7th December 2005, 11:28 PM
I hope that by smaller company, you meant that they only focus on video games and not PC's, TV's, walkman's, etc. We all know about Nintendo's financial statements and that, looking at just the games division of Sony and MS, has a much larger bottom line.
ABF/ PC games require alot of RAM because of the way the game works on the PC. Doom III for example looks better on Xbox than on a high end PC, the same is applied to Morrow Wind, etc. And yet the XBox has very little RAM in comparison to a high end PC with a few gigs stuffed in. I dont pretend to know all the ins and outs of how it works, but it is far easier to develop for PC because your painters pallette is gigantic and you can pretty much do what ever you want and just slap a warning of system requirements on the box.
You could compare it (PC's Vs. Consoles) to trying to have a conversation with a few people (console), or trying to have one with a giant factory full of people (PC).
But basically it just comes down to the point that PC's are designed to be PC's - consoles are designed to be gaming systems.
I dunno about Nintendo not putting as much RAM in to Rev as previous generations. The NES had none, the SNES had none, the N64 had 4 MB (8 if you have the expansion pak) and the GC was the only one to really make the leap and now Rev is going to atleast double it. From what I understand, the RAM in a console is mostly used for preimptive loading and holding textures and models for current or soon to be used sequences for the game so that it doesn't have to re-load the textures and models (making the game run slower). But I know very little about this kinda stuff. It would make sense though that an HD system would need more RAM if it's basically being used as a cache for textures and what not.
ABF/ PC games require alot of RAM because of the way the game works on the PC. Doom III for example looks better on Xbox than on a high end PC, the same is applied to Morrow Wind, etc. And yet the XBox has very little RAM in comparison to a high end PC with a few gigs stuffed in. I dont pretend to know all the ins and outs of how it works, but it is far easier to develop for PC because your painters pallette is gigantic and you can pretty much do what ever you want and just slap a warning of system requirements on the box.
You could compare it (PC's Vs. Consoles) to trying to have a conversation with a few people (console), or trying to have one with a giant factory full of people (PC).
But basically it just comes down to the point that PC's are designed to be PC's - consoles are designed to be gaming systems.
I dunno about Nintendo not putting as much RAM in to Rev as previous generations. The NES had none, the SNES had none, the N64 had 4 MB (8 if you have the expansion pak) and the GC was the only one to really make the leap and now Rev is going to atleast double it. From what I understand, the RAM in a console is mostly used for preimptive loading and holding textures and models for current or soon to be used sequences for the game so that it doesn't have to re-load the textures and models (making the game run slower). But I know very little about this kinda stuff. It would make sense though that an HD system would need more RAM if it's basically being used as a cache for textures and what not.