Is Gears of War as good as it gets?

[ehandlr]

"We pushed the 360 to the limits," Gears of War QA manager Preston Thorne told Siliconera at last night's Hollywood launch party. While obviously an inflammatory remark, there could be some truth to the statement. After all, it was Epic that allegedly convinced Microsoft to bump up Xbox 360's RAM to 512 MB -- and Epic still maintains that 256 MB would not be enough to run Gears in its current state.

So does that mean PlayStation 3 couldn't handle the game? When asked, Preston skillfully dodged the question, but implied the answer was "no."

All console hardware has limits. Has Epic hit Xbox 360's? Does it matter? With the boundaries of the playing field defined, won't developers focus less time searching for the lines and more time experimenting with what's inbounds?

[Bootaaay]

So does that mean PlayStation 3 couldn't handle the game? When asked, Preston skillfully dodged the question, but implied the answer was "no."


Actually he said it couldn't be done because the PS3s RAM isn't unified and that the 512mb of RAM on the 360 nearly wasn't enough as it was. To suggest that a game released a year after the system has peaked the capabilities of the machine is just ludicrous. Epic may have peaked their abillities and their engine on the 360, that doesn't mean that another developer isn't going to come along with another engine, or even make better use of the UE3 engine (BioShock ftw).

[ehandlr]

I totally agree. I'm also hearing from developers that the PS3's shared memory hasn't been a problem.

[Bootaaay]

It's probally got more to do with the fact that the version of UE3 that GoW uses is built specifically for the 360, i'm sure any of Epics UE3 engine variants for the PS3 will make better use of the PS3s shared memory than the 360 based GoW engine could.

[ehandlr]

aye i agree totally.