Before Crysis 2 was announced, I had to explain on numerous occasions why Crysis 1 wasn't possible on consoles.
Regardless of how much the graphical quality was scaled, Crysis 1 stores the basic information of a level in its entirety, streaming additional information as needed; based on the players location. This enabled one of the largest scale experiences provided in a FPS, interactive range was limited by real factors such as ability to hit a target; rather than artificial range constraints. The result of this is high ram usage, a all or nothing scenario; making it impossible to fit Crysis scale onto consoles limited memory.
This was backed up by the head of Crytek also giving this explanation. He said if it was to work on consoles, they would have to change to a cell streaming based model. This however would change part of the Crysis 1 experience, the open environment. Cell streaming games load chunks of a level to keep memory usage to a minimum, but your interactivity is limited to within those loaded chunks.
This is a perfectly reasonable, logical and sourced explanation as to why Crysis 1 cannot be ported to consoles. Given that Crysis 2 was converted to a cell streaming mode, and its scale was reduced significantly, it's far to say this is a fact.
However, many times when I gave this explanation in the past; it was met with aggression. Console gamers didn't like the idea of PC being able to do something that they couldn't, which had nothing to with with GPU and CPU performance. Some rationalized that they could simply "optimize" it to work, suggesting that there is some programming trick to magically fit 1GB+ worth of information into consoles 256mb of ram; without losing anything. Others would attack the point of using these large environments, attempting to negate their value; and hence the meaning of consoles not being able to support them. Some even went as far as to say people like me were proven wrong by Crysis 2 coming to consoles, despite its memory management model being changed to cell streaming, supporting the original argument.
But what it always ended up falling down to, was I was elitist for giving; and supporting this explanation. Even though it is essentially a technical fact, something even the head of Crytek himself has backed up, I was a elitist PC gamer for just mentioning it.
It really isn't hard to be called a elitist in PC gaming, you just have to know what you are talking about; and for console gamers to not like what you are saying. If you want to find real elitism, look to the people who reject reality; in favour for what makes their platform look good.
AnnoyedDragon
All that needed to be said, has been said.
In a nutshell, PC gamers are seen as elitist because they put their knowledge at work in SW discussions. Knowledge that comes almost naturally with experience as a PC gamer, but doesn't as a console gamer. Therefore the ignorance and anger when people prove their ignorance and act like they are entitled to their own opinion despite the fact that it's obviously uninformed.
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