Why are consoles stuck at 16 players?

This is something that has bother me since Live came out. Most multi-player game that where released on Xbox (and PS2) where limited to 16 players. I could somewhat understand this due both system limitations (even though they managed to get Socom to run 32 players fine.) Now its the next generation of consoles, and where still seeing games limited to 16 players. Games like Ghost Recon and the future release of Quake Wars (which supports more players on PC). Some games are fun at just 16, but sometimes it would be nice to have more players in the game. There have been a few noticeable exceptions (like Resistance and Battlefield), but its just not enough. My question is this, when will we see the day when games with multi-player with more than 16 players be prevalent?

This is something that has bother me since Live came out. Most multi-player game that where released on Xbox (and PS2) where limited to 16 players. I could somewhat understand this due both system limitations (even though they managed to get Socom to run 32 players fine.) Now its the next generation of consoles, and where still seeing games limited to 16 players. Games like Ghost Recon and the future release of Quake Wars (which supports more players on PC). Some games are fun at just 16, but sometimes it would be nice to have more players in the game. There have been a few noticeable exceptions (like Resistance and Battlefield), but its just not enough. My question is this, when will we see the day when games with multi-player with more than 16 players be prevalent?

ex-soldier

Online console games are generally peer-to-peer, which means that one of the players is hosting the game on the same console that he's running the client.

PC games benefit from dedicated game servers, which have more available memory, bandwidth, and CPU, and therefore can handle more players.

[QUOTE="ex-soldier"]

This is something that has bother me since Live came out. Most multi-player game that where released on Xbox (and PS2) where limited to 16 players. I could somewhat understand this due both system limitations (even though they managed to get Socom to run 32 players fine.) Now its the next generation of consoles, and where still seeing games limited to 16 players. Games like Ghost Recon and the future release of Quake Wars (which supports more players on PC). Some games are fun at just 16, but sometimes it would be nice to have more players in the game. There have been a few noticeable exceptions (like Resistance and Battlefield), but its just not enough. My question is this, when will we see the day when games with multi-player with more than 16 players be prevalent?

Dire_Weasel

Online console games are generally peer-to-peer, which means that one of the players is hosting the game on the same console that he's running the client.

PC games benefit from dedicated game servers, which have more available memory, bandwidth, and CPU, and therefore can handle more players.

the head of the nail was smashed by Dire Weasel