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[clav]

Minimum spec required for Crysis 1 is 1.5Gig (Vista). The fact that they shoe horned it into a console with a lot less memory and it remained feature intact but also offered up some graphical upgrades says to me that 2Gig of main memory should be enough.

I'm more interested in the GPU. It really should be designed to deliver games that offer stereoscopic 3D gameplay at 1080p at acceptable framerates. The GPU would have to be something special to deliver that.

Yeah the most important thing from the announcement is what kind of GPU is going to be installed.

 

[Plinko]

If nextgen does what it should then the jump will be noticeable.

-High poly count models for rounder looking characters.
-Higher res textures.
-better physics that will help improve animation.
-better bump mapping.
-tessellation.
-better lighting.

Then yes the jump will be noticeable. Look at the Unreal Samaritan demo and tell me it doesn't look like a generation leap.

To GAF or to the general public that will be buying most of these consoles?

Also, I'm quite familiar with the Samaritan demo. I don't think it's even close to being as big a jump as it was from SD to HD. Not even close.

 

[lunchwithyuzo]

Say that again in five years?

In five years they'll be prepping Xbox 4.

 

[gofreak]

True. I would believe 4 cores but 6 just seems ridiculous. Maybe I'm wrong. It's a rumor though and until that part is confirmed (and the dual GPUs) I'm skeptical.

The dual gpu bit does seem weird, but might be a reference to dev kit hardware - which would be less weird.

The six core thing doesn't seem weird to me at all. I mean PS3 had 7 'cores'. 360 had 3. If MS wants easy BC, then another custom PPC design would seem likely. And if they go that route, really any number of cores is plausible depending on what kind of core they want. 6 could seem modest, even, depending on the design.

Minimum spec required for Crysis 1 is 1.5Gig (Vista). The fact that they shoe horned it into a console with a lot less memory and it remained feature intact but also offered up some graphical upgrades says to me that 2Gig of main memory should be enough.

Well, Crytek must see a much more ambitious future than a Crysis 1 level of game complexity - given that they would like 4 times that in the next systems, apparently

Now, a certain amount of that may be 'developers can never have enough RAM' greed, but it's a pretty long way to 2 from that kind of thinking.

I don't know though. I'd love someone to do a broader survey among the top studios today, on how much they'd like to see, on what would be necessary to really achieve their vision of a next-gen game vs what would merely be convenient/nice. But probably most wouldn't want to risk talking out of turn and embarrassing a platform partner in the future if they didn't live up to that.

 

[guek]

Horrid pop-in on current gen consoles say they should; at least if we want to get objects with better textures, physics, and a higher polygon count.

uuuuh, pretty sure texture pop in is NOT due to ram constraints

 

[dragonelite]

Minimum spec required for Crysis 1 is 1.5Gig (Vista). The fact that they shoe horned it into a console with a lot less memory and it remained feature intact but also offered up some graphical upgrades says to me that 2Gig of main memory should be enough.

I'm more interested in the GPU. It really should be designed to deliver games that offer stereoscopic 3D gameplay at 1080p at acceptable framerates. The GPU would have to be something special to deliver that.

Not sure how much window takes but i believe the 360 os takes in 32mb of ram as footprint.
Ps3 is at around 65mb last time i heard about while they dropped it from 90+mb so props to sony.

 

[DeaconKnowledge]

As a final note Deacon before I head out. What has been the more suistanable model of hardware evolution. A focus on gimmicks only and little to no graphical upgrades or a focus on graphical upgrades and spec increases with a light focus on gimmicks?

On the side of success in the gimmick corner stands the wii alone and that was only a partial success considering its failure to sustain 3rd party developers which are need in the long term to be successful. Kinct is minorly successful but its not pushing high volume in terms of game attachment and it was also the rare exception of a current console add on that succeeded. On the side of failures in this department are the 3DS, Move(largely), numerous Sega add ons and older attempts like the Panasonic remote control systems, the Virtual Boy and others.

On the other side you have consoles that have relied on significant hardware upgrades seeing the most overall success. The 360, the N64, the PS2, the PS1, Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo. In terms of sustaining software developers and hardware sales to me it seems the sensible route is large hardware upgrades with some minor gimmicks attached. To be more specific I think hardware upgrades with minor gimmicks based around a tolerable price and only sells for a loss very early on in the cycle. Ideally you also want to be the first out of the gate or very close to it.


If I were a rational actor entering the console market thats how I would proceed. And if your honest with yourself that lloks to be the route both Sony and Microsoft are going. For Sony just look at the Vita. Significant hardware upgrades with minor gimmicks.

As for the rest of your post, You're directly attributing the success of those consoles to better graphics, which I don't at all agree with. The one common element you're skipping over that is constant with every successful console to ever release in the history of the hobby is games. All of your examples featured a robust library. In order to receive said library in this day and age, graphics capabilty, or rather, the flexibilty of standardization, is necessary for a successful console. Being bleeding edge has nothing to do with it, and never has.

 

[Ether_Snake]

I thought the Xbox successor is coming out in 2 years.

The point is 2gb will be very little in five years, so it should be higher considering these new consoles will likely remain until 2020 or so.

It might look like enough for next year or 2013, not so much in 2016.

 

[gatti-man]

There it is! I was waiting for someone to bring this up.

See, the thing is that there is NO "SD to HD" jump in graphics with this new generation of consoles. It's not happening and it won't happen again for a decade, if not longer. The level of graphical quality we're going to see won't even come close to the effect on the eyes of a jump from SD to HD.

Let's compare in game Gears 3 to maxed in game BF3 PC. Yeah I'd say that's a huge jump. Sub HD to true HD with AA and AF will be a similar improvement to last gens jump. Not only that but you finally get HD textures swoooon

 

[chickdigger802]

If this is true, this means more games might actually require more than 2 cores for pc!

Otherwise, pc and wii U will be my system combo next gen. pc and wii worked great this gen, see no reason to MS or Sony stuff up. Man, Japan game development are fucked for next gen consoles...

 

[guek]

The point is 2gb will be very little in five years, so it should be higher considering these new consoles will likely remain until 2020 or so.

You know what? 512mb might seem "small" in 2010, but devs are still pushing that teeny tiny itty bitty pool of ram to make fantastic looking games.

 

[jetjevons]

As long as it can give me Samartian, then I'm fucking happy.



Edit: if that can...

You do realize that Samaritan was the name of big police robot the protagonist faces off against at the end of the demo and not the name of the actual game.

 

[Durante]

2 GB would be really weak, particularly if it's just DDR3. Even high-end DDR3 is around 40€ for 8 GB. Surely they could afford at least 4.

I don't want TES VI to be designed for less than 4 GB of memory.

 

[eastmen]

Ummmmm, why is that?

why is what ?


Why is GDDR5 very expensive ? Because its clocked at very high speeds


Why doesn't a cpu need very fast ram ? because they are designed with low bandwidth in mind and large caches to compensate for that. Look at a website doing overclocking scaling tests , cpus barely scale with bandwidth increase .

 

[olimpia84]

8GB or bust!!!!!

 

[Router]

You do realize that Samaritan was the name of big police robot the protagonist faces off against at the end of the demo and not the name of the actual game.

Its the name of the techdemo.

 

[charsace]

Let's compare in game Gears 3 to maxed in game BF3 PC. Yeah I'd say that's a huge jump. Sub HD to true HD with AA and AF will be a similar improvement to last gens jump. Not only that but you finally get HD textures swoooon

This what I think. Some of the games that were are getting now are showing early versions of tech that companies will be using for games on next gen consoles. People also have to remember that MS designs graphic API. I'm having a hard time seeing them making a box meant for gaming and multimedia that isn't powerful. The next box will have a custom card that will classify as a upper class DX11 part and will have early versions of features that they plan to implement in future versions of DX.

 

[JaseC]

6 core and dual GPU seems waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too optimistic for the nextbox. I'm guessing it's some fan boy rumor and not "real." 6 core isn't even really PC standard yet. the 2 gigs of RAM is more reasonable though.

This shouldn't be used as a gauge. The first generation of Intel and AMD dual-core CPUs were mere months old when the X360 launched with its tri-core Xenon.

 

[PopcornMegaphone]

I know the article doesn't address VRAM, but I would be thrilled with 6 cores and 2 GB of VRAM. The beefier specs with a more modern architecture would please me. Anybody looking for more than that are kidding themselves. The graphics race isn't very important to most consumers anymore. In fact I wouldn't be shocked if they only include 1 GB of VRAM.

 

[SapientWolf]

To GAF or to the general public that will be buying most of these consoles?

Also, I'm quite familiar with the Samaritan demo. I don't think it's even close to being as big a jump as it was from SD to HD. Not even close.

I want the next generation to be the generation of 60fps but I know it won't happen. That would constitute a generational leap for me more than a resolution jump or more effects and shaders.

 

[rapid32.5]

It wouldn't make any sense for Ms to ignore 60 million userbase on 360. And it's time for a new series to take place, Halo every gen has become tedious.

 

[-GOUKI-]

Ram is so cheap. Dunno why it wouldnt be 4gb

 

[PopcornMegaphone]

Ram is so cheap. Dunno why it wouldnt be 4gb

edit -

it depends on how the ram is used .. The amount of ram is of no importance when consoles can cache lots of data on hard drives now.

LOL

 

[R_thanatos]

2GB DDR3 is shit. Disappointing :/

it depends on how the ram is used .. The amount of ram is of no importance when consoles can cache lots of data on hard drives now.

 

[Meier]

Poor Nintendo.

 

[AllIsOneIsNone]

uuuuh, pretty sure texture pop in is NOT due to ram constraints

Yea, I was thinking of another concept all together. More shit at once, basically is what I meant.

 

[Plinko]

Poor Nintendo.

Meh, they'll be fine. It didn't hurt them this go around (although they should have been more proactive about getting the next console out sooner). I think price is going to be the driving factor in this next generation.

 

[muu]

Let's compare in game Gears 3 to maxed in game BF3 PC. Yeah I'd say that's a huge jump. Sub HD to true HD with AA and AF will be a similar improvement to last gens jump. Not only that but you finally get HD textures swoooon

Maybe if it's 360 Gears 3 and a hypothetical Gears 3 PC, but I can't see it w/ BF3 PC by itself. The benefits of improved graphics feel minimal in a military-style shooter like BF/CoD where oftentimes you're fighting enemies that are mid-long distance away from you, and you're just shooting things that aren't map objects. Yes it looks beautiful in screenshots where you get shots of all the players up close while buildings are falling apart behind them, but seriously, how often does that happen in the real game, and how often when you're actually close enough to watch it unfold?

 

[Plinko]

Let's compare in game Gears 3 to maxed in game BF3 PC. Yeah I'd say that's a huge jump. Sub HD to true HD with AA and AF will be a similar improvement to last gens jump. Not only that but you finally get HD textures swoooon

I think we're arguing about two different things here. You and the others appear to be arguing about what would constitute a "generational leap."

I (and Deacon, I believe) are arguing that this "generational leap" won't matter a bit when it comes to trying to sell this thing to the general public.

 

[gatti-man]

it depends on how the ram is used .. The amount of ram is of no importance when consoles can cache lots of data on hard drives now.

What have you done.

Maybe if it's 360 Gears 3 and a hypothetical Gears 3 PC, but I can't see it w/ BF3 PC by itself. The benefits of improved graphics feel minimal in a military-style shooter like BF/CoD where oftentimes you're fighting enemies that are mid-long distance away from you, and you're just shooting things that aren't map objects. Yes it looks beautiful in screenshots where you get shots of all the players up close while buildings are falling apart behind them, but seriously, how often does that happen in the real game, and how often when you're actually close enough to watch it unfold?

Well as someone who runs the game at max I can tell you it happens often. What I mean is at least once a game I stop and think, woah that was really cool. The game has epic scenes happening all around you. If next gen starts with the quality of bf3 pc people will be happy. Speaking of mp not sp.

 

[venne]

The cloud will be Microsoft's biggest advantage next gen. Hardware in the box is only half of the equation going forward.

 

[knitoe]

2GB is the safe assumption. Generally, you take the what's acceptable on the PC and divide by 2. Remember, console OS are minuscule compare with Windows, and since they are close system, developers can really optimize and come up with unique tricks to handle the data flow, streaming and etc. So, 2GB would be plenty. 4GB would be a luxury.

 

[Insane Metal]

2GB? =/

Well let's wait and see.

But honestly, people expecting Avatar-level graphics ingame are insane. If there is any remote chance to make a game look like that in the next few years in a console, the development costs would make it impossible. Or nearly impossible.

So I'm not really expecting the graphics to take a huuuge step from this generation. Development costs already achieved sky-high numbers in this generation, I don't even know what to expect from the next one.

 

[cyberheater]

Now, a certain amount of that may be 'developers can never have enough RAM' greed, but it's a pretty long way to 2 from that kind of thinking.

I don't think devs will ever be happy with the amount manufacturers give them.

I'm sure if this was announced tomorrow, you'd have leading devs declaring it the best thing since sliced bread.

 

[Plinko]

2GB? =/

Well let's wait and see.

But honestly, people expecting Avatar-level graphics ingame are insane. If there is any remote chance to make a game look like that in the next few years in a console, the development costs would make it impossible. Or nearly impossible.

So I'm not really expecting the graphics to take a huuuge step from this generation. Development costs already achieved sky-high numbers in this generation, I don't even know what to expect from the next one.

That's another reason I don't expect a gigantic improvement this round.

 

[Biggest-Geek-Ever]

I still can't buy that the console is launching in 2012, which is probably the only scenario I can see these specs being realistic.

 

[lunchwithyuzo]

It wouldn't make any sense for Ms to ignore 60 million userbase on 360. And it's time for a new series to take place, Halo every gen has become tedious.

If XB3 is coming in 2012, I'll be shocked if it's not at least Twilight Princessed.

 

[Slurpy2k20]

Wait.. remind me how people are satisfied about 2GB of RAM for a 2012-2013 console, that's supposed to last 5+ years? Right now 4GB is the bare minimum you get on most dirt cheap PCs.

 

[gofreak]

I don't think devs will ever be happy with the amount manufacturers give them.

I'm sure if this was announced tomorrow, you'd have leading devs declaring it the best thing since sliced bread.

Of course, but I reckon that'd be motivated by politics than real techie delight.

I'm nowhere near convinced by the suggestion that 2GB is the total amount, if this rumour were true, anyway. There's the clear suggestion in there that there may be more elsewhere.

 

[Angry Fork]

Poor Nintendo.

There's no reason to feel bad for them. They went after the cheap casual market with Wii, dominated, and now they're feeling the repercussions of betting it all on a fickle demographic. They're even trying to do it again with Wii U's specs. Hopefully Wii U fails so they realize nobody wants shitty overpriced hardware (unless Wii U ends up being something like 150-200 bucks which would be reasonable).

Wait.. remind me how people are satisfied about 2GB of RAM for a 2012-2013 console, that's supposed to last 5+ years?

I'm not satisfied by it. I can only hope PS4 has more but it probably won't. With that being said developers have done a LOT on consoles with only 512mb. I don't doubt there will be amazing stuff for consoles next-gen even with 2gb but I'd definitely prefer 4 or more for obvious reasons.

 

[PopcornMegaphone]

Wait.. remind me how people are satisfied about 2GB of RAM for a 2012-2013 console, that's supposed to last 5+ years?

You don't understand VRAM vs DDR. Check the thread title. Notice VRAM is not confirmed, which is the far more important RAM spec.

 

[knitoe]

That's another reason I don't expect a gigantic improvement this round.

I expect BF3 highend PC vs current gen difference from the start. Then, once developers figures how to harness the power, it will be much better.

 

[Durante]

You don't understand VRAM vs DDR. Check the thread title. Notice VRAM is not confirmed, which is the far more important RAM spec.

That depends on whether you just want better looking games, or better games in general.

 

[BurntPork]

8GB or bust!!!!!

Not enough for 2020. Needs to be 64GB AT LEAST

 

[Angry Grimace]

There's no reason to feel bad for them. They went after the cheap casual market with Wii, dominated, and now they're feeling the repercussions of betting it all on a fickle demographic. They're even trying to do it again with Wii U's specs. Hopefully Wii U fails so they realize nobody wants shitty overpriced hardware (unless Wii U ends up being something like 150-200 bucks which would be reasonable).


I'm not satisfied by it. I can only hope PS4 has more but it probably won't. With that being said developers have done a LOT on consoles with only 512mb. I don't doubt there will be amazing stuff for consoles next-gen even with 2gb but I'd definitely prefer 4 or more for obvious reasons.

My guess is with the current trend towards homogenization in consoles, the PS4 will have very close specs to the 360 in order to facilitate getting equal performance on multiplatform titles.

 

[Luckyman]

Nintendo fans have very rose tinted glasses on. Wii U will get support as long as 360 is supported if it sells games.

With huge disparency in number of threads, memory and GPU power Wii U versions of true nextgen titles would be awful

 

[PnCIa]

It would be funny if Microsoft would still go with DVDs for games xD

 

[Massa]

Nintendo fans have very rose tinted glasses on. Wii U will get support as long as 360 is supported if it sells games.

With huge disparency in number of threads, memory and GPU power Wii U versions would be awful

We don't know the specs for either the Wii U or the next Xbox so it seems pretty weird for you to jump ahead and judge Nintendo fans.

 

[JGS]

Nintendo fans have very rose tinted glasses on. Wii U will get support as long as 360 is supported if it sells games.

With huge disparency in number of threads, memory and GPU power Wii U versions would be awful

Scoop?

 

[Proelite]

It has 8x the amount of System ram as the PS3, which is inline with a traditional generation leap. XDR ram is far better than DDR3 ram though.