Bad Memory

Along with the constraints on storage medium that jumping the gun on a console release could inflict, the amount of RAM included could be a problem as well. Mark Rein of Epic was interviewed during GDC this past weekend:

"That's crucially important in the next generation of consoles, even more so than it is today, because we have the ability to do unbelievably insane graphics on these next-gen consoles, but we still have relatively low amounts of memory. In fact, I got a video card yesterday from NVIDIA which has probably twice as much memory as the next-generation video consoles are going to have - and that's only a video card!" (source)

It's pretty easy to infer that he's talking about a 512MB nVidia card, and that he believes the next gen consoles will only have 256MB of system memory. Before you alert the sirens, you have to remind yourself that consoles will never need just as much memory as a PC for several reasons. There is no bloated operating system with a 128MB footprint, nor are there a bunch of applications running in the background. Secondly, console games do not run in the same resolution as PC games. Most people are playing on a 640x480 interlaced NTSC television set. Even running in higher resolutions (720p, 1080i), they still aren't reaching the psychotic levels of detail that many people aim for when playing a game on a PC. On top of that, nobody is trying to get more than sixty frames per second out of console games (though I'd certainly hope they aim for that much rather than settling for 30fps). So this means that to expect consoles to approach the specs of what a high end gaming PC will look like going into 2007 (most likely 512MB video cards and 2GB of RAM) would not only be stupid, but would be expecting specs that would end up being limited by the video output devices most people will be using.

So is he off the mark? No, because RAM is one of the most cost effective measures in hardware, and always provides a noticeable performance boost. Chances are that none of the next generation consoles are going to have a hard drive built in (which is a smart design decision since networking to a PC drive or using a USB/Firewire drive is so affordable), so RAM should be a priority. The GPU's that consoles are sporting will be out of date by no longer than a year and a half after the launch date, and none of them of using CPUs that are directly comparable to wintel x86 stock processors. To have cutting edge processors and GPUs be hobbled by a limit of 256MB of RAM would be pretty lousy, possibly worse than the long term limitation of being stuck with a DVD-ROM drive. I would seriously hope that the next generation consoles have 512MB of RAM. There are a number of methods that developers can use to work around having only 256MB of RAM, but how many of them would actually use them? There aren't a lot of games that stream massive environments like GTA San Andreas does, and that was most likely possible due to the technical simplicity of the renderware-provided graphics. If games are going to take this generation's advancements and create new new ways of impressing us as well, having a decent amount of RAM is one of the bare necessities of wading into the next generation waters.