[AfterDawn]Square Enix: Next gen of consoles need lots of RAM - Page 5

lol, yes, squaresoft loves pc markets, specially how good ports they have launched for pc

Yeah, no, that's the fun of having a PC and configuring it is optional and in no way related to being able to play games. But for stuff like mods and the use of a mouse and keyboard (not to mention the freedom of choice for many, many things) PC has it hands down. Don't get me wrong, my xbox 360 and PS3 get some good use, but they don't have the same experience as a PC. It's inferior.

They're going to skimp it with 1-1.5gb of video memory as they're only aiming to push 1080p max, that I can say for certain.

However, with normal ram they'd probably have a MAXIMUM of 6gb tbh, even though ram is cheap every $5-10 counts as they're selling it on a large scale and competing price-wise with the probably cheaper wii u and with sony/microsoft and they're not selling system specs like alienware, they're selling price/looks/game collection.

To prove this imagine if they included 2gb of ram only, which I doubt - I personally think they'd go with four, imagine the improvement features wise they could include. Hundred-fold over the current systems, and the "typical" market would still be wowed.

You could play BF:3 on 1080p with textures on ultra and everything else on high with hbao without anti-aliasing or with fxaa on a mediumish-high setting while getting 60fps on a system running (a resource [especially ram] intensive) windows 7 (which takes up lots of ram compared to the os' the consoles use) with 4gb of ram a GPU equivalent of the 560ti with 5x0-->6x0 performance (basing it off 580 to 680 improvements) and pretty much any cpu you'd like and it would get you 60fps.

Yeah, pretty much anything would blow current consoles out of the water and why would they reduce their profit margins. These consoles were developed badly. The ps2/xbox was aimed at 480p (BUT COULD RUN SOME IN 720p), a few years later 720p became more common, but the ps3 and xbox couldn't even run that properly (most games are actually rendered in 5xxp I can give you a link if you'd like to argue), let alone 1080p.

These new consoles will definitely beat the wii U (which is aimed at running 720p 4xmsaa or 1080p) so will be able to fluently run these games on high settings (look at batman on the Wii U 720p or 1080p looked crap like medium settings, but the resolution was definitely higher than current consoles).

This means that they will be great consoles for the next 4-6 years (as after then the "4k" resolutions will be more common and by 6 years definitely commonplace and another year-two after that they will have over 80% market share for sure). This means that we will get to the stage where these current consoles have always been in comparison to pc, bad. However, for the next 3-4 years the consoles will actually be quite good. This is only graphics wise.

The experience previous consoles will be improved regardless as you'd get voice chat on the sony console, you'd get larger games on the xbox etc.

But the controls will always be imprecise

The idea that console manufacturers are going to cheap out on us is totally unfounded. Both the PS3 and 360 were sold at a loss for a large part of their life and it's likely their successors will as well. There is no money in console hardware. I'd put money on the PS4 and 720 being very powerful. With Tablets being accepted as gaming machines more powerful experiences will be consoles main differentiating point and all the big publishers and developers are telling Sony and Microsoft this. The financial incentive is simply still there for powerful machines and as long as it is we will continue to get good hardware.

Both the PS3 and 360 were extremely forward thinking still putting out pretty great looking games to this day.

I hope SE will port FF15 to PC. The graphics on Agni's Philosophy is amazing.

The PS3 has 512MiB of RAM total. You don't think a thirty-two fold increase is "realistic" in a console generational shift? After seven to eight years?

8GiB of memory today costs less today than all of the memory in the PS3 did on it's release, and less than the 32MiB in the PS2, and less than the 3MiB in the PS1.

4GiB is the practical minimum for some games right now. These new consoles won't be out for another year and they will last until 2017+.

I wouldn't be surprised to see 8GiB of total memory in next gen consoles.

Problem is that the PS3 especially took forever to become profitable, and Sony is in no position for a repeat. Likewise, MS has their chunk of market share, and won't need to be so aggressive to maintain it.

That said, memory is the last place I'd expect corners to be cut, since it's so crucial to many aspects of gaming (beyond raw eye-candy) and so cheap, in monetary cost, ease of implementation, and power requirements.
Edited by Blameless - 7/9/12 at 12:41am

They need RAM to make up for the slowass optical drives.

That's why they are called consoles and not PCs.

Besides... "experience" is all personal.

Personally myself, I have played much more on my 360 then my PC. I love the games I have on it, and I just insert disk and play. No hassle.

I can also watch Netflix, Hulu, or .m2ts files through media center along with music.

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I cannot see next gen consoles having any less than 8GB of DDR3 as it stands. It needs the most it can get. The first console to do split RAM with some GDDR5 mem would be nice but even just say 8-16GB of shared DDR3/4 would be fantastic.

The reason the Xbox 360 looks like junk today... is because it is 7 years old. The tech inside it was fantastic when it came out. So I would expect some hefty tech to go into the next gen consoles.

My least guess would be 8GB of shared DDR3, bluray drive, 7200rpm hard drive and a 4 core CPU.
Edited by kennyparker1337 - 7/9/12 at 2:43am

if the next gen consoles have 8GB RAM then I can finally make the most of my 16GB I do agree with the devs, even though I don't develop games. The PS3 can't even handle basic web browsing because of the lack of RAM.

Hassle is subjective, though. The Hassle I go through to play PC games on disc is worth it to me. If you play via Steam it's the same as downloading over the XBL or PSN stores. You can also watch Netflix, listen to music and do much, much more with much more choice and configuration on a PC too

I know it's all preference, but the console experience is still inferior to a PC experience.