about the same time that devs actually start to get their shit together and release anything more than slightly iffy launch titles on the new gen.

The NES, SNES, Gameboy, Genesis, PSX, PS2, Atari VCS & ST, C64 & Amiga definitely so. (Was never too much in to the XBox so can't say for definite, but people seemed to hang on to their old ones for quite a while after the 360 was launched - and it may hold for the SMS/GG, but they got a bit sidelined in favour of Saturn/DC dev (both of which hung on in an underground kinda way) so I'm not too sure)

Let's bring the sceners in and see what they can do with the 360 and PS3... in PC terms they probably count as quite "limited hardware" nowadays, so they'd be in their element

 

[tahrey]

"With creative programming you can squeeze anything out of any given platform"

I'm going to be a ***** and just because he has said this, get a console to run BF3, with a 64 player limit and full map sizes with all vehicles and such, PC graphics level and basically every other feature the PC version has, and have it stay above 60 FPS. You can't do it, I am sorry. There is an extent to how far you can go with tech, and why you would limit yourself so badly is beyond me.
Eh, at least with a hardware update for consoles more will be able to be done finally with all games.

People said you'd never be able to get more than 200 sprites running at full speed on a 16 bit, 8Mhz machine without custom graphics chips... but it was done.

Perhaps there could be some kind of plug-in enhancement module made for them, a la the memory pack for the N64, or the SuperFX and 32X chips, but it's probably not necessary. The extent to which current gen console graphics have already been improved is remarkable, it's practically photo-real in some cases. With the discovery of a few more tricks it could become indistinguishable from video to all but trained observers.

Remember that these are fixed-spec platforms, not endlessly reconfigurable PCs. The type, speed/timing, capacity/capability and other detailed spec of each component is already well known. And they don't have to run more than a scrap of an operating system, vs the bloat of Windows XP/Vista/7, Linux or OSX. With a bit of work it's possible to make some very tight loops and amazingly optimised routines that would either not work very well on a PC or cause it to throw exceptions... there just has to be the motivation there to do it, which doesn't exist when you're still operating well within the hardware's intrinsic limits.

Cripes, did you ever see GT2, RR4 or Vagrant Story on the PSX? Games that made most of their contemporaries look like a Game & Watch? Seeing those fit into and run smoothly with only 2mb RAM and a 33Mhz CPU made my technical lobes have a joy-fit. Transfer that same level of hardware abuse to a X360 and epicness will result.