Network now...NEWS
We’ve “Maxed Out” Xbox 360, Says EA Games VP
Patrick Soderlund, senior VP of EA Games Europe, claims that the company's developers have “maxed out” the Xbox 360.
"I like the Natal. It's an interesting device, so I'm truly impressed by Xbox. It's my personal favourite console,” he told the Official Xbox Magazine. “I think Microsoft is on a roll right now. They're doing really well. If I was Sony, I would have a headache, to be honest."
He then goes on to talk about the PS3’s potential, and whether more can be squeezed out of Xbox 360.
"Sony has a lot of good games this year. If you go to their [E3] booth, there's a very consistent, high quality product line-up and that will help them. I do think that we'll see developers inside the organisation getting to understand the PS3 better and I think that we're getting more power out of PS3 right now... I think that we've maxed out the 360 but we haven't maxed out the PS3."
Contact Us / About Us / Advertise With Us / BeltwayBlips / TechBlips / MassiveBlips / GamerBlips / FAQ
Subscribe To Edge Magazine / Corrections / Terms & Conditions / Privacy Policy
Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court 30 Monmouth Street Bath, UK BA1 2BW
England and Wales company registration number 2008885
Subscribe To Edge Magazine / Corrections / Terms & Conditions / Privacy Policy
Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court 30 Monmouth Street Bath, UK BA1 2BW
England and Wales company registration number 2008885
Who cares? PS2 was the second weakest console of its generation and it's still selling and coming out with games. I'm glad that EA recognizes that there is potential in developing for the PS3, but it's not going to make a difference if no one else does it. The fact that companies are more familiar with the 360 hardware has always been a threat to the PS3 and most likely still will be.
Maxing out means "We cannot squeeze anything out of this hardware using this particular engine". So, in order to reach better graphics or more frames per second, you need to recode something.
Maxing out is not hard: just don't optimize your code. You'll get 100% processor load in no time.
Hardly a surprise seeing as it is the oldest of the two and has lower standard specs in key areas.
Europe in general is very anti-MS and defintately leans Playstation period
Honestly, the big thing is to put pressure on MS to continue the $20 refurb hard drive deals and start promoting games to require installs
I have noticed that the wackiest comments from just about every game company comes from their European divisions. I'm not just talking anti-MS but anything to do with gaming. Must be something in the water. :)
I love how it's always something cultural with the implication that there's an anti-US bias or that people in these areas are a bit weird when they don't back Microsoft. It's insulting and adds nothing to the topic of conversation other than feed into the unfair stereotype of people from the US being ignorant self important arseholes who'd buy a gallon of horse shit if you slap a US flag on it and call it something like "Freedom Faeces".
Frankly these particular commentators from the US should just grow up, stop acting like hard done too martyrs and maybe engage with other the subject in the hope of starting up a meaningful dialogue- you may get a fresh perspective on the subject. Just because someone has a different view or understanding of a subject to you doesn't automatically mean they are wrong.
Oh, get over yourself ArronC07. I intentionally put a smiley face at the end of the post to make it obvious to everyone that I was just teasing. Half of your posts are insults to other members, and yet you can't even take good natured teasing not specifically directed to you.
It's particularly ironic to have you of all people criticize others for not adding anything to a conversation since you are only capable of snide remarks and often do not even offer an actual comment at all - just your pathetically overused face palm pics.
Hear hear.
('hear hear,' sounds pompous and weird. I would have just said said 'I agree' but I'm european and so obviously can only do wacky statements with apparently subliminal anti-american messages.)
Good. That means they aren't fumbling with the hardware trying to figure out how to make it work the way they want. Now they can focus on making good games instead! A console having a difficulty curve shouldn't be considered a good thing.
We’ve “Maxed Out” Xbox 360...well, that wouldn't be hard, would it!
Well I'm not sure, having never made a game before but surely at some point the blu-ray (with its 25/50gb capacity) is going to be really handy to people who want to cram more stuff into a game than the Xbox360's DVD9 disc (with 8gb). Maybe 360 games will have to go multidisk but we've already heard that FFXIII will have problems with putting all the different voice tracks onto an xbox disc.
Forza 3 has already announced that it's coming on two discs.
I wish they had included an SD slot on the drive. With the firmware update, even the Wii now has, technically, the ability to run games that go up to 32GB. If the 360 had that, we wouldn't be having this conversation. A 16GB card costs less than $1 to produce, & 32GB is getting close to that now.
This argument will probably not have a conclusive answer anytime soon. Right now, the 3 CPU's in the 360 are a hell of a lot easier for developers to work with than the SPU's in the PS3, and it's been the lead platform on probably most of the mulitplatform games because of that. The GPU on the 360 will continue to give it legs, as again it's easier to work with, vertex shaders run faster on it, etc., because of it's better architecture.
This only changes IF some experienced developers come along and really harness those fat SPU's on the PS3; when they turn that corner the PS3 will be doing things the 360 simply can't.
I think consoles have not been maxed out for quite some time. And well... I've seen a lot of game makers claim that they had "maxed out" a certain machine - until they released their next game and all of a sudden they had managed to improve most things and discovered new ways to get more. Although I do think the PS3 has more room for exploration, I don't think the 360 is running at its fullest either.
saying that they've "maxed out" the 360 could also imply that they think each console has a similar max level, but they think they've reached it for 360, and haven't quite got to that level with the ps3 yet. I don't really know any ea games, and I'm yet to buy an HDTV. Do the games tend to look better on 360? if not, i guess that they do mean that the ps3 has a bit more grunt.
Anyway, I wouldn't be to dubious of the claims. They were made in a 360 magazine after all, so it's perhaps unlikely to be totally spin.
Bleak- I think that may be a fair observation.
Stealth- I think for a while this gen the 360 version of multiplat games tended to have an edge in the graphical department but I think that had more to do with the PS3 being newer, and the 360 always being the lead SKU. Any time you essentially port a game built for another system it's going to be infrerior. As some devs have wrapped their head around the PS3 and other's have used a PC first thought process the games are starting to look more similar for the most part with the PS3 getting the edge more now than they did earlier on (this is from watching comparison videos and reading comparison reviews, not personal experience as I don't have a PS3).
I'm not going to try and argue which system has more power/which system is maxed out, but I take comments like these (and websites posting them) with a grain of salt. We just had the crytek lead developer (or producer someone like that anyway) say that the PS3 and 360 are pretty equal. He stated one has a CPU advantage and one has a GPU advantage (hmm, I wonder which is which???) and that both do some things better than the other. And this was coming from the developer that has arguably made the game/game engine with the most graphic fidelity to-date. So who's word do we take? He even went on to say that they (crytek) already squeezed everything they could out of the PS3 and even had to dig for the extra 1% or 2% they needed to get the game (crysis) running the way they wanted.
Here's the article if people think I'm fanboying it up.
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23898
I'd just like to point out that despite crysis looking amazing, it is an incredibly inefficient game as far as getting the most out of a machine goes. You'd think someone who spent $3000+ on a computer shortly after the game came out could play thing thing maxed out, right? Nope. My basic point here being that their new game probably doesn't know what the hell it's doing on consoles, and won't get it right until they release a sequel/expansion.
Or, you could argue, that as two years down the line it's still the technically most impressive game engine that it simply raised the bar to a point where the consumer tech couldn't match it. Neither have its competitors, yet. As to how effiecient it is, I have no idea, but the console demos looked very impressive, if they can get that standard running in real-time, Crysis 2 should give Gears 2 and Killzone 2 a real run for their money on their respective platforms.
This was an interview in an official 360 mag. Do you not think a pro 360 mag would call him out on that if it wasn't true or at least half true?
The PS3 is harder to develop for and newer. So logically there will be more power to squeeze out of it later in life because it'll take longer for devs to optimise for it.
Was it? The article said it was an interview with gamasutra.
I don't think the Crytek guy would have lied just because he knew a pro-360 mag wouldn't call him not.
Either way, these articles are silly anyway. I think it was stealth who said it best that the both probably have room to improve but the PS3 probably has more room to grow. None of us (or maybe 1 or 2) are game developers so all we really have is what we hear and read to judge, not our own knowledge of game design.
edit: I misread what you meant. I thought you were talking about the crytek article. My bad.
That article is just stupid marketing bullshit.
Developers can make a game where perfing the gpu/ppu/spus on the ps3 shows 100% workload across the board, and it will still look and play like utter shit.
Just because you managed to use and synch up all resources doesn't in any way imply that they are used well, or even doing the right things in relation to the game you are building.
I would venture to say GPU for 360 and CPU for PS3.
Either way, Iwata already stated they are maxing out the Wii with SMB. I await similar statements for the DS, PSP, iPhone and any other device that plays games...
Whisky-
Agreed.
tirminyl-
Yeah that would be my guess, too.
as though EA knew anything about making games. that's laughable.
I think statements like this are a bit stupid. So he is more or less saying Dead Space 2, Bad Company 2 etc etc are not going to look any better? Mass Effect 2 alone, an EA game I should add looks better than the first one by a large margin. IMO both consoles have still a lot to do, look at the games the PS2 produces late into its life.
This is nothing more than something for Fanboys to argue over.
Yeah those PS2 games look the same as any other PS2 game but they'll sell because graphic aren't all that matter and they've innovated a bit more than normal to see those games.
Who will buy GoW 3 when it looks the same as GoW2 when the gameplay and story has been the same cookie cutter story since day one?
Well obviously they've maxed-out the 360. There's a reason consoles run a 5-year development cycle. How long it takes the PS3 to be maxed-out remains to be seen, but they do have, at least, a year over the 360.
I think after seeing games like The Last Guardian, Heavy Rain and Uncharted 2, we will start to see how much more powerful the PS3 is compared to the 360. Up until now though they both more or less look the same graphically. I don't think the 360 has been maxed out yet but there are a few games that are starting to make it creak.