14th April 2005, 11:48 AM
Actually the technical leap is greater from generation to generation, ABF. If you look at the NES hardware specs to the SNES hardware specs to the N64 hardware specs to the GC hardware specs... the leaps have been greater each time than the last. And it the early XB2 specs have some truth to them then this new leap will continue that trend. In terms of pure processing power, in terms of how many polys can be drawn, in terms of how high the texture resolution will become, in terms of everything else (lighting, particle effects, etc.), the leap will be very large.
The thing is, though, that it's easier to tell the difference between a 100-poly model and a 10,000-poly model than it is a 10,000-poly model and a 1,000,000-poly model. As they say, you can put a billion polys into a ball but it won't look any better than a one million poly ball. I don't think we're quite there yet, but we will be pretty soon. The gen after this, I'd say. And games are just going to become more and more expensive to make until there's only the big guy and the (very) little guy. You'll be seeing a new EA Bond game that looks exactly like a movie that costs more than five Bond movies to make, and you'll see innovative little games like Katamari Damashii that cost barely anything in comparison to produce (I don't know if that's actually true, but it's certainly the type of game that could fairly easily be done by a nobody developer). Some people think that the rising costs of games are going to make it so that no one but the big dogs will be able to make a living off of games, but I feel the exact opposite. Because games will cost so much to make, studios will be even more afraid to take risks. And the public will eventually get bored of the same kinds of games. Then they'll look for innovation, and you don't need billion-dollar budgets to make innovative games. Graphics are going to become less and less important, I think.
The thing is, though, that it's easier to tell the difference between a 100-poly model and a 10,000-poly model than it is a 10,000-poly model and a 1,000,000-poly model. As they say, you can put a billion polys into a ball but it won't look any better than a one million poly ball. I don't think we're quite there yet, but we will be pretty soon. The gen after this, I'd say. And games are just going to become more and more expensive to make until there's only the big guy and the (very) little guy. You'll be seeing a new EA Bond game that looks exactly like a movie that costs more than five Bond movies to make, and you'll see innovative little games like Katamari Damashii that cost barely anything in comparison to produce (I don't know if that's actually true, but it's certainly the type of game that could fairly easily be done by a nobody developer). Some people think that the rising costs of games are going to make it so that no one but the big dogs will be able to make a living off of games, but I feel the exact opposite. Because games will cost so much to make, studios will be even more afraid to take risks. And the public will eventually get bored of the same kinds of games. Then they'll look for innovation, and you don't need billion-dollar budgets to make innovative games. Graphics are going to become less and less important, I think.