Playstation 4

[eastyy]

always wondered if any console has had its full potential used

[CMcK]

That is a very difficult thing to judge. Every game will max out a console to some extent. However as tools mature and greater understanding of system is developed more efficient use will be made of those same resources.

[Team Andromeda]

Erm what happened to Sonys "oh were going to keep the PS3 for 10 years" plan?

???

Isn't it completely natural to work on successor after one product hits the shelves , I’m sure that the standard practice in the electrical industry and most industry as a whole and if the PS2 or PS are anything to go buy SONY will continue to support and manufacture the PS3 console for 10 years plus

Or do the likes of SONY, MS (who I seem to remember said the old black X-Box had a 7 year life span) Apple say to the R&D staff after the release of PS3, I-Phone, Windows ECT ; That it's people , put your feet up for the next 5 years, Job done !

All this "more powerful consoles makes games worse" bollocks needs to stop. It's idiotic. It's like people believe there are two people programming a game and if a new console comes out they need to go back to their "Learn How To Program In Basic" book.

Out of these statements, which makes more logical sense? More power at their disposal opens up new gameplay avenues for developers.... or.... banging their heads against a wall trying to eek out a 1% performance gain means the devs have more time for gameplay development.

Spot on . I'm amazed those people every moved on from the 3DO, PS or N64 . I do have to laugh at this photo realistic load of old tosh - Look at the human crowd in Fifa , the human crowd in Dirt (never mind the environment) and tell me that they''re photo realistic

[eastyy]

thing is i guess from a development point of view when we get these super power ful machines the production costs go up as they probably need more man power and time have seen this gen a few devlopers make one game and because it didnt do well pretty much destroyed them

which i would imagine why it would appeal to develop more for the wii and phones

however it blows my mind that this game http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR7vE6l1MN0 was pretty much done by one person

xbox and gamecube last gen when the newer consoles came out any new games pretty much ceased (even though ps2 games are still being released now)

[Team Andromeda]

which i would imagine why it would appeal to develop more for the wii and phones

So why is 3rd party support for the Wii so poor? and why are Mobile phones getting ever more advanced in terms of Gfx they can offer for games ? Shouldn't people here be happy with their old polyphonic phones and Spectrum like GFX; No need to move on, the Phone still works, developers have yet to max it out , and it keeps development costs low J/K

[Flabio]

The rise in production costs is biased more towards the asset creation side than the coding side. It's the fact that your art has to be higher quality (more polys, more detailed texturing, better animation) to stay looking 'current'.

It's a total time sink. And time eats money.

[Matt]

The market as it currently stands is unsustainable. There are too many titles released, lots of devs going under due to the "Hit or Bust" mentality, putting all their eggs in one basket, so to speak. Maybe the next gen would result in fewer titles due to increased development costs - though I'll still argue costs won't jump up as much as they'd have you believe, after all the "next gen assets take us 10 times longer!" argument doesn't seem to stop PC games (with textures many times the resolution) from being ?10 or more less than their lower res console versions.

And before anyone parkets, Live and PSN have shown there is, and always will be, a place for low budget more novel titles.

[Flabio]

PC games are 10 quid less because they don't have to pay the platform holder a licence fee.

[Sketcz]

I saw on the news Sony posted a loss of 3.2 billion.

First news link I could find that loaded properly upon clicking:

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/business/sony-estimates-32-billion-loss-on-writedown-quake-56664.html

What kind of an affect could this have on them and the next gen? Could they go bankrupt?

Also, are we taking bets on whether this is region locked or not?

[Team Andromeda]

PC games are 10 quid less because they don't have to pay the platform holder a licence fee.

Think I made that point before

[Flabio]

It was worth making again.

[FelixofMars]

Part of the issue with the current next gen stuff is that many company's didn't really plan for the increase in quality and also strangely believed there was less optimisation that with previous consoles. As Flabio says they are spending so much of producing the art and even streamlining the experience for modern gaming that development costs have increased. I can't see the 'next gen' consoles actually making the games look much better and I can't see another big leap in production costs.

I do think though its the end of average high end games, it has to be. The 90s console market was a much reduced release schedule against today's and while it still had some crud there where more good games but over a longer period.I would rather have a few amazing games a year than 10 average ones.

The market as it currently stands is unsustainable. There are too many titles released, lots of devs going under due to the "Hit or Bust" mentality, putting all their eggs in one basket, so to speak. Maybe the next gen would result in fewer titles due to increased development costs - though I'll still argue costs won't jump up as much as they'd have you believe, after all the "next gen assets take us 10 times longer!" argument doesn't seem to stop PC games (with textures many times the resolution) from being ?10 or more less than their lower res console versions.

And before anyone parkets, Live and PSN have shown there is, and always will be, a place for low budget more novel titles.

[Matt]

PC games are 10 quid less because they don't have to pay the platform holder a licence fee.

Yet surely as they require higher quality assets / models / textures, they should make back that ?10 due to "increased production costs". The argument doesn't really hold up.

Plus, right now there's loads of money pumped into pointless high end cutscenes and TV ads that have no resemblance to the real game. Eventually we'll be able to use those same assets, those saving money. See?

[Team Andromeda]

Yet surely as they require higher quality assets / models / textures, they should make back that ?10 due to "increased production costs". The argument doesn't really hold up.

Plus, right now there's loads of money pumped into pointless high end cutscenes and TV ads that have no resemblance to the real game. Eventually we'll be able to use those same assets, those saving money. See?

Spot on , I mean MS is already pushing GOW III with a High End GCI advert - A game that doesn't need a push and one that isn't out until September anyway . yet new IP that does need a push like Alan Wake MS does nothing.

Yet surely as they require higher quality assets / models / textures, they should make back that ?10 due to "increased production costs". The argument doesn't really hold up.

Yeah I thought 360 and PS3 cost more due to them being HD and high level GFX, yet PC games that look much better run at a Higher Frame rate and more Res are far cheaper . Like I said before maybe the Royalties need to be looked at, more so when games are shipping with as many Bugs and need as many Patches as PC games anyway.

[Resonance]

The costs are about the same to produce such assets across this generation and the next I believe. If you look at how most CG artists work, they produce work that is far beyond what could be rendered on a modern console in game, and then use some tricks/techniques to make them fit in the game engine. Many of these models have millions of polygons in their original form. Producing the high quality assets is where most of the work goes and then for either this generation or the next, the same work would be done to make them work inside a game engine. The difference being that the next gen model would extract more of that high quality detail.

It is different from the pixel artists of yesteryear having to create new and more detailed sprites.