Thank you
gaming at 60fps with 16xAF/8xaa setups changes your opinion on games new and old period.
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Keighley: Epic says UE4 not targeted at Wii U on GTTV, Epic responds [Updated Again]
- Thread starter Nirolak
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Thank you
gaming at 60fps with 16xAF/8xaa setups changes your opinion on games new and old period.
But that doesn't match recent rumors. I'm not taking "all in" as 8GB of memory and I'm sure Epic isn't realistically asking for that much memory either.
Well I don't game at 60fps with 16xAF/8AA, but I can't stand it when people downplay the importance of tech.
I think a problem here is that most of our big hurdles were overcome, plus there's the crazy race to the top that's choking the industry to death.
EatinOlives
Member
Exactly. I'm not sure where this doomspeak of "only 1.1x more powerful than 360 next generation, guys" is coming from. The 360 was released in 2005, using 2005 technology, same for Sony in 2006. Even if they were to make the bare minimum of improvements it'd still naturally be a traditional generational jump like you said. There IS quite a very large middle ground between 2005 tech and bleeding edge 2012.
I've heard this argument many, many, many times. Oddly enough, they happen right at the end of the console generation, where people claim the graphics are "perfectly fine" and they could live with another 6 years of the same kinds of graphics. Miyamoto himself made the mistake of saying Wii-style graphics were as good as he would ever want them.
The flaw in this argument is the fact that the consumer has zero idea of what a proper next-gen game would look like. Compare this with the current generation, with graphics that we are all very well familiar and satisfied with. At this point, the consumer simply doesn't know what they want because they simply don't know what's realistically the look of a next-generation game. If you've never seen better, you can't possibly see how the current is "worse".
Draw the comparison with that of the topic walking about game resolutions. A lot of console-only gamers have zero clue what a console game running at 1080p and 60 FPS looks like. Many claim they can't even tell the difference, but I guarantee you that's not because they saw a side-by-side comparison, it's because they've never had extensive experience with it and can't realistically picture in their mind exactly what it looks like.
Essentially, the "graphics are good enough" is just a fancy way of saying "I have no clue what the next generation would look like". Which is fine, but it doesn't at all mean that we can simply sit out an entire generation. When (not if, when) the industry moves beyond the current level of technology into another one, those differences are extremely obvious. I heard the "graphics are good enough" argument time and time again between last generation and this one. Today, nobody would think that PS2-level graphics are perfectly fine for current-generation gaming.
Your ignoring the fact that GPU / Ram / CPU manufacturers have stalled in innovating and shrinking chip sizes. Combine the lackluster shrinks with the conservative brick and mortar budgets- and you have what many would consider a disappointment :-/.
Thing is, I think there's a disconnect in most people's heads between a "Traditional" generational jump and the SD->HD jump. People seem to say "I want a generational leap" and in the same sentence "I want the same leap as there was between SD and HD". Ignoring the previous 6 or so generations. I am reasonably comfortable that Wii U will be a generational leap but it won't be like SD to HD.
Also remember that this gen machines were expensive as all buggery. I don't think Nintendo will do a $400 or $599 console. Add in the facts that they like to make profit, and the controller will steal some cost of manufacture from the other components and we just won't see the same as this gen's jump.
By the sound of it, you make it seem like there will no large gap in performance between say PS4 and WiiU especially since the RAM figures look pretty close to each other. I really don't know how much difference will GDDR5 make over GDDR3 in actual practical applications but it seems like WiiU might be the only console you'll really need for next gen.
Yesh! I know there are other tech stuff that I am completely overlooking. Call it a sacrifice for convenience 
They absolutely are asking for 8GB.
Well, obviously 1080p 60fps is going to be just as much of a rarity next gen as it was this gen - but those people already have the option to play with that level on PC.
Except for handheld/mobile gamers, of course. Who were, hilariously, also fine with N64 graphics this past gen. I must count as one of those people as well, because I own more games for DS than PS3.
thuway said:
Well, there's that too. A stable 22nm is a long LONG looooong way off, and console manufacturers depend almost solely on shrinkage (*grin* sorry lol) to reduce costs over time. If you start with a $499 at 28nm how are you supposed to get the mass market on board if you can't get to $199 at all?
Ditto, honestly we probably should've stayed at that level or made a more modest jump given how fucked the budget rises have been. And it IS enough to render sufficient detail, I likened the PS1 to the NES in regards to 2D, and the PS2 to the SNES for 3D, this generation is basically the equivalent of if 2D was still the only option for visuals and continued to be evolved for the PS1 rather than sidelined. Then again, maybe that made the jump straight to PS2 stuff that Vanillaware put out, skipping the PS1/Saturn equivalent for 2D entirely.
ClovingWestbrook
Banned
Ugh, no offense, but its this exact mindset that annoys me to no end. Try producing Uncharted on last gen hardware. Try producing Assassins Creed on last generation. Try producing Gears of War. Try producing Skyrim. Try producing Mirrors Edge. Try producing Bat Man: Arkham City. Try producing the Witcher 2. Try producing Battlefield 3. Try producing Bioshock. Try producing Fallout 3. You get the point. This whole notion that we should applaud stagnation and just enjoy the minimal jump is ridiculous.
Why even move from Atari to NES? Why not just stay at NES hardware forever? We all enjoyed Mario and Legend of Zelda. No need to go to the Genesis and Snes.
Anything that's not a Nintendo console.
If by completely similar you mean not similar then you're correct.
Any console that dies withing two years of average use because of heating issues. Like my $600 60GB Ps3.
I completely agree, but I don't think those huge projects are the best examples actually. I'd rather point to something like Flower. It was made by 3 people, but even so the experience it conveys wouldn't have been possible on weaker hardware.
I guess a console would be overpowered if it would need to be bigger than the original Xbox or require cooling which can not possibly be provided while maintaining low noise levels (despite using high-quality cooling and good engineering/design). So probably anything above 300 Watts.
Glorified G
Member
The whole notion that some people would gladly pay a premium price for a minimal jump is just crazy to me.
"Please MS/Sony, give me as little value for my money as possible!"
On the flipside, how much of that could've been possible on hardware that's stronger (more than a Wii level of increase), but wasn't up to the level we did get? I don't think any of those are quite on the level mechanically as, say, GTAII to III, though that may be a more subtle point now. I probably wouldn't feel that way if it weren't for how bad this generation jump has been for a lot of companies.
Alternatively, maybe this generation should've just been delayed by a few years? There was undoubtedly more mileage to be had out of the last generation consoles (and the PS2 got more mileage ANYWAY), and maybe we'd have had a jump that resulted in more reliably hitting 720p, or at least a PS3 that wasn't obscenely expensive. Then again with the financial crisis of 2008 they may've needed a few years to build a strong base.
Power beyond the average dev's ability to tap without driving costs to a level which makes balancing budgets and revenue streams a difficult - and potentially company-ending - problem.
Dropping all artistic considerations, from a pure business standpoint, console manufacturers are producing a tool to give the average third party publisher an opportunity to make profit. I don't believe any of the three managed to do so last gen for the average publisher - there's a few significant exceptions - albeit for varying reasons.
(And yuck, I hate dropping all artistic considerations! I'd much rather think in terms of the potential of the systems all the time - but you must never escape the fact that this is a business)
Edit: I'd argue that many devs this gen put artistic considerations before business considerations, which is a *wonderful* move for the consumer - but extremely high-risk; I believe that's a major reason as to why we've lost so many devs this gen. I'd have happily taken a less spectacular Blur if it meant Bizarre would still be around, for instance.
Some people liked it when companies weren't dying left right and centre and when there was plenty of variety in gaming, nothing crazy about that. Nobody's talking about paying a premium for a minimal jump either, releasing less powerful hardware this gen would have meant that consoles could have been much cheaper.
I certainly don't agree that hardware shouldn't improve. But I also don't agree with wanting consoles to be as powerful as possible no matter what the cost to the industry.
Glorified G
Member
I liked it when people praised companies like Cd Projekt RED for budgeting properly while still putting out a technically impressive game at the same time.
But fuck it, It's all the hardware's fault that every game has to cost 80 million to make and self responsibility can never be taken.
I disagree, most of the hurdles have not really been overcome. There are many areas that could use improving. Forever and a day now I've said that lighting will be one of the major focuses next gen. Also add shadowing, animation, AI, etc.
With enough power, you can never improve enough.
Also budgets spiraling out of control has to do with a lot more than just developing on powerful consoles.
This doesn't really make much sense. The jump from the PS1 to PS2 is equal to, if not greater, than the jump from the PS2 to the PS3.
Also, I see Nintendo launching the Wii-U at $300 and no higher, while the PS4 and 720 may be $400-$500 range IMO.
And you know this how? The last we saw from Epic was that they were trying to work with the console manufacturers for realistic specs. 8GB is not realistic and I would think the people at Epic would know this.
While I understand that shrinks are becoming harder to do, I do hope the fact that next gen is likely to last even longer than this gen allows MS and Sony to take more of a hit up front since they will be given more time to recoup that cost.
The only thing that could really change this is if Nintendo screws up their plans again by releasing their next system sooner than MS/Sony intend.
Good way of putting it.
But what about the people who can do math and still see a $99 console with forced subscription as a $599 console + $60 a year in Live fees?
As discussed in the subscription model thread, there's a group out there that would want to pay a little up front and then more in the long-run. However what about those that are more concerned with the long-run cost than what comes out of their pocket now?
You have to be able to reduce the price, for real, for them. I'd *hope* that most mainstream purchasers fit in that category of looking at the long-term cost instead of the short-term one. This isn't like buying a house/car, for example.
I think the key word there was "big" hurdle. The stuff you're mentioning doesn't seem big, at all, to me, at least. You can always improve something, after all.
Plinko
Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
I believe Epic was quoted as saying they wanted 8GB of RAM, but I could be mistaken. I remember that being a fairly big story around here.
Edit: My mistake--it was the Battlefield 3 devs who were quoted as wanting 8 GB.
AstroNut325
Member
I think this is a very shortsighted view on the gaming industry. What did the expansion/contraction figures look like in the SNES days? N64 days? Playstation days? How many of the SNES/genesis developers were still around in the N64/PSX era? Also, has the advent of newer hardware stopped smaller developers from getting into the industry? And the medium size studios going bankrupt... could it be possible that it was largely due to the lack of management, planning and utilization of resources?
Great looking games are still being made PC by small and medium size developers where the hardware is much more diverse and powerful. What makes the console world so different?
While there's always room for improvement, yes.. that stuff is nothing. How about strict memory limits that prohibited how much text you could have unless you played crazy tricks with the memory? Or being unable to create something recognizable as a person at all due to power/resolution? Or not having enough power to create a large, populated 3D field until last generation with GTA3? Stuff like better shadows and animation are important to the bigger picture of properly simulating reality at best, completely trivial at worst, and I'm not sure AI in the sense most games use AI has really mattered since last generation.
The budget spiraling thing IS a complex problem though, it may simply have been inevitable even if we stayed on the PS2/Xbox/GameCube up to now (by some insane twist), what with more desire to get Hollywood actors and full VA put in, but maybe there'd be less of a drive to max stuff out if it were a smaller jump, and I imagine we'd more likely see serious Japanese development anyway rather than the majority of them being flat footed.
Boss Man
Member
So you're saying that Wii U is going to be the best last gen system in 2013?
This. Otherwise, games exclusive to PC that are visual splendours would have never seen sequels (for eg: Crysis on PC did not sell the numbers of even Kingdoms of Amalur whose dev team was dismantled. And there is The Witcher 2 which prior to coming out on X360 sold less than a million).
With regards to the next gen system the biggest talking point beside GPU has been the RAM and so far it's a complete unknown. It's frustrating that we have no credible information as to what MS and Sony at the least plan to do.
tinfoilhatman
all of my posts are my avatar
Not sure if serious?
No it isn't ALL anyone's fault, but the fact is the ever increasing power of console hardware is increasing the cost of producing games. I mean look at your example, Witcher 2 cost $15m to produce apparently. Yes that's low by current gen standards and shows that making a top quality game can be done on a budget that doesn't require multiple million sales to avoid losses. But that's still 3 times the average budget of a game from late last gen (2005 average game budget was $5m). By 2010 the average budget reached about $30m, that's a 6x increase in only 5 years.
Thought that was Crytek.
It's possible the country of origin has more to do with those two, plus there's the fact the Amalur game was in the shadow of it's MMO brother (or is that father? Son? whatever). I don't know how it is in Germany, but they were able to make Witcher 2 MUCH cheaper in Poland than they would have here, or in Japan for that matter.
AstroNut325
Member
Of that 30 million... how much of it goes towards technical aspects of the game? And how much of it goes towards creating/building art assets and testing?
I don't understand how on one hand one can argue that HD budgets are out of control and killing the industry and then in the other argue for the Wii-U being a good step up from the current consoles and the right move for the next gen versus machines that target UE4. If budgets are too high now how does a more powerful system(Wii-U) rectifiy that? I mean its the industry's over all health that you all really care about right :/? You would think the arguement would be for a console just like the Wii was to gamecube amirite?
Its a short sighted view to say that continuing to increase game budgets exponentially may be a bad idea for the health of the industry?!, I find that incredibly ironic.
The facts here are that in 2005 the average budget of a video game was $5m. By 2010 the average budget had increased to $30m An increase of 6x in 5 years.
Come again?
Creating art assets is a technical aspect. Also I don't have a breakdown of figures for each part of a games development process on average, I very much doubt that anyone releases that kind of info.
Nothing about that is contradictory.
WiiU is supposed to be a nice jump from current gen but not the typical full generational leap, nothing that should increase gaming budgets massively like the huge jump between PS2 and PS3 for example.
On the other hand a machine targeting UE4 at the moment would be a larger leap over current gen. Something closer to the typical generational leap.
Doc Holliday
SPOILER: Columbus finds America
Companies going under has nothing to do with the hardware. No one is forcing companies to spend millions on "AAA" games. Just because the power is there it doesn't mean they have to use it. How much money does it take to make a NSMB, Nintendogs, pokemon, Geometry Wars, Journey, Minecraft etc etc etc.
IMO was leading to so many studios is closing is the popularity of the business, let me explain. Once an industry becomes popular you start getting the money guys involved. Once you have that you get nepotism, shitty middle management, and go with herd mentality. This is what leads to many devs making dumb decisions instead of smaller teams doing what they do because they actually enjoy it.
ClovingWestbrook
Banned
Exactly. How many amazing 'Indie' games have there been this generation that haven't bankrupted the group that developed it? How many games that have cost $30-50 million have gone on to sell terribly simply due to it being a terrible game? I'd venture to guess quite a few.
Crap, I forgot that the place where I found the number doesn't track online sales. So I partially stand corrected. So far TW2 sold 1.7 million (incl. 360 sales) and I am pretty sure that Crysis eventually through digital sales on PC sold over a million as well.
However, the point I made in support of KageMaru is that he's right in saying that development alone doesn't constitute for ballooning of the costs. Because the said games haven't sold numbers (esp. the first Witcher) that could rival games like Uncharted/CoD/BF/GeoW etc and yet still managed to come out with eye popping visuals and splendid polish.
Cost is a big reason why Epic are touting their new engine. They don't want to see another massive jump in dev costs and claim their engine saves devs a lot of time (and time is money). That's also another reason why it may not run on WiiU now but a few years down the line Epic will ensure that their engine scales to include third party projects for it.
I'm actually curious to know how many tried at a $5 million budget and tanked anyway, or if it's simply not being explored seriously outside of Nintendo (and possibly other Japanese companies) and casual/handheld/mobile titles. Seems like the kind of thing the industry should try just clamping down on and see what happens.
So the answer is that we should spend $400-$500 on a console for the majority of developers to produce graphically weak games that could easily be produced on $200 consoles?
Common its really not as easy as "well you don't have to produce expensive games". Not only do people who buy such expensive consoles expect top level graphics but its also not easy for a developer that is used to producing such games to suddenly completely change direction.
Plinko
Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
I corrected it earlier. It was DICE.
I expect some wild, show piece games, the problem is there seems to be a pressure for EVERYTHING to try being that, or close to it at least. Which I imagine the public generally implores for, otherwise we probably wouldn't be in this mess. I really wouldn't mind having more on the level of Deadly Premonition (well, maybe a bit above THAT) alongside the GTA4s and Modern Warfares, I know not every game can be amazing to look at.
AstroNut325
Member
I'm trying to understand what you're after. Are you saying more development houses need to try to make a game under $5 million? I have to ask... why? Different games intended for different audiences and purposes will have budgets set accordingly. Should the next Crysis or Civilization game target a budget of $5 million? Nevermind that the cost of labor, equipment, tools and other items that add to the cost of doing business have gone up. Development budgets need to adhere to the average of the previous generation? REALLY?
And what about the fact that the videogame market today is bigger than it's ever been. There are more million seller videogames now than every before. And the low-budget titles you seem to desire are still around. Via Xbox Live,PSN, and mobile devices.
Why do you think both Witcher and Crysis moved to multi platform after initially being PC only?
By the way, do you really believe that from Epic? On one hand they've continually fought for hardware manufacturers to increase specs (they managed to get MS and Sony to do so last gen and now apparently they've managed to get MS to do so again) and on the other they're trying to save the industry from increase development costs?, please..
Its pretty obvious that Epic want to help increase the cost for a developer to create their own engines in order to make them more and more dependant on middleware, of which they have the most popular solution by far.
Anyway, been a good discussion but I'm a bit bored of the topic now, time to check more E3 news
Crytek did too, actually.
Alexios
Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
Any middleware aims to cut dev time and of course by extention costs. Otherwise everyone would make things from scratch (many already do of course, if you have the know how and the right conditions then you don't have to pay for others' know how). Epic just want to sell their middleware all over again so of course advertise that aspect as well as every other (and of course Epic want the next consoles to be the most powerful possible with all new hardware features so that developers actually see a good reason to buy a new engine licence instead of keep using 3 which is quite capable of delivering visuals far better than any current console can push as it includes DX11 features - similar to those seen with the Samaritan demo, with the right hardware).
That doesn't mean developers will be spending less money than they do for a current so called AAA game when developing something equivalent with Unreal Engine 4. Outside specific features like fully dynamic lighting (which aren't something all new that next gen/UE4 will bring to the table btw, CryEngine already utilises fully dynamic lighting solutions iirc) which save time on having to compile levels, bake shadows and what not (which is hardly where the bulk of the costs stem from, they're mostly automatic if slow processes with the designers only placing lights as they see fit just as they will do with a real time system), costs are only bound to increase again when developers can and are expected to cram that much more detail than they currently do in every single asset created for the game. The engine used isn't going to make the 2D and 3D artists' work on the creation programs any faster.
And I have no idea what you claim any of those cost cutting intentions have to do with support (or no) for WiiU...
Here, have an 8 bit generic console.
Point that I made is that they want to control the dev cost. It doesn't mean that the dev costs are going to be below what they are now, esp. for titles aiming to go all out on graphical fidelity. They know that costs will rise if they can provide this cost saving incentive then they are in a more favourable place. If the cost is somewhat incremental on UE4 as opposed any of its competitor then it'll gain a greater market share. That's their aim.