Epic Wants "More Memory Than Anything Else" From Consoles

[Maximus2003]

I've been working with electronics manufacturers all my life and I can tell you the decision to go for such low RAM is purely financial. Each component drives up the price which in turns takes away from the profit. Even the smallest component is carefully sourced from the cheapest (yet most reliable) supplier and when you are talking about millions of consoles being built it makes a big difference.

 

[PainAmplifier]

I've been working with electronics manufacturers all my life and I can tell you the decision to go for such low RAM is purely financial. Each component drives up the price which in turns takes away from the profit. Even the smallest component is carefully sourced from the cheapest (yet most reliable) supplier and when you are talking about millions of consoles being built it makes a big difference.

I know what you are talking about, and I've found that this is also a big failure when you allow the 'beancounters' to have more influence than they should.

It's an example of the old axiom, "Penny-wise, Pound-Foolish".

Here's it is saving pennies per unit (To make more on volume), but foolish in that it hurts the ability of each unit to provide entertainment. (It's stated purpose, by making it harder to program for and limiting what it can do.)

I can see it happening now with the news coming out of Sony regarding their next gen PSP. (Reducing the RAM but keeping the rear Touch Screen for example.) Nintendo got bit by it, when they made the Wii so underpowered and focused on the interface...sure it payed off but only because they got lucky on the fad-ishness of it. (Seriously, a ton of people bought a Wii...but very few of them still *play* them, much less buy more Software for them. Which is a big issue with consoles, a poor attach rate is worse than a low adoption rate.) Not that this excuses MS either, which cut corners to get the 360 out early in a way that it was actually a less powerful console than it's predecessor. (Lack of storage, that still persists to this day for example.)

 

[BITE_ME]

I've been working with electronics manufacturers all my life and I can tell you the decision to go for such low RAM is purely financial. Each component drives up the price which in turns takes away from the profit. Even the smallest component is carefully sourced from the cheapest (yet most reliable) supplier and when you are talking about millions of consoles being built it makes a big difference.

Ditto for cell phones too.

They should just make the option, so people can add their own memory.
More profit too them.

 

[Bgood]

Another interesting thing is animation: if you take a person's motion captured walk cycle and put it 1:1 ingame it looks totally fake.
When tweaked and exaggerated to a certain amount it looks much more natural.
The uncanny valley has the most wide range of conditions.

I think 'uncanny valley' as a potential problem is overstated. Take L.A. Noire, whatever you think of it in its totality as a game, the motionscan tech it used was widely praised. If (say), for example Half Life used that ,do you think they'd ever return to the old methods of inaccurate facial animation?

 

[GreatEmerald]

From what I understand, hyperrealism isn't: something close to actual realism, but still not quite there.
It's actually beyond realism, or parallel to it, maybe beyond it.

Right, so I was talking about photorealism. That's because we used those terms interchangeably in school, and it never occurred to me that they are different.

 

[Selerox]

So easy to believe.

As god is my witness, I read Epic Wants "More Money Than Anything Else" From Consoles.

Glad it wasn't just me.

 

[elmuerte]

Banana!

Your argument is invalid.

 

[Spiney]

I think 'uncanny valley' as a potential problem is overstated.

I very much agree that as a potential problem it is overstated; photorealism should not be avoided because of it.

To me it's much more of a perceptual tool.
The intuition of the uncanny can be a valuable tool in realising a certain lacking in the chain of simulations.

I know from experience that a lot of people that have never heard of the theory, still experience it -- that's something's off, but they cannot describe what it is. I'm sure you've heard the statement people have made when comparing UE3 to CE2 or other more realism-oriented tech, that UE3 game always have somewhat of a "studio" look to them -- as if it were filmed inside a studio. What is it, exactly, that gives it this feel? They can't tell.

The LA noire example is great, but apart from the facial animation tech, which I agree is fantastic, their greatest achievement was in getting the lighting and skin looking natural. Imagine if they used early 2000's phong lighting on the faces (say the 'corpsy' Doom3 look), now that would be uncanny!

 

[Jacks:Revenge]

And there's no such thing as the Uncanny Valley btw, it's just some false theory.

disagree.

you realize that the Uncanny Valley theory only applies to representations of humans, right?
it doesn't say anything about the representation of environments or surroundings.

hyper-realism, when it comes to objects and surroundings, tends to look sterile and flat after a point. but that's not the Valley. hyper-realism, when it comes to humanoids, tends to look creepy after a point. that's the Valley. and so far, at least up until 2011, the theory seems pretty accurate.

personally, I've yet to see any kind of human representation (in robotics or CGI/animation) that defies the Valley. I always know instantly when I'm watching something that isn't quite real. maybe advances in technology and computer graphics will eventually disprove the theory, but they sure haven't yet.

 

[Kyllian]

At first I thought the statement was "more money than anything else"

 

[IronMonkey]

They should just make the option, so people can add their own memory.

We already have a device that allows such options. It's called a PC.

An option like that would remove one of the advantages that consoles possess. They are a (relatively) stable platform to develop against. That would be lost if developers could not rely on the console having a fixed amount of memory.

 

[StalwartUK]

I think the N64 had a memory addon that could be used by games to produce better looking graphics etc.

Also the Xbox 360 hard drive is an optional extra and can be swapped out. However I believe it is mandated by Microsoft that games must work without a hard drive attached.

 

[ambershee]

Consoles have had memory expansions before.

Edit: Ninja'd D:

 

[elmuerte]

Also the Xbox 360 hard drive is an optional extra and can be swapped out. However I believe it is mandated by Microsoft that games must work without a hard drive attached.

They dropped that requirement a long time ago iirc.

 

[Sir_Brizz]

Yeah, lots of games require a hard drive now.

 

[Kyllian]

I have no idea what the specs are on a 360, but it wouldn't surprise me if you could build a PC of equivalent power for $200
I also haven't paid much attention to how much that additional HD costs now, but I think it was like $100 for a 20GB, if so, that's rather rediculous

 

[IronMonkey]

I think the N64 had a memory addon that could be used by games to produce better looking graphics etc.

Also the Xbox 360 hard drive is an optional extra and can be swapped out. However I believe it is mandated by Microsoft that games must work without a hard drive attached.

Which is why I wrote "(relatively) stable" rather than "stable".

In the case of the N64, there were only two memory configurations to worry about (some games specified that the memory addon was required) rather than "anything between 1GB and 16GB of system RAM", "anything between 256MB single GPU and 2GB quad GPU", "who knows what sound hardware", "maybe a gamepad, maybe not", "1.5GHz x2 ultra-mobile CPU or perhaps a 3+GHz quad CPU" and an indeterminate amount of free diskspace.

I can't find the reference now but I recall John Carmack writing something to the effect that the fixed platform of the (original) XBOX (and similar) was worth a 2x performance boost compared to the equivalent PC because on the XBOX the programmers didn't have to cater for all of the special cases that were present on the PC.

 

[Kyllian]

Yea, the N64 did have the memory addon, tho I believe it wasn't widely used
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_64_accessories#Expansion_Pak