BioWare - xbox 360 /= downgrades

BioWare exec basically tells us not to expect too many 360 games to ship with downgraded graphics.

"And even more behind-the-scenes... One interesting aspect of this question is that the Xbox 360 offers a different challenge than we had on the PC or even the original Xbox, through a seemingly innocent difference: the development Xbox 360 units have the same memory as retail ones. In our previous console development, and certainly on the PC, we often have twice the memory on our dev machines as on the final retail machines. So first you throw in everything you want the game to have, and then you figure out how to make it all fit in a space half the size. So developing graphics for those previous platforms is easy at first, but you can end up having to downgrade your graphics to squeeze it all onto the system. On the Xbox 360 however, players get a beefy 512MB of memory to play in, but us developers don't get any extra room beyond that. So the reverse happens: we first make the most basic graphics fit within memory, and then we upgrade the visuals as we optimize the game. We're also constantly tuning the art and the renderer to gradually improve the overall quality. Therefore you can actually expect the final game to look better than we've ever shown it."

http://blogs.ign.com/BioWare_Games/2007/05/03/53888/

"Very nice" said Borat. :)

Good news for halo 3, forza 2 etc. I hear. It sounds pretty logical. I hope this doesn't turn into an eternal excuse for bad graphics though. 11Marcel

You would agree that many of the Mass Effects screenshots are really nice, right?  Well, he says expect the game to look even better.  This is the opposite of an excuse for bad graphics.

"and certainly on the PC, we often have twice the memory on our dev machines as on the final retail machines."

What final retail machine.....they are all different.....how could they have had twice and been forced to scale it down.... 

[QUOTE="11Marcel"]Good news for halo 3, forza 2 etc. I hear. It sounds pretty logical. I hope this doesn't turn into an eternal excuse for bad graphics though. ATrillionaire

You would agree that many of the Mass Effects screenshots are really nice, right?  Well, he says expect the game to look even better.  This is the opposite of an excuse for bad graphics.

[QUOTE="ATrillionaire"]

[QUOTE="11Marcel"]Good news for halo 3, forza 2 etc. I hear. It sounds pretty logical. I hope this doesn't turn into an eternal excuse for bad graphics though. 11Marcel

You would agree that many of the Mass Effects screenshots are really nice, right?  Well, he says expect the game to look even better.  This is the opposite of an excuse for bad graphics.

ok, gotcha

"and certainly on the PC, we often have twice the memory on our dev machines as on the final retail machines."

 

What final retail machine.....they are all different.....how could they have had twice and been forced to scale it down....

cobrax75

When you develop a game on a PC you work on high-end workstations where you generally have a *ton* of RAM - high end workstations start around 4gb - you just need it to do serious work. You have to aim that game to run in the amount of RAM that your end user has. You can't expect them to have a gig on their video card and four in the system, you've got to say "low-end 1gb, high-end 2gb, 256mb GPU is the standard".
 

[QUOTE="cobrax75"]

"and certainly on the PC, we often have twice the memory on our dev machines as on the final retail machines."

 

What final retail machine.....they are all different.....how could they have had twice and been forced to scale it down....

subrosian

When you develop a game on a PC you work on high-end workstations where you generally have a *ton* of RAM - high end workstations start around 4gb - you just need it to do serious work. You have to aim that game to run in the amount of RAM that your end user has. You can't expect them to have a gig on their video card and four in the system, you've got to say "low-end 1gb, high-end 2gb, 256mb GPU is the standard".

yes, I know thats true...but their is no logical reason why they would scale down their games, when they know PC hardware will always catch up, and PC games can be scaled down on an individual bases.

To this day, I have not yet seen any PC game get downgraded beyond it being a crappy port. 

Tell it to Rockstar North.Runningflame570

[QUOTE="subrosian"][QUOTE="cobrax75"]

"and certainly on the PC, we often have twice the memory on our dev machines as on the final retail machines."

 

What final retail machine.....they are all different.....how could they have had twice and been forced to scale it down....

cobrax75

When you develop a game on a PC you work on high-end workstations where you generally have a *ton* of RAM - high end workstations start around 4gb - you just need it to do serious work. You have to aim that game to run in the amount of RAM that your end user has. You can't expect them to have a gig on their video card and four in the system, you've got to say "low-end 1gb, high-end 2gb, 256mb GPU is the standard".

yes, I know thats true...but their is no logical reason why they would scale down their games, when they know PC hardware will always catch up, and PC games can be scaled down on an individual bases.

To this day, I have not yet seen any PC game get downgraded beyond it being a crappy port.

[QUOTE="cobrax75"][QUOTE="subrosian"][QUOTE="cobrax75"]

"and certainly on the PC, we often have twice the memory on our dev machines as on the final retail machines."

 

What final retail machine.....they are all different.....how could they have had twice and been forced to scale it down....

subrosian

When you develop a game on a PC you work on high-end workstations where you generally have a *ton* of RAM - high end workstations start around 4gb - you just need it to do serious work. You have to aim that game to run in the amount of RAM that your end user has. You can't expect them to have a gig on their video card and four in the system, you've got to say "low-end 1gb, high-end 2gb, 256mb GPU is the standard".

yes, I know thats true...but their is no logical reason why they would scale down their games, when they know PC hardware will always catch up, and PC games can be scaled down on an individual bases.

To this day, I have not yet seen any PC game get downgraded beyond it being a crappy port.

thats somewhat true...yet still, at this point there is not a single game that benifts with 4 gigs of ram over 2, or with a quad core, over a core 2 duo.  Maybe Supcom, where you might see a one or 2 FPS increase with 4 gigs of Ram.... 

"and certainly on the PC, we often have twice the memory on our dev machines as on the final retail machines."

 

What final retail machine.....they are all different.....how could they have had twice and been forced to scale it down....

cobrax75

Maybe he meants their target machine, like when u see what specs u need on the box u need to play the game optimally, maybe they have 2x that..i dunno just a guess 

Bioware rocks, they will put out a great game. themyth01

"Very nice" said Borat. :)

musicalmac

*double thumbs up*

I hope Mass Effect will blow me away 

I have to see it to beleive it MAss Effect got down graded a while back. Hopefully there start improving the game as they claim.Adrian_Cloud