GDC: Mark Rein Interview (PS3/PC stuff)

[Titanio]

Interesting interview here:

http://www.firingsquad.com/features/epic_games_rein_interview/

He comments on some of the recent PS3 announcements. He doesn't sound too sure as to whether the HDD will come with every system or not - one might hope Phil Harrison will clarify this absolutely tomorrow, or how it might otherwise be something devs can rely on (i.e. how it will be 'required')

Anyway, some quotes:

PlayStation3 development is coming along really nicely. We’re almost finished with our new multi-threaded renderer which will give us performance improvements on multi-core systems like Xbox 360 and PS3. We’ll be showing some early demos of it to our licensees during GDC. We’ll also have a new PS3 demo that we’ll show behind closed doors.

It is great news that Sony is going to offer a free service and that publishers will be able to setup their own servers. This will give us some great flexibility.

If that is what they do [make the HDD standard] then I think it’s a really smart move. It means developers can create features that rely on large amounts of fast, persistent storage knowing that every PS3 will have it. That’s a good thing. It also means Sony can create services knowing that they can leverage the hard drive and every PS3 customer can use them.

On the PC side if you’re playing Unreal Tournament 2004 and you go to a server which has a new content on it you’re able to download that content to your hard drive automatically and then join the game on that server. We’d like to be able to do that with UT2007 on PS3 if Sony will allow it. It certainly wouldn’t be possible on consoles without hard drives because most of that content is going to be larger than a typical console memory card could support. That’s just one example but there other things we can do knowing we have a hard drive on each machine.

He also has a somewhat downbeat outlook on PC gaming All at the link!

 

[RavenFox]

The man has a point on the PC comments.

 

[speng]

On the PC comments:

I do not plan on upgrading my PC again just to play some games. If the PS3 comes standard with HDD, I will most definitely not upgrade. I have a 2.4 GHz Pentium 1Gig Ram and X800 GPU. It should serve me for most games for another 18 months.

All my games will be on next-gen consoles. The only thing is MMOGs that I really enjoy, and I'm hoping in 2years they will be available on next-generation consoles and actually target consoles instead of PC.

Speng.

 

[mckmas8808]

Yeah the PC comments are dead on? Why the hell should someone spend $300+ on a new GPU every 18 months when these next-gen systems are looking so good?

 

[Sonic]

To be fair to PC's and those that buy the upgrades for them....in a year after PS3 gets released there should be much more powerful hardware on the PC side that is able to beat it in terms of graphics. The sad thing is that game devs may not target that level of hardware on the PC, but with current games like Fear needing decen thardware that may not be true going into the future.

I'd like the HDD to come standard in the PS3. It would be a nice benefit to have on top of the Blu Ray drive. I just hope the PS3 doesn't cost more than $400 because that means the mainstream may be unable to afford it for quite some time.

Regardless, when there are games out for all three systems that interest me I will make a purchase.

 

[Griffith]

To be fair to PC's and those that buy the upgrades for them....in a year after PS3 gets released there should be much more powerful hardware on the PC side that is able to beat it in terms of graphics. The sad thing is that game devs may not target that level of hardware on the PC, but with current games like Fear needing decen thardware that may not be true going into the future..

this is sure, in the 2007 will be out PC much more powerful than ps3 and 360, but the game that will be out for pc in 2007, will have to run even on a 6800GT and a X1600, so at the end, console games will look equally or better for at least 2 years from now than pc ones, IMO

just take Black for xbox1 (GF3 with no local mem, celeron 700 MHz, 64 MB system ram), what pc is requested to run a similar graphic in a fps?

 

[London Geezer]

just take Black for xbox1 (GF3 with no local mem, celeron 700 MHz, 64 MB system ram), what pc is requested to run a similar graphic in a fps?

Bit of a flawed comparison.
Criterion have had the PS2 and Xbox architectures to play with for almost 6 and 4 years repectively.
If they had one configuration of PC to play with, a low-end PC of today could run it just fine, at the resolution it's running on those 2 consoles.
PC developers always have to code with the lowest common denominator in mind, and for a lot of possible different configurations.
It's quite clear that the PS2 and Xbox versions of Black are the result of years of development of games like the Burnout Series on those two consoles. They had the time to tweak and get into the small cracks in the system like you could NEVER really do on a PC.

 

[Griffith]

Bit of a flawed comparison.
Criterion have had the PS2 and Xbox architectures to play with for almost 6 and 4 years repectively.
If they had one configuration of PC to play with, a low-end PC of today could run it just fine, at the resolution it's running on those 2 consoles.
PC developers always have to code with the lowest common denominator in mind, and for a lot of possible different configurations.
It's quite clear that the PS2 and Xbox versions of Black are the result of years of development of games like the Burnout Series on those two consoles. They had the time to tweak and get into the small cracks in the system like you could NEVER really do on a PC.

I don't think that mine is flawed, the advantage of playing tot-years with a closed box architecture, will apply to both 360 and ps3, so when 3d cards will be more powerful on pc, the developers will learn how to do amazing new engines for consoles

mmh I really don't buy the burnout -> black, engine story
it's a whole different scenario, with a totally different looking engine, for a devs it's safe to start from scratch, if he wants a great engine, as black's one is
for sure they have a lot of knowlege thanks to other games they've done, this is the point

 

[London Geezer]

for sure they have a lot of knowlege thanks to other games they've done, this is the point

That was my point, yes. :smile:

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Bit of a flawed comparison.
Criterion have had the PS2 and Xbox architectures to play with for almost 6 and 4 years repectively.
If they had one configuration of PC to play with, a low-end PC of today could run it just fine, at the resolution it's running on those 2 consoles.

That was kinda Griffith's point. Closed architecture == better results, so (PC tech > Console tech) != Better Graphics.

For PCs to really be able to take advantage of the hardware,a better software platform is needed that adapts to the hardware more fully. eg. Oblivion doesn't support HDR + AA simultaneously on PC, despite some people owning graphics cards that support FP16 and MSAA. The PC should be able to adapt to the hardware and layer features to make the most use of the resources. Of course that still wouldn't give economic reason to develop top-end resources that all of 5% of consumers will be able to see. If 95% of customers are on 6800 level tech with 128 MB VRAM, why develop textures for a 256 MB board? I guess a toolset that allows automatic scaling of resources would be wanted. If textures and meshes could be worked on at ultra-high resolutions and then at the press of a button multiple downscaled files produced for different level computers, high-end could be supported at no extra cost.

 

[function]

The point about Intel Integrated graphics making the PC a poor platform for games is a good one, but I wonder whether giving enthusiasts dual and quad SLI at the other end of the scale isn't helping things either. The range in power in new, expensive PCs is phonomenal.

Game makers want to cater to the SLI crowd to get the entusiast bucks but even the high end mainstream crowd spending up to $200 - $300 dollars on a (360/PS3 level) graphics card may feel like they're missing out.