Epic's PS4, Xbox 720 wish: 'Give us more memory'

July 28th, 2011, 00:39 Posted By: wraggster

Epic Games isn't presumptuous enough to draw up its ideal specs from the next PlayStation and Xbox, but it knows one thing: it wants more memory.

The tech and software firm has been very vocal in recent months about its desire for the industry's next-gen machines to match top-end PCs.

It was a point driven home by its astounding Samaritan demo at GDC in March, which showcased Unreal Engine 3's new DX-11-compatible capabilities. If you haven't seen it yet, we very much recommend you do so now.




When we asked Epic European boss Mike Gamble what the firm wanted from the next-gen, he told us: "Basically, Samaritan was our request to the hardware manufacturers - that's what we'd like to be able to do. Beyond that we don't really know anything."

Senior technical artist and level designer Alan Willard agreed, adding: "There's always that question, nobody has knowledge for sure until the manufacturers say 'here's our minimum specs'. We obviously have things that we'd very much like to see but until the major console manufacturers come out and say 'here's what we're thinking' we won't be able to make any concrete plans."

However, when asked how they'd feel about consoles that offer little more in the way of raw horsepower and more in other areas, like AI capabilities - as discussed by Ubisoft - both execs made it clear that there was one enhancement Epic would be petitioning for above all.

"I think our biggest request from any new console will always be more memory - more than anything else," Gamble told us.

Willard added: "Yep, that's something we lobbied for with the Xbox 360 and PS3. We talked to them and went: 'Hey, here's what we can do with this and here's what we can do with that. Give us more memory and we can do better.' That was a win for us and that is something that will always give us a bigger platform to work on."

PlayStation 3 contains 256 MB of XDR DRAM main memory and 256 MB of GDDR3 video memory, whilst Xbox 360 offers 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM.

When asked if there may come a stage in the future where gaming graphics could became 'too real', Willard said:

"It's to problematic to make something that's...well, nobody wants to go home, sit down and play their own life, I think that's one of the mistakes that a lot of people assume. You want it to look good, you don't want it to look real. Yes we want to make characters look really good but if you look at BioShock Infinite those characters look fantastic - Gears of War's characters look great. They're not photo-realistic, they're not meant to be. They're meant to be interesting, fun and great game content."

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...s-more-memory/

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