Trying to understand the justification, which I hope is better than, "heck, 5GBs is enough compared to last gen. Let's just put the rest aside and see what happens in a few years."
There's something like 2 GBs 'spare' RAM in the 8 GB configuration. It's RAM that's likely not going to be being accessed constantly whether it has game assets stores away there or background tasks or user applicaitons. Would it be better for games to allow precaching for 2 GBs games assets, like more megatexture tiles in complex city environments? Or better to keep resident 50 different utilities and social apps that the user can flip to the front in an instant? Different folk will have different preferences, but the justification for needing that much for apps somewhat confuses me. Even looking forwards I can't see where the change is going to come. We talked about this at length in the next gen tech thread, about Durango reserving 3 GBs, and it seemed a gig or more could be used for Kinect and stuff, rather than 'apps'. What future requires a console to do more than a current iPad? Is the web going to become less and less efficient and just become retina-quality images taking up a gig a page or something equally ridiculous?
