Crysis sold over a million copies, Steam took almost a billion dollars last year. Games on consoles are heavily pirated as well - it's a minority of PC gamers who pirate games.

OK, I feel I have the time and the effort to explain this all.

The first thing we have to consider is the Oblivion was moved to the 360 very late in it's development cycle (I think something like 6 months before release). So, the engine is very very, and i mean very unoptimized, even for the PC. The 360 was completely new, so they didn't have time to get used to it. RDR and Just Cause 2 came out at least 4 years after (I haven't counted or checked this) the consoles had been out; the developers have had a lot of time to play with making games for it.

Secondly, there is absolutely no http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_surface_determination (which basically only renders what the player can see), which would (probably) easily allow there to be open cities. Well, provided the engine was optimized. Not to mention the fact that all of these meshes were http://sites.google.com/site/oblivionpoinfo/optimization/pyffi), and had a high poly count. The next thing we need to consider is that nearly all the objects had collision, as in they could be picked up and thrown about. This sort of thing is very taxing on the GPU, which slows things down a lot. So adding all of this together, and the fact the game had to still render the rest of the outside world (in the closed cities if you go outside the land is blank with rubbish textures and no wildlife etc,you can see it doesn't bode well. Let's not forget all the high poly NPCs and armour and weapons etc.

Now, if we move onto the CPU. This has to keep track of all the NPCs going about on their day to day business, and if hostile NPCs and creates could run into the town willy nilly, things would slow to a crawl. This is because the AI of Oblivion is very resource hungry (because it does a lot of stuff). Just Cause 2 does not have NPCs with schedules, that go about their daily business in a routine, and do other such stuff. Combat AI is even more taxing than the routine AI that would normally happen. Please note the reason why combat in cities in vanilla oblivion doesn't slow down is because there are not the extra NPCs/creatures from the wild that have just rampaged their way into the city. So this would tax the CPU too much, causing things again to slow down (even if the GPU wasn't suffering from all those polys; they are seperate and one will bottleneck the other, so if one is taxed too much, the whole things slows down).

So, the summation of all of the above features will one way or another cause a slow down.

The optimisation of software (the game engines etc.) has developed considerably since Oblivion, which is why consoles can do so much now, even after being 6 years old. So Skyrim should be able to have open cities, if BGS chooses to go that way and invests sufficient resources into it.

So, that pretty much answers it. Consoles are holding back games with their aging hardware, but the evolution (and considerable investment) in the software that runs on them will prolong their life for a few more years.


EDIT:




Please do your research before claiming it's more expensive to buy a gaming PC. Sure you can spend as much as you like on it, but you can play PS3 quality games on a PC that won't cost much more than . . . a PS3.

Downloading games illegally on console is just as bad as it is on PC (modding and hacking is a huge issue on both Xbox and PS3). Game developers are becoming more console-centric for one reason, because consoles are growing and becoming more popular every year. Why miss out on an opportunity to make huge profits? Eventually, I believe Sony and Microsoft will figure out a way to keep consoles somewhat on scale with PC so they don't become outdated after a few years. Of course at that point, consoles will probably cost so much money that you may as well just buy a PC...

Also the most $$$$$$$$$$$$ game is WoW, but really if skyrim doesnt come with DX11 support i will be very disappoint. Also you forget to mention Valve is the most profitable per employee company EVER.

Estimated worth 4 billion

employee's 250.

????

success.

I see no reason for them to do that, despite the many shortcomings and general price gouging in the console walled garden they're still selling, and if the console market has taught me anything it's that nothing matters more than money.

Here's the thing:

1. Map size doesn't matter, because not all of the map is loaded at one point in time. Likewise, not all objects are loaded into memory at the same time - or else the consoles (and PCs) would quickly run out of RAM. If everything in Oblivion (meshes, sounds, etc) was loaded at once, that would take up over 3.5 gigabytes.
2. The Xbox 360 has 512 megabytes of RAM. The PS3? 256 megabytes. There are phones out there with more RAM than either.
3. As mentioned, Oblivion objects / NPCs are much more complex than RDR or Just Cause 2 - thus they take up more memory. A certain number of objects are required to make a game-world believable - Oblivion has more objects / NPCs that are more complex, thus it likely pushes the limits of both consoles in terms of RAM.
4. The Skyrim NPCs / objects are likely going to be just as complex as the NPCs and objects in Oblivion, if not more so. Thus, more RAM is needed to hold the same number of NPCs or objects (in theory - they may simply be as complex as Oblivion's are).
5. While PCs have made leaps and bounds in processing power and RAM, the Xbox 360 and PS3 have not. A game made in 2011 - Skyrim - must deal with the same computer specs as a game made in 2006 / 2007.
6. So, yeah, the consoles are holding back PCs in general.

If I remember correctly in one of the videos filmed at Bethesda HQ, they showed an Xbox360 that looked like it was hooked up to a computer. If I knew any better, theres a good chance that during production of Skyrim, they are also testing the game on the 360 console as well to make sure its running the way it should. Im sure they also have a PS3 hooked up as well and testing too.

The PS3 actually has 512 as well, it's 256 of faster RAM and 256 of slower. Of course, 512mb is still a very small amount, but it's worth mentioning just for inter-console comparisons.

Really? Hm. I thought it had 256MB of system and 256MB of video RAM. Which are not the same thing (that's according to Wikipedia).

You guys say whatever you want, illegal pc-downloads is a much greater issue than illegal console downloads. Only releasing a game to PC does not generate nearly as much money as a release on all platforms. Like it or not, money talks.

All of the screen shots we have seen of Skyrim were clearly taken from a Xbox 360 so far. BGS is making sure the quality of the game is as close as possible throughout all platforms.

If you watch "The road to skyrim" the todd howard interview,third video i think he basically says this:
At the moment the enviroments you walk through,are pretty good.
They'll look better each time,but there isn't this enviroment thing they can't do yet.
He also said,they don't feel the need at the moment to move to the next hardware cycle,because it doesn't push them anywhere,thast really new yet.


Consoles obviously have a limit,but tools and tech are getting better,which means they can still get extra things out that hardware,which todd as more or less said above.
Consoles aren't dead yet.
I mean ,remember that skyrim is on the same consoles as oblivion was. Yet they have made the graphics much,much better ( in my opinion ),and also made the draw distance better + other things. If you look at oblivion ( which was impressive at the time ) and skyrim now,to me thats some achievement,considering it's 6 year old tech.
I love the way this game is looking,but i ain't everyone else.
Anyway,just thought i'd put my view across

I thought all the screenshots were from a computer since the game is being made on a computer? Either way, they still look good.

Oh, indeed you're right, though I'm not sure what affect that would legitimately have, given the far-from-PC architecture.


Of course, it's much easier to run illegal software when you actually control your hardware, rather than it being a walled garden - but it's still a serious issue on every console, and to say that "Most" PC gamers pirate games is simply wrong. There's even a lot going on around the PS3 at the moment due to sony's inadequate protection leaving the console effectively unprotected, so PS3 piracy may well end up being not only easier than piracy on any other console, but easier than piracy on PC, as well. Any torrent site will tell you that so far, 360 game pirating is on similar scales to PC game pirating - and the PSP was devastated by piracy, the DS suffering similar rates but having stronger sales.
It seems obvious that a cross-platform release generates more money, but you cannot extrapolate from that that a PC-only release is not viable. Intel's research shows that the number of "Gaming-class" PCs could well outstrip the number of consoles (Estimated by using console sales over a period, and gaming-class graphics card sales over a period), and Steam's billion dollar income, where steam is one (albeit major) player in the digital distribution ecosystem estimated to only take slightly over 50% of PC sales.

So, for most PC gamers to pirate all their games there must be an awful lot more PC gamers than there are any other type of gamer. Hm, the numbers on that don't quite check out.

World of warcraft; also they dont have to gimp the pc game they can just do what idk DICE is doing with BF3; full dx11 support, 64bit optimized, ect and so on. Bethesda should at least throw in DX11 even if they dont implement the effects themselves this way modders can mod in the effects.

It's not because of illegal downloads that games on PCs don't sell. It's just that a larger proportion of people buy consoles (well not according to Intel, but I know a lot more people with consoles than with gaming PCs), therefore a larger proportion of games will sell on consoles.

I know this is really a moot point, but apart from the fact that the amount of NPCs and items, etc. that the game has to keep track of, realistically and historically speaking, cities and large towns were not open in the medieval ages, when this game basically takes place. For protection, many cities and towns were walled. As for small towns and villages, they were not usually fortified by walls, but Oblivion has plenty of settlements that are like villages, and they are all open.

Did he get it wrong?.. I thought he said OVER 100, 400 is over 100 isn't it? I mean... it says so right there in the thread. I don't know how anyone could get that wrong.

Maps can be as big as you want as long as the storage media allows it. Nowadays maps are "streamed", so size is not important.

WHAT CONSOLES CAN'T AFFORD is the complexity, so graphics are lowered and detail reduced to be able to handle it.

I think people main complaints aren't the fact it's closed off by walls, more the fact that it's in a separate worldspace. Therefore that means no levitation etc. etc. And no loading, which people seem to care about a lot

Discusion here is open cities who is a cpu and memory problem, DX11 is rendering, argument against DX11 stand just as well for a PC only game, more modules to adjust to as they also want to support older graphic cards to get more players, but yes they should include it in a new engine as they probably will use it for later games to.

Sims 2 has poor graphic, however you had no chance running it with the expansion packs on console because of memory use, graphic is not everything.

TY for the link to infinity, bookmarked. However MMO is PC only, two reasons, memory and keyboard+ mouse, you need mouse to control and keyboard to chat, again graphic is not everything WOW make Oblivion look good however Oblivion don't have hundred people in different armor at the screen at once.

What they should make the best game they can on the consoles, then in the port over add latest dx11 effects OR at least the ability to mod those effects into the game.

Why is it just consoles that are blamed for restrictions? I'd say 20% of PC gamers dont have spec any higher than a console also. Not everyone wants to spend a lot of money just to play games.

Well people are going HERP THE DERP how are consoles holding PC's back.

I just pointed that out, and showed the true potential of PC gaming and how SO SO SOSOSOSOSO far away consoles are from that sort of raw power.

You don't have to spend a lot of money. End of.

PC games have graphics sliders so those with low end machines can still play, and those with high end machines can get all the juicy good stuff that they paid for.

Consoles are 6 years old. So it's like making games for a computer that's six years old. This topic is probably going to turn into a console vs PC war, but at the end of the day the outdated technology that are the consoles are holding back a lot of multi-platform games.

EDIT: :ninja:

Woohoo!